Now there's a lot of talk today about what has become known as the culture. And every nation has one. For example, there is a British culture, a French culture, and an American culture. But exactly what is the culture? How do we define it? Because the culture is not an animal, vegetable, or mineral. It isn't a solid, liquid, or gas. It doesn't breathe, or eat, or take up space. And yet, it is one of the biggest and most important aspects of our lives. The American culture really can't be defined by our language or our financial status or our cuisine. So what is it? And the reason I am asking the question is because it is one of the most common subjects about which people talk. For example, many politicians run for office today so they can transform the culture. Entire Christian ministries are in business to recapture the American culture that evidently has been either lost or stolen. So it would seem to me that since the culture is so important and so prevalent that we could define it very easily. And yet many seem to struggle at actually telling me what it is. So let me give it my best shot. The culture is the sum total of all the communication, all the attitudes, and all of the decisions, and all of the actions that dominate a large group of people. So the American culture would be the sum total of all the communication attitudes, decisions, and actions that the majority of the people of the United States have that dominate our nation. And certain aspects rise up from that. For example, even though it is rapidly changing, the overall majority of the American people speak English or a derivative of English. I'm quite certain that what we speak here in the South is still called English. One thing I noticed moving from Texas is how busy people are down here. They're constantly fixing to go do something. The majority of the American people love things like freedom and liberty, and they work hard, they pay their bills, they seek to give their children a better life than they had. The overall majority of the American people treat one another with kindness, and when there is a national emergency like 9-11 Hurricane Katrina, we temporarily drop our social and political differences, and we come together in amazing acts of kindness and sacrifice that literally astound the world. Nobody teaches this. This happens spontaneously based on the fact that the American culture, with all of its faults and its blemishes, is still dominated by a spiritual principle. It is permeated by an ethic. that is both absolute and eternal. And that principle has several components to it, such as a general belief that hard work is valuable, a general belief that we are accountable for what we do, a general belief that there are some moral absolutes, a general belief that living rightly provides for a better life. And these vague generalities that run through every aspect of our culture are based on a single concept. a general belief in a god or a supreme being. So I hope you can see that it's certainly not that everybody in America is saved. Because having these vague general beliefs is not enough to be forgiven and made righteous. I don't think that's ever been true in this country. From the very beginning of this now 230 plus year old experiment with democracy, There were atheists and agnostics and deists and a whole host of people deceived by false religions and heresies. But there was and still is an ethic that dominates the American culture. Some call it a Judeo-Christian ethic, but I think a better term would be a biblical ethic. For example, even though many are trying as hard as they can to erase our history, the reality is that our entire judicial system is based on English common law. And English common law is based on the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20. And that's not my opinion. That's a fact of history. But we are living in a time when the foundational concept and the prevailing ethic that underpins our culture is going through a radical and profound transformation. More and more people live in this country and are being born who either do not know or do not care what this ethic that dominates our nation is all about. And this has caused great consternation among many. Many efforts are underway right now by many people to either restore the culture on one side or transform it on the other. And this is what people are talking about when they use the term the culture war. And the people of this nation are rushing to and fro to be on one side or the other of this great battle. And the line of demarcation in this war is the culture. Leading the charge and helping to divide the people on one side or the other is the politicization of this war. I never could say that word. The notion that if we simply get the right people into positions of power, we can win. And because almost everything in America today has become political, the only goal is winning. But in order for one side to win, the other side has to lose. And this means that everything going on right now in the political arena is not about what is right, or what would be helpful or what would fight evil, which is the primary purpose of government according to the Bible. But both sides are determined to win by any means necessary by forcing the other side to lose. And so anything that can be said, any action that can be engaged in is acceptable. Every effort, no matter how unfair or untrue, is now justified as long as our side wins. But by default, that means that many times there are no longer any efforts to even discuss an issue rationally so that a good and workable and productive solution can be found. There doesn't seem to be any rules anymore. And so everything is fair game because each side is focused on one thing, decimating the other. And that is what happens when the only thing that matters is politics. But I am here today to beg you to understand that the very nature of people and the very fabric of the American culture is such that neither politics nor politicians can solve the problem with our culture. What is fundamentally wrong with us as a people and as a nation is not something that government can fix. There is no policy, no law, no edict or mandate, no political philosophy from those who rule over us that can fix this issue. There is no man, no woman, no political platform that can fix the culture. And that is because if it is true that the culture is the sum total of all that we say and do and think, then only by changing what we say and what we do and what we think can we fix the culture. But to change what we say and what we do and what we think requires that we change. You see, if what I think is contributing to breaking my culture, then only by altering the way I think can the culture be fixed. But how do you change the way people think? Only by changing who they are. Because if I can be radically and fundamentally transformed, then not only would I think differently, but I would say and do differently as well. And the only power in the universe that can change who I am is the power of God through Jesus Christ in true, genuine, biblical salvation. And that means that if the American culture is being destroyed, then the way, the one way, the single way, the only way we can hope to stop this destruction and restore the culture is to fundamentally transform the human being from what he is now to what he ought to be. And then his thoughts and his words and his actions would also change. And the summation of what would happen when millions of people are radically and fundamentally and thoroughly and eternally transformed by the power of God through Jesus Christ in true salvation is that the culture would reflect that transformation. That is why I tell you that if you really love your country, if you are genuinely dismayed at what is going on all around us, If you truly wish to see the culture become pleasing to God, American people must be radically transformed. Because you cannot change the culture without first changing what people say and do and how they think. And you cannot change the way people talk and think and act until you change them. And you cannot change people externally. They must be changed internally. That means that the culture war is not now and never has been a political battle. It is not a financial battle. It is not a racial battle. It is not a gender battle. It is not an age battle. You can't fix this with education or medicine or technology or government. This is a spiritual battle. And the battlefield is not in Washington, D.C. It is not in the halls of Congress or in the Supreme Court or in the state capitals or at City Hall. The battlefield is in the mind and in the heart of men. And by using the word men, I am not talking now about all of mankind. I am talking now about actual men. Males. I am talking about fathers and sons and brothers and husbands and uncles and grandfathers. You see, the sovereign God of the universe has called men to struggle against the lusts of their flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit to assume a primary servant leadership role in this life. Men are called by God to lead. Men are called by God to stand up and to speak out. They are called to walk and to run and to bring forth. They were created and equipped and then commanded to build and to plant and to create and to see to it that the will of God is carried out. About 1,500 years before Jesus was born, the Spirit of God stirred up a young protege of Moses to rise up and to stand up and to speak out against the compromise of his day. And the Bible says that Joshua was very strange. Moses was moved along by God the Holy Spirit to tell us that Joshua would not depart from the tent of worship, but dwelt continually near the presence of God. So it is no wonder that in Joshua 24, verse 15, with very little divine truth to read and study, he said, "...if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." This is what the Bible means when it talks about a man ordering his home. And it is his divine mandate. And so unlike women, men are called by God to conquer and to dominate and to subdue and to rule. And men are called and equipped and then commanded by that very same God to love and to teach and to lead and to worship. The primary reason why God made men to be husbands and sons and brothers and fathers was so they can take the dangerous and the hard and the difficult and the dominant positions in this life that will allow them to provide for and protect their wives and their children and others at home. All throughout history, men have left their homes to fight in wars, to basically do two things, conquer new territory and protect women. our mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters from evil and bad men. And godly and qualified men are also called and equipped and commanded to fight in spiritual wars as well. So men are told to stand in leadership positions in the church so that God's people may hear the Word of God rightly divided and be protected from damnable false teaching and destructive sinful behavior. And when God wanted that done, He looked to men. So winning the culture war begins with individual men. It begins with men recapturing their God-given place. It begins with them first understanding why God made them to be male in the first place, and then going about to live as though their maleness is right, and true, and correct, and proper, and a glory to God. You see, being a man is fundamentally different from being a woman. I was in Washington in 1993, and I was at Senator Trent Lott's office, and I was asking him two questions. I was asking him about this push for equality in the military, and then I was asking him what the Department of Education did, because they don't educate children, they don't build schoolhouses, they don't buy textbooks, they don't pay teacher salaries. So what do they do back then for $30 billion of my money? And he told me, he said, I'll get back to you on that because he didn't know either. And so I was in a meeting and I got a tap on my shoulder and they said, Trent Lott wants to talk to you on the phone. And so I went to the phone and I said, hey Trent. He said, Blair, I got you an answer on that about the Department of Education. I said, what? What do they do? He said, they coordinate. And I said, Trent, I'm about to make you a hero. I said, you tell them that I'll coordinate the stew out of whatever they want me to coordinate for half. You give me $15 billion and I'll coordinate anything you want me to coordinate. And then I said, what's the push for equality all about? And he said, we can't stop this. This is a tidal wave that is running through Washington. This is 25 years ago. This is a tidal wave running through Washington and it is going to affect every area of our lives. And it has. So you may have noticed that men are fundamentally different than women. And this is what the Apostle Peter is talking about here in the first part of verse 7. When he said, you husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way as with someone weaker since she is a woman. Here Peter was moved along by God the Holy Spirit to give husbands a foundational principle to ponder about women in general and their own wives in particular. That women and wives are weaker than men and husbands. But in what way is Peter telling us that women and wives are weaker than men and husbands? How are we to understand this? Well, our first hand is by looking at the actual Greek word that Peter chose to use as he originally wrote this verse down at some point near the latter part of the first century. And the word that Peter used means feeble, lacking physical ability. Now, even though our English word weak or weaker is used about 47 times throughout the 66 books of the Bible, 1 Peter 3, verse 7 is the only time that this particular Greek word was used in the entire New Testament. And from the definition of this Greek word, we can see that at least part of what Peter was trying to convey was that women are generally not as strong as men physically. But the definition of a word is only part of understanding it. One of the most important ways to understand what a biblical writer meant is by examining the context of how the word was used. And before Peter said that women and wives were weaker, he said this, Live with your wives in an understanding way. Or as the King James puts it, dwell with them according to knowledge. So Peter is commanding believing husbands to use knowledge and understanding when dealing with their wives precisely because they are weaker. But how is dealing with our wives in an understanding way related to physical weakness? Now, since it is true that this Greek word has to do with physical weakness, then maybe Peter was teaching here that because our wives are physically weaker than we are, that godly husbands are to live with them in such a way that we do all the heavy lifting. And that would mean that a correct application of this commandment would be that godly husbands should carry out the trash and not let wives move the furniture. Well, probably not. But how do we know that? Two ways. Number one, because the literal Greek says, live with your weaker wives with understanding of their. And number two, because Peter said there is a divine penalty if husbands don't do this so that your prayers will not be hindered. So are we to assume then that if I don't move the furniture that God won't hear my prayers? And that's what Peter was writing here? I don't think so. So even though the definition of the word has to do with a physical weakness, the context here is not on the woman's or the wife's physical weakness, but on the weakness of her nature. And this reality emphasizes something that is somehow very offensive to many people today. Men and women are not equal. We are not the same. Never have been, never will be. So the revered goal of equality between the sexes it seems to dominate so much of our conversation isn't true. And excluding perhaps how much money we pay women to work, this equality is not even attainable. So we are not equal because we cannot be equal. And nothing can ever change that. Men and women are different. And what I think is fundamental to being biblical is for us to know that men and women are different on purpose. In other words, God purposefully made us to be different. And that means that rather than seek to minimize or eliminate our differences, we should emphasize and celebrate them. Because those differences are profound, they are fundamental, and they are self-evident. So the distinctions between men and women are not some mistake that needs to be corrected. Our differences are not some problem that needs to be solved. And that means we should not be trying to change these distinctions through science or technology or medicine or governmental legislation. And the reason we should not seek to change the differences between men and women is because they aren't something of which we should be ashamed. They are part of why we worship God. And that means that the indisputable fact that men and women are not equal is a reality that needs to be taught and learned and promoted and rejoiced over. God made us uniquely male and female on purpose. And this is simply another way of saying what I never thought would ever need to be said. God's will is that men are to be men. And women are to be women. And the roles that are inherent in being a man or a woman are set in concrete and are unalterable. And that means that deviation from these roles is sin. Oh, I can wait. If I was in politics, that would have been a call, an applause line. I'm just looking for an amen every once in a while. But Peter's telling us here that a woman's nature is not simply different from a man's, but weaker. So in what way is a woman's nature weaker than a man's? Is it because women are unable to be saved? No. Well, how do I know that? Because Peter said, show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. So in this sense, men and women are equal. The fact that Peter says that women are fellow heirs of the grace of life shows us that women can be saved and they can have full access to God and all of His promises through salvation to the very same degree as a man. And to this, the Apostle Paul agreed when he said in Galatians 3, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, and if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendant, heirs according to promise. You see, under the Old Covenant, it mattered whether you were a Jew or a Gentile. It mattered whether you were a man or a woman, and it mattered whether you were a slave or a master. But part of what makes the new covenant infinitely superior to the old, to the degree that we are told that the old covenant is now obsolete and should be abandoned, is that in Jesus, things like ethnicity, and nationality, and education level, and political connections, and sexual distinctions, and status in this life are completely irrelevant. to the very issues that were paramount under the Old Covenant are totally without any significance under the New. And that means that the very core issue on which the Old Covenant hung its hat, the Jewishness of the elect, has been completely eliminated. And forgive me for just bringing this up right now, but this will affect your eschatology. If Jewishness is irrelevant, then it matters all the way through. It's irrelevant about last things. It's irrelevant about getting saved. You can't have it both ways. It's either relevant or it's irrelevant. Okay, but if a woman is a fellow heir of the grace of life and spiritually equal with a man, how is her nature weaker? And as we seek to comprehend that, we also need to realize that the honor that Peter desires for husbands to show their wives is shaped by the knowledge or the understanding that the husband has of two truths. Number one, the husband's understanding that his wife is weaker. And number two, the husband's understanding that his wife is a fellow heir of the grace of life. And these two truths must be kept together. One balancing the other. Because if the husband emphasizes one truth above the other, he will not honor his wife. He will warp her. Emphasizing the truth that she is a fellow heir above the truth of her weakness will allow for the wife to be placed in positions in the home and in the church that she is not equipped to handle. And everybody will suffer for that, including the wife. And emphasizing the truth that she is weaker above the truth that she is a fellow heir will allow for the wife to be crippled and hindered in what God has called her to do. Oh, how we need God to teach us. One key that will help us is for us to understand what Peter meant by using the phrase, someone weaker, to describe the wife. Peter said, live with your wives in an understanding way as with someone weaker, since she is a woman. Now notice that Peter did not say that women were weak, but that they were weaker. So the way we should see this is not that men are strong and women are weak, but that men are weak and women are weaker. Both men and women are weak as it pertains to godliness. Men do not have an easier time in resisting temptations than women do. Obedience does not come easier for men than women. That simply isn't true. The reality is that men struggle against the lust of their flesh that delights in rebelling against God as much or maybe even more than women. Men need the grace of God as much or more than women do. Men need forgiveness and mercy when they fail as much or more than women do. So all human beings are weak. The man's nature has problems and weaknesses inherent in it that, while different from that of a woman, are nonetheless very serious and very real. And it's not a lot. There's not a lot. There's only about ten things that make men unique to women. There's only about ten things that make women unique to men. And Satan knows all of them. And so he usually fights men in one or more of these ten areas, and he usually fights women in one or more of these ten areas. And he's been doing that for 6,000 years. The woman's nature has problems and weaknesses inherent in it that, while different from those of a man, are nonetheless very serious and very real. But the man is called by God to fight against his sinful inclinations to lead. While the woman is called by God to fight against her sinful inclinations to support and help the man. Now I want you to notice something very interesting about what Peter says here. Peter was moved along by God the Holy Spirit to say, live with your wives in an understanding way as with someone weaker since she is a woman and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. So the issue that would normally invite domination and abuse out in the lost, unsaved world, the weakness of the wife, is the very issue that commands honor. The point of the greatest vulnerability for the woman is the very source of her honor. The fact that evil men can take advantage of a woman's weakness is the point that affords her the greatest degree of honor when godly men do not. Now another thing I want you to see, what does Peter teach here as the reason a woman is weaker than a man? Is it her upper body strength? No. Does Peter get into the fact that women only have two-thirds the blood supply of a man? No. Does Peter get into the fact that back in the first century women couldn't go to school or learn? No. Does the apostle get into the fact that every 28 days most women accumulate more sodium around their inner ear and thus have a tendency to be dizzy, especially when flying an F-14 fighter jet at Mach 3 speed? I can't find that. So to what does Peter attribute a woman being weaker than a man to? He said, since she is a woman. So Peter refers us back to the order of creation as to why a woman is weaker than a man. In other words, the weaker state is precisely because God created her as a woman in the first place and has nothing to do with any external situation like unfair treatment by society. Now the main reason I am bringing all this up today is because this is the next verse in my verse-by-verse journey through 1 Peter. But I am also speaking out because I honestly see this issue as the seminal issue of our day. I used to think that many years from now, if the Lord should tarry, that the Christians of the future would look back on us with great bewilderment. And they would ask us, how could the richest and the freest nation in history, a nation that spoke the loudest about Jesus, systematically hack their unborn children to death? And they would ask those of us who might still be alive, what did you do when all this was going on? Because that was the question that we asked the Christians of Germany in the last century. What did you do when they were gassing the people? But now I see abortion as simply another symptom of a much larger issue. The great confusion about what it means to be a man and a woman. In fact, I see almost all of the social ills of the modern American culture like the exponential increase of illegitimate births, the normalization of sexual perversions, the increase of divorce, the rise in abuse toward women, the horror that six out of ten men in the church routinely look at pornography, the rapid increase of single mother homes, the rise in multiple women having children from the same man. I see all of these evils as directly linked to the same problem. Men no longer knows what it means to be a man and women no longer know what it means to be a woman. Men today are either getting in touch with their inner femininity or they're trying to emulate Clint Eastwood. Women are either marching for the right to murder their baby or they're emulating the Queen of England. But fewer and fewer people see that we are told what to do and what to believe and how to behave in the pages of sacred infallible writ. Many church leaders today are openly teaching that the many, many, many verses that limit the behavior of both men and women and that redirect our efforts to an almost forgotten way of life are archaic and irrelevant and have no place in the church of the 21st century. And inerrant statements like the first seven verses of 1 Peter 3 given by man, chosen personally by the Lord Christ Himself, are seen as apostolic suggestions rather than apostolic commands. The notion that by pulling the lever in the ballot box to elect a man into a position of power that this will change the culture simply does not happen. And it does not happen because it cannot happen. And while I understand people who are not saved and who do not read the Bible thinking this way, I cannot imagine anyone who was truly born again thinking like this. During my lifetime, We have seen an appalling acquiescence on the part of the average man as he has freely and gladly relinquished more and more of his God-given responsibility and calling. Men today are abandoning their spiritual authority and their positions in the home and in the church in record numbers. A spiritual lethargy has gripped them and they have become dull and unconcerned and listless. give them some toys to play with, and provide them with a little discretionary money, and more and more husbands and fathers are just tuning out and are perfectly content to idle their lives away while the world is on fire. The result of female domination and leadership in the home and in the church is clear, unarguable, and frightening. It is an unmitigated disaster. An entire generation of young boys are being systematically destroyed because fathers either don't exist or don't lead. Every statistic says the same thing from crime, to behavior, to illegitimate births, to abuse of women, to abortion, to sexual perversions. Nothing works right when men are sitting and when they are silent. And we can point our finger at uppity women and condemn feminism all day long, but women usurping authority over men is the natural and normal result of men not assuming their God-given role and of women filling that vacuum. And the fix, the one fix, the single fix, the only fix is for men to repent and obey God with joy. And I want to be crystal clear about this. It does not matter if the husband is happy or content about not assuming this role of leadership, protection, and provision. God has called men to lead. And so if they refuse to lead and are happy with that, then they're being content with rebellion. And that is a horrible place to be. Men have told me that for them to lead is, quote, just not my style. Or that it is, quote, goes against my nature. Which is simply an attempt at justifying their refusal to obey their Master. I didn't write any of this, dear friends. This is the Word of the living God. And everything I know about God's Word tells me that being saved should make obedience to God the best and the happiest place on earth. Dear friends, we simply will not see the change in our culture. We will not win the culture war. We will not experience the revival that we say we want until we begin to love what God loves. And that will never happen until men become godly and those godly men begin to lead. But for men to be men, real men, godly men, they must first learn to love. And in order for men to be strong and vibrant and powerful and productive, they must first learn what it means to love. And in order to love correctly, men must first learn how to love God. We simply cannot love others correctly until we learn how to love God correctly. But loving God is a gift. So God has to graciously grant us the gift of love for Himself. We can't work it up. We can't make this happen. We can't rub the two sticks of human decision and willpower together to manufacture a love for God. So the first order of business is that men need to begin to cry out to God to grant them the gift of love. Listen to what the prophet wrote about 750 years before Jesus was born. The Lord utters His voice before His army. Surely His camp is very great. For strong is He who carries out His Word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome. And who can endure it? Yet even now declares the Lord, return to Me with all your heart and with fasting, weeping, and mourning, and rend your heart and not your garments. Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate. slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness, and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him? even a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God. Blow a trumpet in Zion. Consecrate a fast. Proclaim a solemn assembly. Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation. Assemble the elders. Gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out of his room and the bride out of her bridal chamber. Let the priests, the Lord's ministers, weep between the porch and the altar. And let them say, Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the people say, where is their God? Then the Lord will be zealous for His land and will have pity on His people. The Lord will answer and say to His people, behold, I am going to send you grain, new wine and oil. You will be satisfied and full with them. I will never again make you a reproach among the nations. Well-meaning ministries today are advocating protest marches and boycotts and letter-writing campaigns. They raise money for political campaigns and push for Supreme Court judges. Anything except what Joel says here. And so they turn their heads and pretend not to see blatant sin all in the name of winning the culture war and being on the right side. But here, The man of God who saw the wickedness and compromise of his day promoted different things like fasting, prayer, repentance, mourning, and weeping between the porch and the altar. Things you seldom hear anymore. But these are the tools that will help God's people return to God, which is what the real problem is. And who did Joel say would lead this great returning back to God? Let the Lord's priests The Lord's ministers weep between the porch and the altar. And let them say, spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. The Apostle Paul also rejected the tactics of the modern church as it pertains to recapturing the culture. When he said this in 2 Corinthians 10, verses 4 and 5, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But make no mistake about it, when Christians resort to carnal and natural and earthly and political tactics to try to bring about a spiritual awakening, We are doing two things. We are testifying loud and clear that we really don't believe that the real problems of our nation are spiritual. And number two, we are testifying loud and clear that we disagree with Paul. And we absolutely do believe that the weapons of the church are of the flesh. But I don't think either one of these are good. And I don't think either one of these will ever in a million years lead us to where we say we want to be. Spiritual problems cannot be fixed with natural and earthly and carnal and political weapons. You simply can't get there from here. The Bible says you can't. Only by us repenting, only by us praying, only by us returning to God, and only by God's people returning to God can we hope to see genuine revival. And that will only happen when men rise up and stand up and speak out and begin to lead again in their homes and in the church. But it's just so much easier to go into the voting booth and pull a lever and put the sticker on my lapel and then take great comfort that because I voted for the right guy, we're going to see God move and restore our nation. It's all so very neat and tidy. I don't have to change the way I live. I don't have to concern myself with whether my prayers are being hindered because I'm not living with my wife in an understanding way as someone weaker precisely because she is a woman. I don't have to bother struggling against my fleshly lust to humble myself to obey God's Word. I don't really have to do anything personally. And bingo! Instant revival. Instant holiness. Instant transformation of the culture. But notice what Paul said in the very next verse. And we are ready to punish all disobedience. Well, amen to that! That's exactly what we say we all want, right? The punishment of all disobedience on our land will lead us to a great and marvelous revival where biblical holiness and purity will dominate. So, when will God give us this punishment of all disobedience? When we have all three branches of government? When we get strict constructionalists on the court? when political liberalism is finally defeated? No, Paul had another way. When will all disobedience be punished? Whenever your obedience is complete. What? What do you mean my obedience? What has my obedience got to do with seeing our culture transform? I mean, I just saw some of the most influential ministers in America on TV talking about getting on our phones and bombarding the senators so they'll vote correctly. We need to win this culture war, Brother Blair. So we need to get busy and make sure that our side is winning. Yeah, we do. But the Holy Bible says that when God's people are obedient, then God will punish those who are disobedient. But that also means that if we are not obedient, then he won't. I would suggest, my friends, that what we believe and what we do and how we live our lives as individuals whom God has sent his love upon will not only transform our culture, but it will transform the world. The single most effective way to prove to people that the miracle of the new birth is the best thing that can ever happen to a person is to show the world a people who have actually experienced the miracle of the new birth. So I am suggesting to you that when men, as individuals, first see the value of what Peter is teaching here, then as we begin to yield to what Peter is teaching here, that how we treat our wives when nobody else is watching, has more to do with the transformation of the American culture than anything else. Because God did not call any of us to transform the culture. God called husbands to honor their wives as a fellow heir of the grace of life. God called husbands to live with our wives in an understanding way because she is weaker than we are because she is a woman. Oh, come on, Brother Blair. What does this have to do with us transforming the culture? Everything. Because as men change, the Word of God is honored. And when God is honored, hearts and minds and lives are changed. So, when men change, families change. And as families change, churches change. And as churches change, neighborhoods change. And as neighborhoods change, entire regions change. And as regions change, the culture changes. But none of that happens until and unless men change. Now, I agree, this is infinitely harder and will take much longer. than become politically active in voting for the right person. But men being godly at home with their wives will also yield infinitely better results than becoming politically active in voting for the right person. So may God be good to us to raise up godly men who will return to God and love their wives. Because when men like this pray, their prayers are not hindered. Let's pray.