The Faith Of Sadducees

Jesus Answers the Sadducees’ Question About the Resurrection

Please turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 20, that can be found on page 880 if you're using the Pew Bible. Luke chapter 20, we will be looking at verses 27 to 38. When you have that, please go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.

And Jesus said to them, But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.

Then some of the scribes answered, Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask this day as your Word is open before us, that we would have words of life. We pray that we would see the hope of the resurrection, and not only that, that we would be instructed by Christ's demeanor, his familiarity with the Scripture.

We pray that you would equip us to face all enemies. Pray that you would equip us to face the great enemy that we have of the accuser, but then also those who speak on his behalf. We pray that you would give us a great hope in the future, in the resurrection, but also great confidence in the work that you are doing even now.

In Jesus' name, amen.

The Sadducees, Leveret Marriage, and the Resurrection

Well, as you should have been noticing throughout Luke 20, if you have been here, that Jesus is responding to various opponents. There are different opponents who have come at him. There are the scribes, the chief priests, the elders, and they have come at him.

They have come at him through spies as well, and they've given different arguments, and now he has a new set of opponents, the Sadducees. And this really is the thing that ties together this whole chapter, is that there are various opponents of Jesus Christ who have come at him and are challenging him.

And so in each of these passages, we have something to learn about the doctrine that is addressed in that passage. Like here, we have the resurrection that is addressed, but that is not necessarily the main thing that we should pay attention to and focus on.

Rather, we should also notice how Christ is instructing us in dealing with opponents, how he himself, the great example for us, the one who is the author and defender of our faith, the author and architect of our faith, has resisted these opponents and answered them.

So we should gather both of these things. We should gather details about the resurrection, about the life to come, and we should also gather information about how Christ is instructing us to live our life as we will face opponents.

Both of these must be considered. And so I would like to break this up into three different categories. First, there is what we should know about the resurrection. And there is also how we should be interpreting scripture.

And lastly, how we should be arguing about scripture, how we should be arguing with opponents of Jesus Christ. But just to walk through this passage first so that we understand what's being said here.

Starts off in this first verse, there came to him some Sadducees who denied that there is a resurrection. So there are Sadducees. Luke explains to us what a Sadducee is, or at least something about Sadducees.

Sadducees deny the resurrection. They're essentially the ancient equivalent of modern-day liberals. Modern-day liberal Christians deny things like the resurrection. They deny spiritual realities. They deny angels, things like that.

And so the Sadducees do. The Sadducees deny the existence of spirits. They deny the existence of the resurrection. And they're also very particular about what passages that they consider as weighty, just as a modern-day liberal might only care about the red letters of scripture and discount others.

So the Sadducees particularly care about the words of Moses, and they argue from the words of Moses. So they give this doctrinal premise in verse 28. They say, they asked him a question saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.

So this is talking about Deuteronomy 25. Leveret marriages. Leveret marriages were marriages where if a man had died without having had a child, his brother, being free to marry, would have to marry that woman in order to produce offspring for his brother.

So his brother's name would be carried on, and his widow would not have to suffer dishonor. Now, you see an example of that in Genesis 38, where Tamar had married Ur. Ur died, and then there was Onan, and then Onan dies, and then so on.

And so Tamar, because she had been wronged in this because a Leveret marriage had not been pursued as it ought, she ends up wrongly going about seeking union with Judah himself in order to produce offspring.

And it's from that line that we even have Jesus Christ. So there is in her desire to obtain the promise, which is a good desire, she'd use sinful means to pursue it. But that is one example that you have of Leveret marriages in scripture.

So that is what this is talking about. They're talking about this law of Leveret marriages. Okay, Moses tells us this particular thing that we must do. Now, in verse 29, it gives not the doctrinal premise, but the situational premise.

It says,.

Okay, so it's describing the situation. It's explaining that she doesn't have children each time. That's what motivates the additional marriage each time, that each brother is marrying this woman. And even the final one has no sons.

So there's nothing that really distinguishes these brothers. There's not one that has a son that would make him more her husband than any of the others. So they're describing this situation as a setup, as a challenge for Jesus.

Because here's the question. The question is, Afterward, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife. This seems to the Sadducees to be kind of a preposterous situation.

If she had seven different husbands, being monogamous with each one, she's going to wake up in the resurrection, if the resurrection were true, as a polygamist. And certainly, this couldn't be the case.

So therefore, the resurrection cannot be true. They rejected the oral traditions of the Pharisees. And in their mind, this might be an example of scripture triumphing over tradition. That clearly, the resurrection cannot be true.

Clearly, if you were just to take Moses out of his word, you would wind up at the conclusion that there is no resurrection. Now, Jesus responds to that.

The Sons of This Age and the Sons of the Resurrection

And he says,.

The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age into the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they cannot die anymore because they're equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

Okay, so he answers their objection. He answers their hypothetical by explaining that they're starting off with wrong premises. They don't understand the nature of the resurrection. They don't understand what it is that's even being argued for.

It's not that we would have the same kind of life that we do here. It's rather that there would be an entirely different kind of life in the resurrection. Yes, it is a physical resurrection, but it's not one that entails all the same things of physical life here.

The sons of this age, that is both believer and unbeliever alike who are here in this world, marry and are given in marriage for particular needs. In leverant marriages, what's the issue? The issue is, well, there is limited life.

So there's a need to continue on a line, continue on a legacy. Well, if there's no death, there's not a need for continuing on a legacy for children, etc. Because you are your own legacy. You can continue on forever.

There's not a need to pass something on. And if there's no death, then the same thing is true for the widow, that she does not have to worry about being shamed. So there's not the same needs that would drive us to marriage.

They are rather like the angels. They are sons of God, angels being occasionally called sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. So they are raised from the dead. They are like the angels, not necessarily bodily, not necessarily in every way.

They aren't like the angels bodily. But they are in terms of not dying, in terms of not having the same needs that people do here on this earth. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. So now he goes on from answering their objection to giving his own positive case. He says, not only is it the case that your objection doesn't work because you don't even understand what our position is, but rather, in addition to that, you're wrong because if you were to take Moses, you would believe in the resurrection.

He is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He's not the God of the dead, but of the living. All live to him, meaning that if he has saved someone, that salvation is for his purposes, that they might live unto him.

And that necessarily entails a resurrection. You see this throughout scripture. In the passages that we've been looking over in Isaiah, what motivates the resurrection and what motivates not just the resurrection, but God's salvation of his people in general, is that they are a chosen people for his purposes.

And if he has chosen them for purposes, then he can't simply discard with them because that would mean that his purposes are not good. Rather, his purposes are to give life in order that they might live unto him.

This entails a continued protection. This is what Isaiah or the Lord in the book of Isaiah consistently points to as motivating assurance of God's good hand in salvation, is that he picks a people not to discard them, but rather to preserve them for his purposes.

So he is not the God of the dead, but of the living for all live to him. First of all, the resurrection. What should we be taking away from this about the resurrection? First of all, that there is a resurrection.

There is a resurrection. There is a bodily resurrection that will happen on the last day. That is the day that Christ returns and all will be raised from the dead bodily. Both believer and unbeliever will be raised bodily.

The believer will be raised to a glorious resurrection. The unbeliever to a shameful resurrection. On that last day, if you can imagine that everyone will be lined up before the throne of judgment and you would see all the different people, it would be visibly obvious who the saints are and who those who are not holy are because they will have different qualities of resurrection.

And Jesus mentions that here. This is not just a statement that all will be raised from the dead. He speaks of those who are worthy to attain to that age. Now, he doesn't describe how exactly one becomes worthy.

It's explained elsewhere in scripture that worthiness happens through him, that through trusting in Jesus Christ, you can have his righteousness and alien righteousness that's credited to you in order that you may stand before the Lord.

But he speaks of some being worthy to attain to that age. Now, everyone will still exist in that age, but only some will have status in that age. And so that's what he means by attaining to that age. They will have honor then.

And this is something that he describes as happening to all. He says, all live to him. Now, that's another thing that people might look at and get the wrong idea. Well, if he's describing all living to him, then that means that all will be resurrected, that all will be saved.

And so Jesus is advocating for universalism, the idea that everyone will be saved. Scripture speaks like this frequently. When it has in mind a particular group of people, it will speak of all, it will speak of the entirety of that group of people.

In Romans, it speaks of all having been condemned through the actions of one man. So it is the case that all will be justified through the righteousness of one man. That does not mean that every single person will be made righteous.

Rather, it is talking about those who are under that headship. Just like with Adam, everyone was under Adam. So it is with Christ that everyone who is under Christ will be justified. So when he says all here, he's talking about all who attain to that age, all who are counted worthy.

The idea of being counted worthy suggests that some will not be counted worthy. So there is a judgment as well. There is not just a resurrection of gloriousness for everyone, but there is also likewise a resurrection that is to judgment.

Now, all will stand before Christ in judgment, but some particularly to be condemned in judgment because they do not have true righteousness. The only righteousness that can come from Jesus Christ. Now, one other doctrine that I think this is very helpful to counter is the idea of hyperpreterism.

If you've never heard of this, preterism refers to a kind of interpretation. There's different, in each passage that talks about the future, you can interpret it in different ways. You can interpret it in a futurist way.

That means that it is still in the future for us today. You can interpret it in a historicist way. That means that it happened sometime in the past couple of millennia. You can interpret in an idealist way, which means it's kind of always happening.

Or you can interpret it in a preterist way, which means it happened really soon after Jesus Christ. So it happened in the future relative to him speaking, but it was very soon after, like within a generation.

Now, preterism is not a dirty word. There are some passages that you should interpret as coming very soon after Jesus Christ. There are some passages that you should interpret as not having been fulfilled at all.

There are some passages you should interpret as having been fulfilled in the past several millennia. And there are some passages that you should interpret as being fulfilled constantly. So no one of those is a right thing.

They are right and wrong, depending on the passage that you are looking at. Sometimes people will speak of any one of those categories as a wrong category. They are all right categories, depending on the verse that you are looking at.

Now, what a hyper-preterist is, is someone who counts way too many things as having been fulfilled right after Jesus Christ. So a hyper-preterist would say, okay, the resurrection was sometime after Jesus Christ, but it was really soon after Jesus Christ.

We've got some passages in the New Testament where Paul says the resurrection hasn't happened yet, and it hadn't happened yet, but it happened really soon after Paul. And in fact, the resurrection has already happened, and when we die, we have some kind of spiritual life that we enjoy, and that is the resurrection.

Okay, so that's what hyper-preterism would be, is if you count, it's especially the resurrection, if you count the resurrection as something that happened, that has already happened. Now, this is an excellent passage to respond to hyper-preterism.

It's my favorite passage to respond to hyper-preterism, because it describes this in terms of ages. It talks about the sons of this age. It talks about those who attain to the next age. Now, these two ages refer to the time when there is resurrection and the time where there's not resurrection.

And the time that there's not resurrection is a time where there's marriage, where there's still marriage, so that means the resurrection has not yet happened. Now, a hyper-preterist could say, well, you shouldn't interpret this as talking about ages.

You should talk about, interpret this as talking about worlds. Sometimes the word here is used to speak of worlds, but it speaks of ages as characterized by particular qualities, and that's why sometimes it would be translator's world.

It really does refer to ages. It's not talking about two overlapping times where you have some sons of this age and some sons of the next age. It talks about sons of the age as even including us who are saved.

Even those who are saved are sons of this age, so it's not just distinguishing saved and unsaved or anything like that, but it is distinguishing two distinct time periods. The resurrection has not yet happened.

Now, maybe you've never encountered that and you're very blessed if you have not, but occasionally you will find this, that people are hyper-preterist and believe that much of scripture has already been fulfilled in such a way that it really leaves us without much application today other than some kind of small measures of personal piety or something like that.

A lot of those who are hyper-preterist abandon the church because they don't see a need to follow things like the Lord's Supper, because if this is something that we're supposed to do until Christ returns, and that return has already sort of happened, it happened in 70 AD with the destruction of the temple or something like that, there's really no need for any church ordinances, no need for the church, et cetera.

So it's a very problematic doctrine. I find this an incredibly helpful passage to respond to it. So there is a resurrection. There is a judgment. We should reject any kind of other alternative to that.

Now, this also tells us about the qualities of the resurrection. The resurrection has certain qualities. So we will have a life that is like the angels. Once again, that's not referring to bodily. The whole thing that Jesus is arguing for is a bodily resurrection.

But we will be like the angels and that we will not have the same needs that people do here on this earth. So for example, we will no longer be subject to death. Another thing that's not explicitly mentioned here but is implicit is that we will exist in great quantities.

Now, it's the case that the way is narrow. Few will find it. Yet at the same time, the quantity of people that Jesus will gather on that last day will be great enough that it will be like the angels, more than the stars of the heavens, et cetera.

These figures that God gives us, more than the sands of the sea. I don't necessarily mean that in a literal way, but in the way that God intends it, that it will be such great quantities that will be innumerable.

It'll not be something where you can see any sort of lack. That is how the angels are now. There are many armies of them. There are hosts of angels. That's what the word host means. It means army. And so it'll be that we will exist in such great quantities that there won't be the need for progeny for that reason also.

I mentioned honor already. There wouldn't be a need for continued marriage and for continued offspring because there would not be a need to pass on a legacy because you wouldn't die. But likewise, it will be the case that there will be so many brothers and sisters around you that the need to populate the earth to be fruitful and multiply in that way will have been completed.

So what this speaks to is a fulfillment of multiple things, not just that we will have life, but that the people will exist in such great quantity that there won't be a loneliness among God's people that warrants that same kind of command to be fruitful and multiply.

If you've never considered this before, one more reason to believe that there wouldn't be continued offspring in heaven is because of God's purposes in making a redeemed people for himself. One of the main things that distinguishes angels and humans is that God came to save humans, the offspring of Abraham.

He did not come to save angels. And that characterizes us in such a way where the angels long to look into it. They want to know about the salvation that those that God has saved among humanity enjoy.

And God has created us in a special way that we might enjoy it in a special way. We are created with particular weaknesses even in order that we might enjoy it. And so what would it mean for God to continue creating new people after that last day?

They would not be a redeemed people. They would be a people who already know protection, already know safety, that already know life and do not need Jesus Christ, would not be thankful to him in the same way that we are able to be thankful that not even the angels are.

So there will not be two classes of people, those who are thankful for salvation and those who cannot be thankful for salvation because they didn't receive it, but there will just be the redeemed. So an additional reason to, beyond simply Christ's own words, that there would not be continued marriage.

And offspring in heaven.

How Jesus Interprets Scripture

Now moving on from the resurrection itself because this passage is not designed to be an exhaustive explanation of the resurrection, though it is a little more exhaustive than the doctrines that were addressed before in this passage, but it exists in this passage to describe to you the way that Jesus handles opponents.

I would have us next turn to the issue of interpretation. How should scripture be interpreted? One word for the interpretation of scriptures, hermeneutics, that comes from the Greek word to interpret.

If you ever hear the term hermeneutics, that's what it's referring to, is just how you interpret scripture. This is one of my favorite passages, likewise, not just to talk about hyper-preterism, but also to talk about the interpretation of scripture.

I think it should be very sobering for many people when they see the way that Jesus interprets scripture. I think every one of us should put ourselves in the shoes of the disciples listening to this and wondering, if we did not know that Christ was the Messiah, if we did not know that Jesus was who he is, and we heard a mere man make this argument, or let's say that you had not read this part of the Bible, somehow you had read all the rest of the Bible, but not these particular parts in the gospels that tell you about this, and you heard someone make this argument, he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he's not the God of the dead, but the living,.

All live to him,.

And you heard that as an argument for the resurrection, what would your response be? I would guess that the vast majority of modern-day Christians would reject that argument entirely. They say that's a gross mishandling of scripture, even if the doctrine is true.

That is a gross mishandling of scripture to just take some narrative detail that he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then say that, well, he's not the God of the dead or living, even though they're dead right now, and will live eventually, and so that means that there's a resurrection?

You should place yourself in those shoes and ask, would I have received this argument from Jesus Christ? And if the answer is no, something needs to change about the way that you interpret scripture, because you are not interpreting scripture the way that Jesus is.

Many people will talk about the way that you interpret scripture as being equivalent of the way that you would interpret any other book, right? They'll talk about the grammatical historical hermeneutic.

If you've ever heard about that, that's good, okay? It's good to consider what the grammar is saying, the historical context, et cetera, but there are so many other details about the way that God has given us this book that should drive us to understand it more fully.

He has told us the purpose of this book, that the purpose is to correct us, instruct us. 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17, says that all of scripture is useful for correction and for reproof. So if you take some passages and you say, this is just narrative, this is just telling us about history, this is not telling us anything that could possibly reprove us, you are not interpreting it as fully as you ought to interpret it.

Or if you are interpreting it in a way where you're seeing it as the words of man, not as the words of the Holy Spirit, where it's designed to come together as a cohesive unit and all interact with one another, all culminating in the revelation of Jesus Christ himself as being our salvation, you are missing the main message of scripture.

And many Christians do this. Many people who believe that the Bible is authored by the Spirit fail to read it as a document written by a single author in that way. And it should shape so many of the ways that we read it.

Here, as we see Jesus point to that promise of life that all lived to him, that God has given us a pattern of saving his people in such a way that we could not even entertain the idea that they would just stay dead forever.

That must drive us to hope in the resurrection and to come to many conclusions interpreting the scriptures more fully than many might. There are several categories to consider here. The way our confession, the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith talks about this is that there are some doctrines that are expressly set forth in scripture.

Okay, that's a doctrine where it just said point blank and that's how it is. And there are things that are necessarily contained in scripture. That means it's not expressly put forth, but if you put all the pieces together and you really are reading it all in context and you're understanding God's purposes in it, you will come to that conclusion.

There's a lot of debate around this term, but when someone is very willing to take the express statements, but then hesitates for many of the logical conclusions when it's all taken together in context, all the things that are necessarily contained and they take a lot of the express statements and they demand express statements when someone tries to follow the logical conclusions farther, that's often known as biblicalism.

There's a lot of debates around whether or not that's an appropriate term to use for people, but I think it's a useful one. I think it's a useful category to say, you need to be more willing to follow scripture to its logical conclusions and not demand express statements everywhere.

That is not the way that Christ is interpreting scripture. Express statements are good when God gives them to us, but he has called us to interpret it completely. Now, what are the restraints on this?

How do you interpret rightly? There's what is known, and I know I'm giving you a lot of vocabulary right now. If you forget the vocabulary and just remember the doctrine, that's fine, but having the vocabulary may be helpful to you in the future if you ever hear it.

It's known as the analogia fide or the analogy of faith. What that means is, there are different ways that doctrine is set forward. In some ways, it's in very clear ways and in some ways it's analogous, but less clear.

And the clear passages or even clear doctrines, as they're taken together with all scripture, have to interpret the less clear passages. Now, that would be the case here, where you have a passage.

That says,.

I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What doctrines should be controlling how we interpret that passage? Well, the doctrine of God giving life to his people, the doctrine of God saving his people.

That is important enough when we see David delivered from death as he prays to God for him to be delivered from death. Certainly, it can't mean that he's just delivered a few times and then that's it, but rather that there must be a resurrection.

And as God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, surely, there must be a resurrection for them as well. And so these greater doctrines, these clear doctrines have to interpret less clear doctrines or clear passages have to interpret less clear passages.

One of my favorite examples of that, and you should be thinking about this not as just clear passages, like you have to have another express statement, but just clear doctrines. If you have a clear doctrine that many texts together have come together to show, that can interpret the other.

So for example, in 1 Samuel 15, twice in that passage, it speaks of God regretting. And so it says, God regretted that he made Saul king. But then later on in that passage, he says that he's not a man that he should regret or change his mind.

So how do you take those two things together? Well, whenever we describe God's actions, they're necessarily anthropomorphic, right? He is not a man. He doesn't act like us. But the only way we could understand his actions, you know, when he speaks, he's not speaking by the way we are by moving his lips.

When he acts, he's not subject to time the way we are. It's all analogous. It's all anthropomorphic. Even being described like a man. And so his actions are anthropomorphic, but statements about his being are more precise.

So when it says that he is not man that he should regret or change his mind, that statement that he is not capable of regret has to control the statement that he does regret. We understand that, okay, this doesn't mean that he made a mistake.

It just means that there's some displeasure that the Bible is explaining to us with using the human emotion of regret. Okay, so that would be one example of this. Another good example of what people might call biblicism is where someone understands some truths about God, but then is not willing to accept the doctrine of the Trinity because there's no verse that says God is triune.

Well, that you'd have to collect from many different passages all together. That is a bunch of truths placed into one. The fact that Jesus is God, the fact that Father is God, the fact that the Spirit is God, the fact that they are not the same person, the Father's not the Spirit, Spirit's not the Father, the Son's not the Spirit, et cetera.

All these things put together give you the doctrine of the Trinity. You're not gonna find all of that in a single verse. So it would be, one extreme example of biblicism would be to reject the Trinity because you can't find a verse that says God is triune.

But this exists all over and it exists in a lot more places where people feel very uncomfortable accepting any kind of more developed doctrine from people who have been studying the Bible more fully. For example, you see this a lot in the nature of creation because the creation account is limited, abbreviated.

There is a lot of doctrine that is implied from there that is not expressly set forth but we are still supposed to take into account. When Jesus interacted with the Pharisees about divorce, what were they doing?

They were looking for express statements. They're saying, well, Moses said that it was okay to divorce a woman in the context of this law. So therefore, it must be in general. Just because there's no penalty in civil law, that must be there's no actual moral penalty in God's courts.

Because they can't find a verse that says, well, it'd be wrong to divorce for these various reasons. And what does Jesus respond to them with? From the beginning, it was not so. The two became one flesh.

For this reason, man shall leave his father and mother. The two shall become one flesh. This is his argument against them saying that their divorces that they would allow for are okay. Once again, if you were to hear that argument, two shall be one flesh, how does that argue against divorce?

If you lived in a society where the kind of divorces that exist back then over small things were prevalent, maybe you would say, well, that verse doesn't say that. No, Jesus is saying creation itself implies this.

The fact that God has brought them together implies that it would be so that they would not be separated unless there was an actual full and final violation of the covenant or death parting them. That's one interesting thing about the Sadducees here is they're ignoring the fact that, well, death actually breaks the covenant.

The covenant is for life. And they seem to think that it would extend even beyond this particular life. So don't be like the Pharisees where you were just reading individual expressed passages and not drawing from the whole of what God has given in creation itself.

You see that elsewhere in creation, right, many people when it comes to the Sabbath, you know, our church is one that in our doctrine, the Sabbath is the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath.

Now, many people would say, well, I don't see anywhere that says that Lord's Day is a Sabbath. Well, you do have a statement in Hebrews 4, a direct one that says that there remains a Sabbath for the people of God.

But let's say you were to discount that. Would it not be the case that even before the Ten Commandments, you have the people observing the Sabbath? And is it not the case that the fourth commandment motivates itself by the fact that God rested on the seventh day?

So therefore, there must be one day in seven. If it's saying that that is the argument, what it's appealing to is the nature of creation, much the same way Jesus is appealing to creation when he argues against divorce.

You can see this in all kinds of places. There's all different things when it comes to the way that, especially the way that the world has been created. One conversation I had with a friend recently, the beginning of Genesis, we're asking whether or not it would be wrong and particularly demonic or satanic, meaning, and think about the way the word satanic is used.

Satanic is not just, you know, really, really, really bad. That's what a lot of people mean by satanic. Satanic meaning imitating Satan, imitating the accuser, right? So in Genesis 3, if you were to ask the question, is it satanic to suggest a reversal of roles in the home where the man stays at home and watches the kids and the woman goes out and provides?

I pulled up the passage, Genesis 3, 16 and 17. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

And to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I command you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Now, in part, I was pointing to, your desire shall be contrary to your husband and he shall rule over you, or excuse me, because you listen to the voice of your wife and have eaten the tree. Okay, so Satan tempted the man to reverse the role, to not have authority requiring his wife to submit, but rather submitting to his wife because he listened to her.