Marriage Counseling in Eden

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 3:10-13

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Well, as we press forward in Genesis 3, we're not quite toward the end yet.
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We're going to be looking at verses 10 through 13 this morning. And then from that, next week we'll thankfully have
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Greg, our brother, preach to us. That's in part in anticipation for the little
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McDonald baby. And then after that, Lord willing, on the 8th we'll come back and finish chapter 3.
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It'll take us to the very end. So this morning we're continuing on what we began a few weeks ago.
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We looked at the fall, and then last week we even considered the fallout of the fall.
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You begin, of course, with this alienation between man and God. And that alienates man from himself.
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Now that heart of flesh becomes a heart of stone. Now the soul is dead in trespass and in sin.
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Though the body is alive, the body is now decayed. So first man is immediately cut off, alienated, separated from God, and then from himself.
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Everything is at war within himself. And then from nature. That which man inhabited, this
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Edenic paradise, was meant to draw him toward God, toward God's goodness, toward the infinite complexity of God.
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And yet the divine simplicity, the goodness of the artistry of God, every leaf that he saw would have the glow of the divine touch.
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And now we see man actually using creation as a barrier to God. Instead of being drawn to God through it, he tries to use it to hide himself from God.
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He makes a covering out of leaves. He presses himself into the ground to hide. And then of course we see, as we move into verses 10 through 13, that man is at odds with his neighbor.
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Man is at odds with his spouse. Man is at odds with his flesh in that one flesh union that we looked at in chapter 2.
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And so this morning we're looking at the continuation of the fallout of the fall.
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And that is the marriage. The effect of the curse of sin upon marriage.
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The corrupting effects upon the relationship between a husband and a wife. And that begins,
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I'll begin in verse 9, but we'll be looking at verses 10 through 13. The Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you?
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So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
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And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which
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I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.
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And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you've done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.
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The relationship Adam and Eve had with God was perfect. They delighted in him and he delighted in them.
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But as we've seen, as a result of the fall, pure fellowship, pure fellowship between God and man was broken.
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God takes the initiative by grace to restore something of what was lost, but it's not pure fellowship.
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It's not what it was. And it won't be until the finality of the redemption that God introduced into the world.
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The relationship between man and God then was perfect, now broken. The relationship
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Adam and Eve had with each other was also perfect. Man delighted in woman, woman delighted in man.
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But as a result of the fall, pure fellowship between man and woman, between husband and wife was broken.
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And we still in our marriages retain the effects of the fall. Pure fellowship.
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What was has been broken. I remember as a boy, as you might have heard me say in times past,
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I was sort of a GI Joe kid. And that meant usually, much to my sister's embarrassment, that I always dressed up in fatigues from the
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Mass Army Navy store whenever I got home from school. And I remember one day going over to my neighbor's house and his mom had gotten this wonderful gift, this beautiful ceramic bowl imported from Italy from a relative.
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Beautiful. And it had beautiful paintings of fruits on it and it was the pride of her living room table.
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Well I had a dud pineapple grenade on my H -strap suspenders and unfortunately my little paper clip came out and that little two pound metal sphere smashed that bowl to smithereens.
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That is what happens with the fall. Now you could painstakingly superglue those pieces together and have some semblance of what it was.
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What it was meant to be like. The contours, the shake, you'd get a sense of the decoration. But no one could say this is how it was.
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And that's how it is even on the best marriages in this fallen world. No one could say this is truly what it would have been like.
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As God designed marriage to be. We're cracked. We're chipped. We're broken.
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There's pieces missing. Even the redemption that has begun to work in us and through us in our relationships is only a faint dim echo of what
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God had originally given and what God will ultimately restore. As God had created the world there never would have been a need for marriage counseling.
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Think about that. Marriage counselors would be out of business if it weren't for the fall. There would be no
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Jay Adams writing the books that Jay Adams writes. Wayne Mack would never write strengthening your marriage because every marriage would be perfectly strong.
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I don't know what the ladies would study on Fridays. It wouldn't be adorned because adorned probably wouldn't have been written if there hadn't been a fall.
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And this is all because Eden was perfect prior to the fall. So only moments before where we are in chapter 3 there was no discord.
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There was no lack of harmony. No sense of tension. No irritation. Can you imagine a marriage without a glimmer of irritation?
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Not a glimmer. A little too much pepper on the mashed potatoes. None of that.
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A husband that's just sort of, oh honey, I've had such a long day. Can you take care of this?
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No irritation. Can you imagine what that would have been like? No sense of lack.
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No unfulfilled desire from each other or for each other. Perfect harmony.
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But as a result of entering into sin, that sin immediately corrupts their relationship to God and therefore their relationship with each other.
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It's not coincidental that the law is given in this very order. The law is given first by respect of our relationship to God and second, bound up with it by relationship to our neighbor.
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That's how Jesus summarizes the law of how we love God and the second being like it of how we love our neighbor as ourself.
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The image of God as it was reflected originally by Adam and Eve. That's the significance of Genesis 128.
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Not simply as individuals but as man and wife in this mysterious union. That image of God expressed in human community comprised this love for God and this love for one another.
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Love for God and love for neighbor are inseparable. They're part of what it means to be the image of God.
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They're part of how we reflect God. There's an individuality that's as true and as necessary as community.
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Now that's less so in us than it is in God in terms of God's essence but nevertheless we see it reflected.
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And we live in a time where our individuality is pressed over against our sense of community. There's a reason that opioid use and depression and suicide rates have increased since March.
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It's because of this. Human beings weren't made to be alone. So what's fractured and distorted by the fall is this marriage relationship that once existed in perfect harmony.
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There's an immediate dysfunction and we see it as soon as the fall is taking place. Even in the temptation dynamics leading up to the act that really is the fall.
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So let's consider how to counsel Adam and Eve in Eden immediately after the fall.
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As we examine these dynamics and then apply them to us. We've already considered in times past that Adam was given specific tasks in Eden.
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Remember Genesis 1 .27 and following. God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him.
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Male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
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Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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Adam and Eve together carried out this calling of dominion. Together they served as vice regents in what
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God had given them. And they were to expand the glorious order and presence of God over the face of the earth.
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Beginning from Eden and then stretching to the very end of it. As they produced generations that like them would reflect
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God's glory, God's perfection, God's goodness. This was meant to be man's role.
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Secondly in Genesis 2 .15 and following we see something specific given to man. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it.
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Notice specifically that this is given to man. Work and keeping as we've said from before, looking at Numbers 3 for instance.
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This is what the priests do in the tabernacle. So this is all by way of review.
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Eden is sort of the primordial temple. If by temple we mean the dwelling place of God.
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The tabernacle is then decorated to look like Eden. Solomon's temple then has decorations inspired by the spirit of God to look like Eden.
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The temple is this garden like presence of God. It's a temple garden.
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John picks this up in Revelation 22. We return to Eden and now it's also the heavenly
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Jerusalem which is as a city the whole temple. And there is no sun. The light comes from the lamb.
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It's this beautiful picking up of all of these biblical themes culminating at the very end of Scripture.
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But significantly in Numbers 3 we read that the priests were called to attend to and to work.
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And it's the same words to garden, to keep, to work, to abode, to keep or guard.
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And this is what Adam is tasked to do in Eden. In other words, Adam is a priest.
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So going back to 2 .16. The Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.
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Did you notice that? The Lord God commanded the man to tend and to keep the garden of Eden.
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As a priest would tend and keep the tabernacle of God's presence. And in 2 .16
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God commanded the man of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.
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But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day you eat of it you shall surely die. So Adam is the guard.
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Adam is the protector. Adam is the keeper. Adam is the one who has the commandment. God commanded the man.
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So what does that require of the man? Not only is he to be the priest but he's to be the prophet. He must now declare
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God's word. This is what God has said to us concerning this tree. My wife, listen to me.
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Do not go near this tree. Do not provoke the Lord. He's the one that's to guard.
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He's the one that's to protect. He's the one that's received the word. And therefore he's the one that must declare the word.
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And that's how we come to Genesis 3. We find the serpent so much more cunning in a class all his own.
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This ancient serpent, the dragon. And in that cunning he goes to the woman. Because the woman's not the guard or the keeper per se.
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The woman's not the prophet. And so he goes to the woman to tempt her.
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You shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Did God really say this? The cunning serpent goes after Eve, not
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Adam. Adam fails to guard the garden from the presence of the serpent. Adam fails to protect his wife,
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Eve. He fails, as we'll see, to sacrifice himself. So all these fallen dynamics come on the head of Adam.
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We read with our eyes trained on the activity that's taking place. And that's why we always have our little reformed dad jokes about,
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Hey, you know, if you don't like giving birth, you shouldn't have eaten the fruit. What should stand out to us is the absence of Adam in chapter 3.
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Where is Adam? Where's the guard? Where's the keeper? Where's the head?
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Where's the leader? Where's the warrior? Where's the king? That's what should scream out to us.
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Why is chapter 3 all about Eve at the beginning? The absence of Adam is something that should immediately grab our attention.
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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate, and she gave to her husband with her, as we said a few weeks ago.
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He's there. He's with her. He's standing next to her. Completely mute. Completely complacent.
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Completely complicit. He's not guarding. He's not protecting. He's not acting as a head. He's not laying himself down.
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He's not acting as a prophet. He's not rebuking. He's not exhorting. He's not directing. He's not reminding.
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He's not saying, God forbid we do this evil in his sight. Do you know what he said? He's laid out the curses.
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So the first thing we see with Adam is this utter selfishness.
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This utter selfishness. We see it then continue as the narrative unfolds.
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Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. It's interesting in Hebrew.
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In Hebrew you can attach a pronoun as a suffix to the end of a noun.
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And that's what we have here. We actually have it attached to the verb. The pronoun for Adam is part of the verb to hide.
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And that emphasizes that Adam is hiding himself. Adam's about Adam. So here's the fall.
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And we read in our translation, Adam and his wife hid themselves. More literally, it's Adam hid himself and his wife.
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It's kind of like the wife's an afterthought. Yeah, just lay down there. I'm about protecting myself.
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So immediately there's this emphasis on Adam's selfishness and his absconding from his role to be the protector, the keeper, the one who would sacrifice himself for his bride.
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And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, you see Adam confessed this. And the
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Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? He said, I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked.
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I hid myself. I hid myself. I didn't stand between Eve and you,
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Lord. I hid myself. It's the opposite of Christ, isn't it? He stands, as it were, between the sinner and the wrath of the
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Father. And he cries out, Father, forgive them. It's the opposite here. Christ says,
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I lay my life down for the sheep. He puts himself in that place of judgment. Even though it's not a judgment he deserved.
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Adam deserves this judgment. And he wants nothing to do with Eve. So he's not guarding her.
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He's not guarding the garden. He's not guarding his wife's heart. He's not guarding her from temptation.
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He's not leading her. He's not protecting her. He's not sacrificing himself where there's a need to sacrifice.
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All of these things, guarding, protecting, sacrificing. Do you notice that these are all actions? They require effort.
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They're labor -intensive. They can be exhausting. It takes work to guard. You have to be proactive.
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You have to be alert. You have to be thoughtful. You have to think through the trajectory of decisions. If I don't do this at this time, or if we start going down this path, what will this become?
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There's an activity to that. It's exhausting. It takes work. Protecting. Always being able and prepared.
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Being equipped to protect. And then, in the midst of that crisis, or in that moment, or in that situation, to lay down yourself, to sacrifice yourself.
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It's the ultimate form of protection. All of this is activity. So the great sin of husbands then, the great failure behind all these failures, is passivity.
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If all of this is activity, the great failure of Adam, and every husband since Adam, is passivity.
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Passivity. The fall corrupted God's design of loving, sacrificial, other -oriented headship, into hostile, self -serving, often overbearing, but more often, completely indifferent passivity.
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I realize there are some husbands who tend to be more overbearing, more selfishly dominant, and that is certainly a result of the fall.
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But in my experience, every husband is passive, in one stripe or another. It tends to be that that aggressive dominance, that selfish dominance, comes out in all the areas it shouldn't.
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And the passivity comes out in all the areas it shouldn't. Where a man should be aggressive, where he should be dominant, where he should have these masculine instincts, that tends to be where the man is passive, indifferent, lazy, and selfish.
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And on the things that he, he should be passive, he should be loving, it shouldn't be a big deal. There, for some reason, he becomes very dominant, very obsessive, very upset if he doesn't get his way.
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See, everything is corrupted in on itself. What we've seen in Adam up to this point is a shocking passivity.
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A scandal of spiritual laziness. A willful sleeping at the wall, while the enemy breaches and destroys and burns down what has been so good and so perfect.
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Adam quickly then blames Eve for his sin. He doesn't protect her. He doesn't lead her.
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He doesn't sacrifice for her. He hides himself without any thought to her. And when he gets called out, he blames her.
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Instead of taking responsibility before God for his own actions, his own sins. Instead of covering her, of doing what
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Moses did with Miriam, when Miriam was really persecuting Moses. Instead, when
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God begins to bring judgment upon Miriam, Moses intercedes. Show mercy, God.
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We don't see that in Adam. Notice even how he talks of her. It's degrading from the get -go.
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The woman you gave to me, the woman you gave to me, you named her. She has a name.
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You named her. You named her when you looked upon her and your heart leaped for joy.
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And you spontaneously composed a love song. Flesh of my flesh and bones of my bones.
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And she was the sort of exclamation point on your worship of God's goodness and artistry.
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This was the greatest of all of his creations. And you named her Eve, the mother of all living.
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But now it's just this woman you gave to me. Do you see already the hostility and the resentment that's taking place in this relationship?
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She gave me of the tree. That's not a way for a guardian, a protector, a leader, a head or a king to think.
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It doesn't matter the mechanics. We all know that the one in authority is where the buck stops.
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Adam has this role of authority. We saw that if you saw the VP debate, right? We know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden weren't welding cages, right?
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For ice compounds. But the reason you can say who built the cages, Joe? Who built the cages, Joe? The reason that's effective is because if you were in charge, ultimately you're responsible.
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Adam's in charge. He's responsible. But instead of owning that responsibility, instead of saying, you called me, you gave me that commandment about the tree.
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You gave me the warning. You made me the prophet. You made me the priest in the garden. You made me the guarder and the keeper of the sanctity and of the purity of my wife.
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You put that upon me. Instead now it's this distanciation. She gave me of the tree and I hate. She put me up to it.
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It's almost like she deceives me. It's really me against the serpent and my wife. That's how
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Adam's portraying it. Sin does what sin always does.
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It spurns the good gift of God and with it, it spurns the giver who is God. It isolates.
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It becomes so selfish that it becomes blind into selfishness. It rejects any thought or concern for the other.
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It denies any and all responsibility. People lose self -awareness in sin.
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They become so hardened in it. So indifferent to the damage that it causes. So oblivious to the way that they portray themselves.
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Adam, this head, this guardian, this protector who is in one flesh with Eve is essentially saying,
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God? She did it. Condemn her. When you gave me that commandment, you said, in the day you eat of it, you will die.
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She did it. Judge her. Kill her. Kill her, God. We can go back to how things were if you just kill her.
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What a leader. What a lover. What a head. What a guardian. How anti -Christic is that?
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Christ exclaims of His bride, Father, the same words, She did it. But condemn me.
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And judge me. And kill me. And show her mercy. Christ shows us what the husband truly was meant to be.
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Why that authority was given to him. Why he was made head. That he would be a covering.
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That he would be a fortress. That he would be a refuge. Adam had been
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God's vice -regent in this perfect world and now he's a selfish, hardened coward blaming others for his sin.
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And this spineless blame goes so far, Adam even insinuates that God is somehow to blame.
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The woman whom you gave to be with me, Hey, things were pretty good between us,
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Lord. Now I know you said it wasn't good I was alone, but I wasn't complaining. You gave her to be with me.
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It was your fault, really. If you think about it. He begins to blame God. For his sin.
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His passivity. And that's almost comical to us. It's so absurd. And yet we do the same things in a myriad of ways.
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We blame God by blaming the circumstances or the situations. Whenever we speak of having to make the wrong choices, we are in effect blaming
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God. It was put before me. What else could I do? We begin to think my little
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Eden would be perfectly fine without my Eve. I was doing great in my walk. Eve ruined everything.
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It's a passive, selfish, cowardly, absconding husband that thinks that way.
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And people all over the world do this. They blame God for their problems and their choices and their sins.
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Adam should have pondered the words that he said. The woman whom you gave to be with me. Verse 12.
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The reality is, God did give Eve to him. To be with him. For what?
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To be guarded. To be protected. To be a co -laborer in the work of dominion.
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To be a co -heir of the glory of God in all of the world. To point to the mysterious fulfillment of Christ in his church.
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He's using as a negative the woman you gave to be with me. Instead of seeing, that's the calling. You gave a woman to be with me.
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You gave me this woman. You gave me charge. You called me to certain responsibilities. You said, you must be the kind of head that will guard and keep.
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That will nourish and protect. That will comfort and help. That will work together unto the calling that I've given to both of you.
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So, husbands. How's your priesthood? How's your
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Eden? How are you dwelling with the woman that God gave to be with you?
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God gave her to be with you. Are you guarding her? Are you protecting her?
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All that activity that requires thinking through decisions. Not just for the day or the week, but for the decade to come.
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Things that we're doing now that are going to form such deep ruts of routine that they'll be impossible to climb out of in 5 or 10 years.
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That kind of guardianship. That kind of sense of protecting. Are you covering?
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In other words, are you laying your life down in sacrifice? When it's your needs against the direction that God would have you go.
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Do you willingly deflate your ego? Do you willingly set aside yourself? Do you not seek to do your pleasure?
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But the pleasure of Him who called you. For the good of she whom He gave to be with you.
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Are you dwelling with them as Peter would say? Do you know where they are spiritually? It's hard to be a priest if you don't know where the person you're ministering to is spiritually.
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There's a sense that every believer is a priest, of course. But I'm saying there's something unique about the role that God gives to a man, to a husband.
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There's a spiritual guardianship, a spiritual headship that's very much like unto a priesthood. There's a great book,
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I'd encourage you to read it, by Samuel Waldron called The Man as Priest in His Home, where he lays out the principles here.
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It's very important. You can be right next to her and be oblivious.
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Dwelling with doesn't mean that somehow just because you're occupying the same space means you're fulfilling any one of these things.
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Adam was right next to Eve, blindly failing everything that he was meant to do as a husband.
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So it's not proximity that equals success. It's not being around or giving scant attention.
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It's actually this active spiritual labor. And if you're like me, you feel the weight of that.
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You feel your failures in it day by day. How passive you can be on things that matter the most.
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And how the only things that get a rise out of you are things that ultimately don't matter. They're things that relate to your comfort. Things that relate to your ambitions.
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The husband's not just called to be there, but to know his wife. To know his wife. That's a euphemism in Scripture for marital intimacy, but it's more than that.
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It's not just that. It's more than that. It's recapturing this idea of the harmony.
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The harmony which is truly knowing the other as you know yourself. That's the biblical vision.
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To see God as He is. To know God as He is. From a creaturely perspective. We again and again and again return to Ephesians 5.
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For husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Gave Himself for her. He guards
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His bride. He protects her. He lays Himself down for her. He sanctifies and cleanses her with His Word.
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He presents her to Himself. Glorious. No spot. No wrinkle.
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Nor any such thing. She's holy. Without blemish. That's work.
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Christ is our High Priest in Heaven. He's doing the work of a husband. You need to know your wife.
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What does she struggle with? What does she often mention? What seems to be a recurrent theme?
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Can you detect some root of bitterness or envy that You need to take the time and the patience and the care to uproot.
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You're in the unique position to guard her soul and protect her soul. Has she been spending time obsessing over worldly things or worldly issues?
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There's some blind spot that she's unaware of. And she's been unaware of for a long time. You can't be passive with that.
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You have to do the work of recognizing that. And it's a spiritual endeavor. Lord, help me. Help me to lead her through this.
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Lord, help me to guard her from the world, the flesh, and the devil. Help me to be a head that's guiding her on this holy way,
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Lord. It presupposes that the husband understands the Word and that he can wash her with it.
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That means that the husband as a priest is a student of the Word. He's hiding the Word in his heart.
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He's meditating upon the Word day by day. He's creating the spiritual car wash, as it were, within his own soul.
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And you have to know then where you yourself are weak. Where you yourself need washing.
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And often it's in that very dynamic. As you're seeking to minister, to lead, to guard. It's causing you to be convicted, to be humbled, to cry out for the cleansing touch of a
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Savior. Often it's in that very marital dynamic. It's not that you're some reservoir of sanctification.
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And, oh, my poor wife, she's so spiritually weak. Let me go help her again. It's rather in the dynamic that as you feel this calling from God, it reveals all of these ungodly things in your own life and walk.
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And so you're dependent upon the same mercy that you'll be then showing to her. You're asking to receive the same grace that you're hoping to impart to her.
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There's a spiritual dynamic to this. Each of you then must know how to possess your own vessel in sanctification.
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1 Thessalonians 4. You have to know how to possess your own vessel.
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It's yours. You don't blame others for its current state. You guard, you protect, you keep.
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It's your commandment, your calling, your responsibility. You're the priest in your home. You're the head in your marriage.
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Marriage counseling, when you have a couple, we all know this, right? You know, you as the counselor, you put your seat directly in front of the husband.
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It doesn't mean the wife doesn't have issues that have to be worked out. It just means the husband is the head.
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Ultimately, there will be no change apart from change in him. Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.
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He who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it, cherishes it, just as the
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Lord does the church. We're members of his body, of his flesh, of his bones, you see?
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All those things that Adam had peeled away from in Genesis 3, that in Christ we see restored.
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Paul, when he's dealing with marriage issues in the church, can't but help of going back to Genesis 3 and then speaking of Christ from that.
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Going back to Genesis 2 and speaking of Christ from that. And this is how he's addressing marriage to the church.
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He says that a husband nourishes and cherishes himself in the same way he ought to nourish and cherish his wife.
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He must love her in this way, the same way that Christ loves his bride. That means that there's a gentleness in a husband that's grounded in and reflective of Christ.
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Some of you know, and I think I've mentioned it, I've been reading a book by Gavin Ortland on the gentleness and meekness of Christ.
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He said of Moses that he was the meekest man on the face of the earth. I think it should be said of Christ that he was the gentlest.
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There's a gentleness to being a husband. It's not this endless series of irritations.
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But then you swallow every third and you sit back content like,
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I've gotten a lot better with my frustration and my temper. I only get mad about a few things in any given day.
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Wherever you're irritable, you're essentially doing what Adam did. You're blaming
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God. You're saying things would be better without her. You're not saying, you gave her to be with me. This blessing, this co -laborer, my flesh, my body.
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I'm going to be endlessly gentle. I'm going to nourish. I'm going to cherish. I'm going to become weak to meet her weakness.
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I'm going to put myself aside. This is a principle. It begins in the marriage and it works its way out into other relationships.
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If you can't do it in your marriage, husband, you're not going to be able to do it in any relationship.
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But if you can do it in your marriage, the most demanding, the most pivotal of all relationships in this earth horizontally, then there's no relationship that you couldn't exhibit these same
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Christ -like qualities in. This is a Christian principle and I'm saying it begins in the marriage.
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We who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the week, Romans 15, 1 and 3, not to please ourselves, for even
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Christ did not please himself. The Christian principle is honors given to the weak.
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That's a Christian principle, not a pagan principle. It's not an enlightenment principle. It's a Christian principle.
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We read the gospel sometimes and we look at Jesus coming to the lepers or to the paralytics or to the demon -possessed and we read it as though if we were there, we would be having the same compassion that he has.
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We would be calling, Oh Lord, please go to him. Won't you receive him? We read the gospels in this way, filtered through the compassion we've already received from God.
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You must know, this is something that is not true. We would have treated those social outcasts, those social pariahs, in the way that they were treated back in Jesus' day.
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Jesus comes full of grace, full of mercy and compassion. And he uplifts and gives honor to what is weak.
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The Christian has this mentality that they bind and mend and bear up.
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They lose themselves in their esteem of others. And I'm saying this begins in a marriage.
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Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Colossians 3 .19, such profound simplicity that if obeyed, if followed, could end so much marital stress.
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Love your wives. Don't be bitter toward them. Some wives are such patron saints that they just have adjusted to the bitterness.
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I remember giving Elsie wedges of lemons when she was younger and she just could take a big bite out of a lemon and not even blink, unfazed.
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Bitterness had no effect on her. And there are some wives, God bless them, they've walked with their husbands a long time and their husbands have not decreased, they've increased in bitterness.
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And the wife has just adjusted to that. Don't be bitter to your wife.
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The husband should be sweet, refreshing.
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He comes home and the wife's eyes light up.
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Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another, in honor giving preference to one another.
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You must have these principles worked out in the home. It begins in the home, it begins with the husband and wife. Nations are forged one way or the other from this relational dynamic.
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Children go on to repeat so many of the failures, so many of the dynamics that they see and they grow up under.
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And a whole generation can shift into the kind of hardiness and depravity and resentment that we see in our day.
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But when a husband guards, when a husband protects, when a husband lays himself down, when a husband nourishes, when a husband cherishes, when a husband says,
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Yes, this woman you gave to be with me, I take responsibility for her. I'll lead her in love.
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Where I fail, I'll ask you for forgiveness and her for forgiveness. Even at my loss,
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I will do what it takes to guard and protect and lead her to sanctification. But the fallen dynamic doesn't just fall in the lap of the husband, does it?
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We also have to give some marriage counseling to Eve. The Lord God said to the woman,
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What is this you've done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate. Again, everyone's playing the blame game.
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Adam blames, Eve blames. No one takes responsibility. I mentioned and I read from a few weeks ago that poem,
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The Fall, from Preston and Jackie Hill Perry. And I said I'd finish it and I'm not going to read the entirety of it, but I want to read a little bit more as we move toward Eve, because this is just so beautiful in the way it captures these tensions, these dynamics.
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The husband being the head and wanting all of the authority and dignity of headship without ever assuming its responsibility.
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But then also the tension of the wife who really sets out apart from her husband. It's not just that Adam refused to guard and protect, it's also that Eve didn't want to be guarded, didn't want to be protected, didn't want to have a head.
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And that then becomes cemented in verse 16 as a form of the curse. Your desire will be for your husband, but he's going to rule over you.
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So listen to this. This is starting off with Adam. Eve, can't you see?
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In our feast for knowledge, we've become fools, searching for wisdom in a mere branch.
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We forgot about the God who had the power to grow us from dust with no roots. His mind is as wide as the sky and we were free as clouds, but now the silent hum of shame echoes the land.
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The eerie chill of our father's curse crawls across our conscience and the very river we bathe our naked souls in is damned because of you.
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What have you done? Notice that Adam is echoing God's interrogation of Eve.
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He's throwing her under the bus. This was what you did, though he still has the fruit in his mouth, so to speak.
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And Eve says, don't blame me for murder and name yourself victim, as if we're not both ghosts with skin.
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You see, there's this immediate death. And they both say, you left me for dead.
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It's very insightful. They're both alienated from each other now. What was meant to be torn in a perfect harmony and self -dependence, is that though they were true individuals, and as individuals reflective of the image of God, there was a sense in which they could not truly reflect the image of God until they were together as one flesh.
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They were interdependent in a profound way. And now because of the fall, they're alienated in a profound way.
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There's this alienation and hostility. There's a sense of being abandoned. Now what was meant to be glorious, fruitful, and cooperation is corrupted.
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You left me for dead. Did you forget the sixth day when God made you from dust?
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And Adam says, but He made you from me, for me. While sleeping,
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He carved you from my caged bones. Beautiful. But you, with your pride of disposition, switched positions and tried to lead.
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You took heed to a snake without consulting me first. You didn't respect me. You usurped my role.
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And Eve says, He gave you authority. He made you the head of us, but you became the neck. You were there right beside me.
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You weren't leading. You weren't protecting. I can still see the apple stuck in your throat,
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Adam. Swallow your pride. You were supposed to lead me, yet I'm to blame? Your wife, your
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Eve, the one who is now shame? Once beauty, the moment you saw her, breath. The day you removed
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God from your soul and emptied your nest of His glory is the day you begged me to take His place, to fill your voids, to become this image of perfection to satisfy your insecurities.
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You see, now she's projecting outward. It's not just what's happened between us now, but now this is what's going to happen to humanity as a result of the fall.
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Now, instead of a perfect, exclusive fulfillment in harmony between a husband and a wife, now there's the sense of a man finding a fulfillment he can never fully grasp in many women.
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You're saying, now God is going to be replaced by woman.
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Instead of God giving you that sense of completion and you finding fulfillment in me through Him, now
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I must take His place and fill your voids and meet your insecurity. God forbid our sons grow up treating their sisters like cemeteries, stacking their bodies and bones in one closet to wear as one flesh every time they want to feel alive.
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You see, and Adam says, Eve, please understand you further prove my point.
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That prideful organ brewing beneath your breast, your heart, beats with no submission for your husband.
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And for this, your future daughters will not be quiet, gentle, some will be as loud as nagging crows, scavenging on the dead earlobes of men.
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Their bodies, sculpted for God's glory, will become lures, enticing our sons to sin.
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And these women, your offspring, will hand their soul over to men who are not their God. They'll kneel for value at the altar of man's approval, but that worship will not make them whole nor holy.
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You see, now the centrality of God in that relationship is replaced. Now they look for but never find in each other what
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God was always meant to be. Everything goes awry. Man seeks to find security and self -fulfillment in many women who he treats without any concern for them.
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Cemeteries, as he says, hung in the closet. But women also looking for an approval instead from God from men.
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Though there's no security, no wholeness, only degradation. It doesn't make them whole, it doesn't make them holy.
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And together they say a little later, we're both sin wrapped in flesh, we're both broken creations, stained glass windows with no shine, no sun, no light, we're both dark, imperfect, lost, we're fallen.
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Very good assessment of the dynamics between Adam and Eve, but also projection of what will come of the fall.
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Eve was made to do good to Adam. You saw that, right? He made you from dust,
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Adam. Yes, Eve, but He made you from me for me. You were my helpmate, my co -labor in the work of creation and dominion.
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Eve was made to do good to Adam. A wife is given to man for his good, not evil.
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But she failed to do good at the tree, she did evil. And so she abandoned her role as a helper.
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Instead she became a hindrance. So all this emphasis on man's headship, on his leading, on his guardianship, on his self -sacrifice, it's complemented by a woman understanding her spiritual role as a helpmate.
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As one is going to further and direct and exhort and encourage and rebuke if necessary, but be that spiritual helpmate and support in all that God has put upon man to do.
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And that he won't be able to do apart from her as helpmate, apart from the gifts and the abilities, the insights that she's been given.
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She'll either be a help or a hindrance. And that's true of every marriage. That's true of every marriage.
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As a wife, you're either going to be a help or a hindrance to your husband and to God's design for you both.
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From the fall forward then, the rhetorical question is posed, who can find a virtuous wife?
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Who can find a virtuous wife? And you know I'm riffing off Proverbs 31.
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Very interesting. Proverbs 31 to a feminist would be a patriarch designing the perfect wife.
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But I love that we include in our translations the inscription. Whenever you read a psalm or often wisdom literature, you have a little inscription that says this is the context in which this was written.
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And the context of Proverbs 31 is King Lemuel writing out what his mother always reminded him.
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It was an utterance of King Lemuel's mother. My son, my son, so much of the emphasis of Proverbs.
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My son, who's going to find lady wisdom? Who's going to walk in the way of wisdom? My son, who can find a virtuous wife?
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Her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts in her, so he'll have no lack of gain.
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She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the
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Lord, she shall be praised. And 1 Peter 3 takes up this language.
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Don't let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, putting on fine apparel. Let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.
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This is a virtuous wife. There's an incorruptible beauty to the virtuous wife.
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It's a funny thing that so often that incorruptible beauty is seen as a wife matures through many decades.
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And as we could say maybe outwardly the grass has begun to fade, the flower has begun to perish, that inward beauty shines.
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Isn't it amazing? You see a wife even approaching perhaps widowhood.
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You see this incorruptible beauty, this gentleness, this quietness, this wisdom, this just sort of infinite well of love.
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We live in a world that's all about outward show. Isn't it? And yet the spiritually mature woman does not want to have that corrupted fixation upon the outward show.
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She's cultivating and maturing an incorruptible beauty. And what that looks like according to the
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Scriptures is a gentle and quiet spirit. That's what she's cultivating. To go back to the poem, she doesn't want to be a nagging crow.
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She doesn't want to be, I don't know if you're up with the slang nowadays, but what the cool kids call a Karen. I feel bad for Karens.
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Actually, most of the Karens I've known in my life have been very godly and saintly women. But a Karen is someone who has a butch haircut and chews out the manager whenever anything is late or wrong in her order.
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And our pop culture calls that a Karen. You can go on YouTube and watch compilations of Karens screaming out at police officers for giving them tickets.
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That's the idea here. Not a gentle and quiet spirit. Not reserved with dignity and wisdom.
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But a sort of ferocity. A cawing, as irritating as a crow.
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Hen -pecking men. Pushing their husband into a position of docility and passivity for which he's responsible.
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Can't say, oh, if only my wife was this way. Doesn't work that way, pal. But this is what
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God has given to women. To be virtuous wife. We live in a culture that despises this design.
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That would say, this is weakness. This is self -denial. In all the wrong ways they mean by that.
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We say, yes, it's weakness. Yes, it's self -denial. Reminds us a lot of Christ. Our culture alerts women to be the crows.
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To be the vultures. To be the scavengers. To be the irritants. To be aggressive. I am woman, hear me roar.
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Scripture says women should not be roaring. It's not what God designed women to be. To be aggressive and fiercely independent and self -assertive.
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This is a radical overthrow of how God has designed man and woman to complement each other.
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And thereby to flourish. Neither man being passive, nor woman being assertive and aggressive.
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Neither of them will find fulfillment in that. Neither of them will flourish. There will be misery individually, and then misery corporately.
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And we see a whole society be turned inside out as a result of that. When men are made effeminate shells of themselves.
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And good men, good men, being made effeminate shells of themselves.
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I was listening to a podcast on a commute this week from men I have books from that ought to know better.
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And it was just blithering, estrogen -filled effeminacy.
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And it was very off -putting. Men emasculate their instincts to be men.
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To guard, to lead, to protect. Do you know that it was only about a century ago, with a little extra change, that it was still widely expected that men go down with the ship, women and children get on the lifeboats.
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That is Christian principle of civilization. Men have a certain generic calling to be guardians, protectors, and sacrificial heads.
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The wife and the child goes on the boat. Nowadays, I don't know the protocol nowadays.
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I know what happened with that Italian cruise ship captain. He seemed to jump on the lifeboat real quick. It used to be that even if there was a spot on the lifeboat, the captain would go down with the ship.
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That was just kind of what duty required. Now, I don't know if I'd go along with that. I'd want to preserve life.
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But you see the principle here. This is what it means to be a man. We live in a culture now that puts fatigues on our daughters and sends them off to war.
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This is a complete mutation of what God has given. And so men who have instincts to be guardians and protectors, now that's called toxic by our culture.
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Brothers and sisters, what's toxic is not masculinity. It's femininity in men.
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It's a feminacy. And what's toxic in women is masculinity. Not having this...
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What's precious in the sight of our God, of our Creator, a gentle and quiet spirit. When you emasculate a man, or you make masculine a woman, you're perverting
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God's order and God's design. In the case of the woman, when you make a woman, and you shave and dye her hair, and put a pink hat on her and make her screech along the road in D .C.,
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you're making harsh what was meant to be comforting. You're making barren what was meant to be fruitful and nourishing.
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You're making hideous what was meant to be the beauty of fragility.
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And that's why men would go down with the ship. Because they recognize that. At a societal level, we've lost that.
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We've lost it. You remember four years ago, the parades.
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Part of that whole parade with those anatomical hats, if you understand the reference, was something that they took from a debate line and they would screech,
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I am a nasty woman. You remember, was it Alyssa Milano going up there? I am a nasty woman. And if you're a
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Christian watching that, you should say, yes, yes you are. You're hideous.
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Hideous. There's no part of that that is beautiful.
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There's nothing to be proud of. That's something to be ashamed of. There's no dignity to that. There's no beauty.
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There's nothing precious. There's nothing glorious. There's nothing mysterious now.
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Everything is cheapened and degraded as a result of sin. Like Kierkegaard says, the devil comes into the jewelry store and he changes all the price tags.
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What is meant to be costly and beautiful is now cheap. And what is cheap is now pandered after.
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What is this but a further degradation of what God designed to be our good, our glory, as men, as women, in our marriages, in our homes, working its logic out into the dominion of society.
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Behind all of this cultural vehemence, there's a despising of God. And therefore, therefore, there's a despising of true womanhood.
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True womanhood. And along with it, then, true motherhood. There's a blood cult to this resentment toward motherhood, isn't there?
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A blood cult. And especially, I think, the chief resentment is a homemaker.
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The idea of a homemaker is anathema to our culture. And it's because a homemaker is a mother, is a woman, is walking in the very thing that God designed them to be.
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He's cultivating a gentle and a quiet spirit. It goes against their central dogma, which is the usurping way of the serpent.
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Rule, roar, be aggressive, be fierce. What a beautiful calling
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Christianity has for women. Just as it's a glorious calling Christianity has for men.
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To lay down your life. A husband's called to lay down his wife's life in a certain way, and a wife is called to lay down her life in a certain way.
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The husband's called to put himself on the line. To cover what needs to be covered. To sacrifice where a sacrifice is needed.
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That's how he lays his life down. Like Christ, he looks to Christ and he puts himself aside. He doesn't do what pleases him, but what
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God would have him do as a husband with his wife. What God has called them in their home, in their family to do.
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And a wife lays down her life by being a helpmate. Being a homemaker.
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There's a spiritual power in this. It's funny, for all the dynamics of power, the feminists throw it away.
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Women have a unique spiritual power in their gentleness, in their quietness.
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They have an incredible influence. When you read biographies of missionaries or great revival preachers, you'll find these women that I'm talking about.
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Their influence, their prayers, their example, their witness. 1
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Peter 3 says for wives to be submissive, even if some husbands do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives.
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There's a power there. There's a power there. What's gotten into my wife?
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Some of you have that testimony. You were the indifferent, passive husband, completely unmoved, and your wife was a crow, and then the crow came to Christ.
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And you're there in your passivity going, what has happened here? What's gotten into my wife? There must be something to this
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Christ thing. That's what 1 Peter 3 is getting at. Something has radically changed my wife. I don't think
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I'm a better husband, but she's treating me like I am. Spurgeon spoke of such women in this way.
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They attain supreme authority over all simply by yielding. They gain a queenly position in the house by gentleness and quietness.
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Nobody dares to offend them, not because they would be in an uproar, but because they're so kind and gentle.
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There's a power here that goes against the thinking of the world. Submission does not mean that the husband's will is never changed.
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Clearly, Peter expects the husband's will to be changed. Maybe he'll be changed. Maybe he'll be converted as a result of you acting this way.
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Paul assumes the same thing in 1 Corinthians 7. You're setting apart your unbelieving husband just by being a
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Christian wife to him. So don't divorce him if he's willing to stay with you. You don't know if you're going to save your husband.
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That's what he says. There's a power to submission, isn't there?
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A unique power. The dynamic is very different from how a wife exercises her calling to how a husband exercises his calling.
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But a wife, in everything she does, seeks to abound for the Lord. A husband obeys what
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God has given him to do. A wife must obey what God has given her to do. They both must do what God has given them to do because that's what they were built to do.
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That's what they're designed to do. They're running on all cylinders when they're doing what God called them to do. They're finding the fulfillment and the satisfaction and the joy of what
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God has originally designed them to do when they do it. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the
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Lord. For the husband is the head of his wife. As also Christ is the head of the church and He is the
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Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be subject to their own husbands.
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In everything. Just like the church. This isn't easy.
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We already mentioned verse 16. God said to Eve, Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you.
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And you can see from this how this ongoing dynamic of desire, of authority, of getting my way, it plagues marriages.
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The woman's desire becomes selfish just like the man's desire became selfish. The woman's desire to usurp is for her own ends, not for the ends of God.
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A woman can't usurp what God has given to man to somehow say, this is what we need to do spiritually.
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This is going to glorify God. When God has said, no, that's not the kind of glory I want. You're glorifying me, wife, even when you're submitting to your foolish husband.
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You're glorifying me. When you're submitting to me in this way and you're doing it unto me, that's how you're bringing me glory.
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You know, there's a lot of wives out there, quite frankly, who've taken the spiritual lead and because they're able to somehow bring their home up by the bootstrap spiritually, they think this is what's pleasing the
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Lord. Right? At least we're somehow getting to the end and the ends justify the means.
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I'm going to have to be the spiritual head. I'm going to have to make the decisions here. I'm going to have to call the shots because at least we're making good
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Christian decisions and my husband's just over there on the couch. And so, you know, this is what's glorifying to God. No, it's not.
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No, it's not. You glorify God in your submission. And where the husband's just there as passive as a stone, as indifferent as a corpse, you're doing it unto the
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Lord and so you're crying out to the Lord. You're crying out to the Lord. Help me. This is not easy,
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Lord. Help me. Help me to do this unto You. When I feel no compulsion, no reason, no basis to do it unto
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Him, help me to do it unto Him. Help me. Because I know that this is what's going to glorify You. May it be my conduct in this way that leads
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Him. Another thing that we see is her desire weakens and disarms the man rather than complimenting and helping him.
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When the puzzle piece is fit, it's a glorious thing. When you're mashing and peeling the pieces to make them fit, it's not.
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A wife that is not cultivating a gentle and quiet spirit, she's disarming her husband. She's weakening her husband.
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It's sort of this self -defeating effort because you're taking away the ability for him to be that guardian, that protector, that head.
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And then also her desire for the man is not driven by spiritual concerns but by fleshly concerns.
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Fear, jealousy, self -pity, anger, pride. This is the curse of Genesis 3 .16.
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Wives, submit to your own husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Submission does not mean a woman's will is only as strong as her husband's will.
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That's clearly not the case. The wife has a spiritual strength that's used to serve her husband because serving her husband is how she serves
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God. So as we come to a conclusion here, a few final words.
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Adam and Eve had the only perfect human marriage the world has ever seen. Marty and Marie are a close second, but still.
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Adam and Eve had the only perfect human marriage the world has ever seen. They dwelt in perfect harmony in every aspect of their lives.
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They worked and worshipped and rested together in perfect fulfillment and satisfaction. There was no union more intimate, more unified, more other -oriented than theirs, humanly speaking.
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But as we've seen from the fall, as we've rehearsed together this morning, they now have a marriage like we have our marriages.
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One sinner looking at another sinner dealing with shame and guilt and dysfunction. But thankfully, their hope is our hope.
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We receive the redemptive grace of God which draws us closer to Him, makes us more like Him. Richard Phillips, and I think this is really encouraging, as we perhaps all despair when we're confronted with the word of what we are meant to be.
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And if you're feeling like I'm feeling this morning, you just feel this lodestone over your heart for how far you've fallen short of this.
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And I love what Richard Phillips says. It was in mercy that God cursed the woman and the man and ejected a poison into their relationship.
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That was a mercy. It was a mercy that God cursed the woman and the man and injecting a poison into their relationship for which
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He alone is the antidote. In the futility of love apart from God, Adam and Eve would have to turn back to God.
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Just as we must turn to God today for grace to repent of sin and minister in love.
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Love between a man and a woman, love between a husband and wife, love between man and his neighbor cannot work without love for God at the very core.
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And so by means of His curses, God is actually showing mercy, drawing us back to Himself.
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We're given to each other. We're given to each other as husbands and wives for support, for help, for encouragement in the difficulty of the narrow way, for advancement of God's kingdom, complementing each other's strengths and weaknesses, for the advancements of God's good design in creation that societies might flourish and better behold and reflect
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God's good order. And so we need God's love at the very center of our lives. You have to fill up your tank, as it were, with God's grace and then be steered by the
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Gospel. You have to be steered by the Gospel from His love, finding that mutuality, that complementarity, recognizing that at every turn you are co -workers.
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And I love what 1 Peter says, you're co -heirs. Is there a specific role, is there a specific dynamic between a husband and a wife?
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Yes. But wife you must realize, husband you must realize, you're co -laborers and you're co -heirs.
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Equal in dignity, equal in glory. And the arrangement that God has built into this creation on that day will fade away, lunge into that beautiful vision that Jesus said, and heaven will be like the angels in this very dynamic.
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Marriage won't be like what we've experienced it to be. The mutual help.
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That means we're workers together. John Angle James says, a lovelier scene is not found on the earth than that of a holy couple employing mutual influence.
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The wife to the husband, the husband to the wife. And the hours of their companionship stirring up each other's hearts.
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That's the most loveliest scene on earth. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word,
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Lord. We feel the weight of the calling that we've fallen so far from,
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Lord. We pray that you would allow that conviction, Lord, to bear good fruit of repentance,
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Lord, and change. Forgive us, Lord, forgive me. For ways that as husbands we don't guard our homes, our eyes, our ears, our tongues.
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We don't protect. We don't root out, chase out, deflect or assault the world or the flesh or the devil.
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Forgive us for ways that we are so self -consumed we're not laying our lives down in sacrifice, not walking with our wives in a way of understanding, not covering and washing, not nourishing and comforting and loving them as our own flesh.
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Forgive us. And Lord, forgive the wives in this body for times that they have not cultivated a gentle and quiet spirit but cultivated the opposite for ways that the world has deceived and allured them to make women into something she was never meant to be, to turn the beauty and fragility of femininity into something hideous and perverse.
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Help, Lord, help our marriages to be better reflections, more strongly unified in the grace that you show and the grace that you reveal through them.
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Let that grace, Lord, flow from our marriages into our homes, from our homes into this church, from this church into the community,
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Lord. Let there be true change as true seeds are sown of the Gospel through these efforts, through these truths, through the way that your grace meets us at these demands and callings and responsibilities of life and where your mercy meets with the difficulties and the hindrances and the hardships of it,
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Lord. For the youth in our church that are preparing for marriage, let them consider these things diligently and wisely.
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Prepare themselves, Lord, in vulnerability and transparency before you, Lord, to prepare themselves and examine themselves rightly.
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For those that are past a married season or are single, Lord, let them again understand the beauty of what this all is about, which is
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Christ and His relationship to His bride. And in their exclusive way, as they show devotion to you, as they show care for the church, may they be that glorious image and that glorious truth to all the married couples here.
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Whatever season we're in, whatever station of life, let us understand your holy and wise purposes and let us walk in them by your grace, for your glory.