Adam Doomed the World by Listening to his Wife

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Good morning. If you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis chapter 3, we're going to be continuing our study on basic truths.

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The verse you should be turning to is Genesis 3, 17a, which is on page 3 in your pew

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Bible. Basic truth that God has for us today is the truth that Adam doomed the world by listening to his wife.

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So when you do have Genesis 3, 17, go ahead and stand for the reading of God's word. Genesis 3, 17a, and to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife, have eaten of the tree which

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I have commanded you, you shall not eat of it. I'll go ahead and read the rest of the verse. Cursed is the ground because of you, in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

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Amen. You may be seated. Let's pray. The Lord, we come before you as people today who desperately need to hear from you.

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We know that your words that you have given to us today are words that are meant to help us to understand the world, they're words that are meant to help us to understand the basic human condition.

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As people, we come before you desperate to hear what you have to say to us in your scriptures. We pray that you give us eyes to see and ears to hear all the good things that you have for us today.

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Bless our time and help us to glorify you in everything that we say and think. In your son's name I pray, amen.

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It's interesting, if I were to think about the most common complaint that wives have towards their husbands, it would probably be the complaint that he doesn't listen to me.

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That's an observation I've made over the years that has borne itself out into counseling situation after counseling situation.

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It's an observation that seems to be fairly valid as an observation.

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It's somewhat funny, I was talking to Elizabeth, my wife, this week and I showed her the title of the basic truth that we were going to be considering today and she kind of chuckled at it and her first observation was the observation that I just mentioned.

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Her first observation was the observation that, you know, isn't it funny that women's primary complaint to their husbands seem to be the complaint that they never listen to them or that they're not appropriately hearing them.

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Now, I think that Elizabeth and I probably are noticing something about reality and noticing something about the way the world works,

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I don't think it's all in our heads. I consulted AI with this question that I had, which

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I imagine, I can't remember the exact way I phrased this consultation that I had, now that we have this resource that we can absolutely trust in everything, obviously, but I consulted

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AI and I did ask, I said what is the most common complaint that women will have, wives will have towards their husbands and that was first on the list, okay, so I imagine that even if it isn't absolutely true in every respect, it does point to some kind of reality.

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Now, if you have been married for any length of time or it really, I mean, this is beyond just marriage, if you've been married for any length of time, if you've been in leadership positions in any capacity for any time, one of the things that you'll realize is that you might be frequently on the receiving end of this complaint and I will say that, you know, men, they don't often excel at listening and they can often be very quick to offer solutions without doing the work required to know what kind of solution that they're offering, but as I said,

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I mean, if you've been married for any length of time, if you've been in church leadership or any kind of leadership for any length of time, what you'll realize is that this is a frequent complaint that might be leveled against you and you might also realize that when you hear this complaint, there are many times where you're tempted to think that there's more to the complaint than what is on the surface of the words, meaning, like when you hear that complaint, you might be tempted to think that it means something different than what is being communicated at face value.

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You may be tempted to think that what it means is actually something along the lines of, you aren't doing what

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I want you to do. Do you understand what I mean? So when you hear, you're not listening to me,

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I don't feel heard, you might often think what is being communicated is you aren't doing what

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I want you to do and you might be perfectly justified, brothers and sisters, in suspecting that because there are many times where you patiently listen to the concerns that others bring to you and you've listened to them so patiently that you can communicate back to the person bringing those concerns what they are saying in a way that they might recognize.

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I mean, so there's plenty of times where you listen to the concern and you present them, this is what

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I hear you to be saying, is that true? And then they recognize it as true and yet, puzzlingly, they still don't seem to feel heard.

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And you might respond to that by saying something along the lines of what I just said. It seems like I'm heard what you said,

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I've listened to what you said, I just don't agree and I'm not taking the solution that you want me to take.

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So it seems like what you mean when you say you don't feel heard or you don't feel listened to, it seems to be that what you mean is something along the lines of you aren't doing what

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I want you to do. And I will note that if you ever try to take that tactic, it'll be a very rare occasion where someone comes back to you and says, oh yeah, that's right, that's exactly what

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I'm trying to communicate. That's not really what happens in most instances.

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In fact, they'll probably double down on the accusation that you aren't listening to me and I don't feel heard.

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Now due to our current cultural understanding of things, this is a very natural situation that can play out in a wide variety of ways.

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And this doesn't simply reduce to just differences in male -female dynamics. Today, because we have embraced moral relativism, we believe that truth is relative.

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And I know that if you were to talk to a group of Christians like ours in church like ours, we wouldn't think that we could be influenced by moral relativism to the degree to which we are.

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But you might be surprised to the degree that when you live in a culture and society that is so hostile to the notion of objective truth, it can rub off.

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The standards of communication that are embraced by a society that has rejected the idea that absolute truth actually exists, they can rub off on you in a wide variety of ways.

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So the job of the listener today is not simply to listen to understand. The job of the listener today is not simply to comprehend what's being communicated and sympathize with it and then be able to evaluate it objectively and either agree with it or disagree with it.

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Those are no longer the rules of communication that we're operating today. The job today is to listen in order to empathize with the concern and validate the concern.

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So if someone brings you a concern, today you're supposed to listen to that concern and then you're supposed to validate that concern.

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You're supposed to affirm it as if it's their truth. Now, as Christians, we're obviously not going to say, hey, your truth is valid for you.

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But that is the expectation that is supposed to be taken in any kind of encounter when someone does bring a concern to you.

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So considering that's the case, it's very difficult to imagine a scenario where someone brings a concern to you to where, if you consider the rules that you're expected, you're supposed to validate that concern.

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You're supposed to listen to that concern. And for them to feel heard, right, it's not even about them being heard.

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It's about them feeling heard. For them to be able to feel heard, you have to validate that concern. You have to empathize with it, meaning step into their world and almost feel it with them.

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So if you're supposed to step into their feelings, embrace their feelings as your own, validate their feelings as being true, then the natural corollary of all that is that you have done the job of listening.

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And the job of listening means, well, I mean, if you agree with what I'm, if you validated my concern, if you felt what I feel in this moment, then why wouldn't you take the appropriate action that I want you to take, right?

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So it might not be that anyone who's saying, hey, I don't feel heard, I don't feel like you're listening to me, is in their own mind demanding that you do what they say.

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But it really seems to be an inescapable conclusion if you do the work of listening as it's defined by a society that is held captive to the notion of moral relativism, it might be that this really does follow.

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Like if you really do, if you really heard me, you would see that what I'm saying and what I'm thinking, what

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I'm feeling is right and you need to validate it, you need to affirm it as being true and then you need to, in a corresponding way, take the same kind of actions that I would take.

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Because I mean, obviously, if you love me, right, if you love me, if you care about me, if you want my good and you can see that my concern is valid, why wouldn't you do, take the necessary steps in order to address my concern.

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You understand what I mean? So that's the situation today. So all this points us to the reality that what it means to listen to another person is not necessarily intuitively obvious to us.

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It's not necessarily intuitively obvious to us in the society we live in today what we're actually saying when we want people to listen to us.

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And then in our passage here today, we see that this passage itself is an example of Adam listening to the voice of his wife and it may not even be intuitively obvious to us what is meant there and what are the parameters of listening that are expected for us and how to navigate many of the situations that we find ourselves in today.

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And so as we read this passage today, we would do well to reflect on the nature of listening and nature of the words that are being used in this passage today and think about the truths that God has for us to consider, in particular, the truth that Adam doomed the world by listening to his wife.

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Now, biblically speaking, when you read Genesis 3 .17, it says this, and the reason why we're spending some time on this today is because we want to understand what it means when

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Genesis 3 .17, when God's issuing his condemnation of Adam, we want to understand what

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God meant. Why did he include this as an essential feature of why the whole entire human race was led into sin?

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We already know the order of events that happen. We already know that God created man to be woman's leader.

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We already know that woman came to man and presented him with fruit to eat.

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We already understand that she was deceived by the serpent in presenting him this fruit to eat. We understand that he wasn't deceived when she presented him this offer to sin.

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He went forward with it with full knowledge, not being deceived at all. We already understand all of these things, but God, in Genesis 3 .17,

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he mentions this as a feature of why the human race has been cast into sin and we should do well to consider it.

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So Genesis 3 .17, and to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree which

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I have commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Now, listen to the voice of in this passage. It's a euphemism.

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It's a euphemism for obey. That's what it means. So Adam doomed the world by listening to his wife.

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What I'm trying to suggest is this is a euphemism for Adam doomed the world by obeying his wife.

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So as we are going to govern our time here today, it would be helpful to govern our time by asking a simple question and then we're going to talk about different senses in which we're going to give answers to this question, but the question we're going to ask is the question, should husbands ever listen to their wives?

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Now, I know that when we ask a question like that, the obvious answer is yes. Husbands should obviously listen to their wives, but then there's also correspondingly true that in this passage we see an example of husbands are being told not to listen to their wives.

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And you're obviously living in a society right now that doesn't seem to have much of any category for that at all and to the extent to which we do have a category for that, it's almost a hypothetical category that should basically never exist.

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So you are living in a society right now. You're living in a world right now where in response to some abuses in the past that we could probably acknowledge as having some correspondence to reality but might slightly be overstated at times.

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You're living in a world right now that really is trying to react against the male leadership which was basically characteristic of generations past.

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So you're living in a society that's trying to react to those abuses by trying to correct the balance. So right now you're living in a world that really doesn't have much of any concept of male leadership.

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You're living in a world right now that is dead set on trying to destroy the patriarchy, to smash the patriarchy.

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You see this in every movie that you watch. You see this in every TV show that you watch, every book you're going to read.

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You are relentlessly being bombarded with messages which essentially present women as omni -competent and man as a hopeless buffoon.

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That's the storyline of basically every TV show that you're going to watch, every movie that you're going to watch.

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The guy is basically a hopeless buffoon. The woman is basically omni -competent.

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She's capable of not only doing man's job for him but also doing her own job which she doesn't recognize as her job.

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But she's strong in both areas. She is seen in the language of our world as basically having a woman's intuition which is almost infallible, which you should in every single case consult and pay heed to.

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So man is basically considered as offering nothing to marital equations at all.

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I promise you there's no bitterness that's coming out of my heart which is pointing out these basic observations. It's just I have eyes.

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I've watched TV and I understand what's being communicated. I understand that man's being communicated in almost every single

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TV show as the buffoon. I remember growing up and you would have the notion of the

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TV dad in the shows that you watch. There's the concept of the TV dad who had a job of leading his family and during the

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TV shows there might be not every episode but on some of the episodes he would give his moral lesson to the family that was supposed to communicate his authority and his leadership over the home.

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That thing is gone now. That kind of perspective is gone. You don't have the TV dad anymore. You basically have the omni -competent mom and the guy who just kind of messes everything up and is along for the ride who is basically there to be corrected by his wife at every single point.

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So the point here is to say you're living in a society that's hostile to the notion that there's ever a situation where a man shouldn't listen to his wife.

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As Christians I think most of our impulses are basically to tone that down as if marriage is not two sinners living together who are both in their own ways going to entice each other to sin.

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As we're considering this question should husbands ever listen to their wives, you need to have in your mind a category that our first human parents fell into sin because there was a role reversal that happened and because Adam inappropriately listened to his wife.

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So we need to have a real category for how that can happen and what that means and what are the parameters of that and what are the conditions of that.

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So how should a husband listen to his wife? I mean that's a real question that you really need to answer.

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I would suggest that a lot of the answers that we give on this topic are not as thoughtful perhaps as what they should be at times.

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Our instincts kind of default to the world that we're living in without realizing it so that in the world that you're living in there is an expectation that any time a woman says something for any reason you must take heed of it and follow it unless it's just absolutely and overwhelmingly obvious that like in the extreme situations, obviously if your wife wants to abort the baby you don't listen to them in those kind of situations but I think in every day to day affairs we basically default to yeah if she says something you need to pay attention to it, you need to listen to it, you need to take it seriously, you need to heed it almost without thinking and that's kind of a reflective attitude and I would suggest that that doesn't really, if that's our attitude we're not really paying attention to our basic principles of anthropology at that point and we need to have a little more thought with these kind of topics.

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But the question as I said, the question we're going to try to consider is the question should husbands ever listen to their wife and I want to give a variety of answers.

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So first, they obviously shouldn't listen to their wives i .e.

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like in other words like listen, what does listen to their wife mean? They shouldn't listen to their wives i .e.

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obey their wives instead of God and that's the primary thing that the passage is talking about here today.

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And to Adam he said because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree which

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I've commanded you, you shall not eat of it, there's going to be some great consequences not only for you but for the whole human race that come from that.

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Husbands should obviously, they obviously shouldn't listen to their wives i .e.

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obey their wives instead of God. And this passage is a clear example of it.

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In the coming weeks we're going to spend about three weeks, Lord willing, going through some of the entailments for what happened as a result of this, what happened as a result of Adam being the first man who failed at his basic duty of being a man, his basic duty of leading his family in accordance with the commands that God had given them.

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We're going to spend some time talking about the entailments of that for the rest of the world and for themselves.

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But I mean at the outset we have to realize that this actually is a real problem, this actually is a real problem.

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And as a result of what we learned about last week, we realize that many, due to the nature of the way the fall works, women are going to be tempted to insert their will above God's will in a wide variety of situations in the

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Bible. And as I said, I mean that's not a unique temptation to women. Women also have a temptation to insert their will above God's will.

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It goes both ways, but you just have to acknowledge it's a reality that goes both ways. So when you consider this passage, a husband obviously shouldn't listen to his wife, i .e.

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obey their wives instead of God, whatever God says goes. I mean this passage establishes the authority of God above His creation.

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So God's authority above His creation is absolute. Because God made man and woman, as we've learned in the opening chapters of the

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Bible, man and woman don't belong to themselves in the primary sense, they belong to God.

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What God says goes. He is the Creator, He is Lord. You live in a world, a

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Christian world today that talks about making God Lord of their life.

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But then you do have to understand that we don't make God Lord of our life, He is our Lord regardless of whether or not we want to recognize it.

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What He says goes. His authority is absolute. He is the potter, we are the clay. If He gives us a command, He expects us to follow it.

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And when we do not follow it, we can't look and turn to Him and say, hey, I didn't follow it because this creature made a claim above me that supersedes your claims.

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That isn't the way it works. God's authority is absolute. So there are situations that many men will find themselves in where a man will be forced to pick between God's commands and the will of their wife.

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Like that's a real situation, that's a situation that can happen. This is a situation that happened to our first parents.

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It's a situation that honestly is very common to life. It's a common situation. There have been plenty of men throughout history who have looked at the scriptures and thought this is what

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God wants them to do. Not just in clear black and white sin issues, but in the basic issues of wisdom and how to lead a family and what priorities to establish within a home.

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There have been plenty of situations where you have husbands who think to themselves, God has commanded us to do certain things or God has revealed in His word that it would be wise to do certain things, and then they are forced to pick between God's pleasure and the happiness of their wife.

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I mean, I've had many, I have many friends over the years who have invested significant portions of my life investing in, who personally had convictions that in order to honor the

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Lord we need to go to church here, instead of going to church here, to the other place.

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I've known many guys who have gone into ministry, because I did go to seminary, I've known many guys who have gone into ministry and the whole time they seem to be dragging an unwilling wife behind them trying to pursue the things of the

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Lord when they have an unhappy situation that's happening at home, which is a distraction to them.

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I've known plenty of personal friends who have gone to very bad churches because their wives wouldn't be happy going to good churches.

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It's a real thing. I'm not suggesting, and if you hear me to be suggesting, that a guy's perspective is always right and always governed by scripture and a woman's perspective is always wrong and not governed by scripture,

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I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that there are plenty of situations that we should be able to realize where men are trying to lead, and because I have a little bit of a public platform

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I hear about it all the time, and they'll tell me about the ways in which they're trying to lead and the ways in which their wives are trying to fight them and prioritize their own perspective.

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These are things that happen, and you see these things happening in the scriptures in a wide variety of ways. Eve prioritized the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life over and against God's commands.

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Because man is oriented towards the happiness of his wife in certain ways, he wants a happy home, he wants a peaceful home.

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He may not be wise enough to know how to get it, but certainly most men are probably peacekeepers as it relates to the happiness of the home in their current life right now, but the point here is just to say

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Adam, he knew what God said. There's a claim being made of authority for his wife, he gave in to that, and this is a story that's happened in the

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Bible in a wide variety of ways. I mean you can think about the situation with Sarai and Abram where in Genesis 16 -2 she says,

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Behold now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children, go to my servant that I may obtain children by her, and the same phrase is used here.

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It says, and Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. That's the same phrase that you see here where God's saying because you've listened to the voice of your wife, not every idea that your wife has is going to be good, that we have to acknowledge.

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Not every idea that she has is going to be good. 1 Kings 21 -25, there was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the

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Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited.

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So these are real problems, brothers and sisters, these are real problems and the human race has been remarkably affected by these things.

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Think about how Adam and Eve, their actions, the actions of Adam in particular, abdicating his headship, giving away authority over the leading of his home to his wife in this instance.

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Think about how it's remarkably affected all of us in the world that we lived in, and the quality of their life, the quality of our life.

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These certainly had major ramifications. You think about the situation with Sarai and Abram where she's telling him to go into his maidservant to obtain children by her.

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Think about the disastrous consequences that came from that. Think about the disastrous consequences that came from Hagar now despising

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Sarai, looking upon her with contempt and scorn, division and pain within the family.

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All these things are not good. Think about all the disastrous consequences that came from Ahab listening to Jezebel.

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This is a real problem. So should husbands ever listen to their wives? Well first, they obviously shouldn't listen to their wives, i .e.

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obey their wives instead of God. Second, they obviously shouldn't listen to their wives, i .e.

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obey their wives, i .e. place themselves under their authority and obedience to their commands.

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Do you understand what I mean? So if listening to the voice of your wife is a euphemism for obey, well a husband shouldn't listen to his wife, meaning obey her as if she is the one in authority over him and he's the one who's not in authority over her.

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So in other words, what I'm trying to suggest is, it's not just that Adam shouldn't obey Eve when she asked him to sin, it's just that obey is an inappropriate word to describe the nature of how a husband should respond to his wife.

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Do you understand what I mean? Period. So biblically speaking, there are authority structures that God has ordained and established.

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The way it works biblically speaking is that commands go down the authority ladder, requests go up the authority ladder.

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Do you understand what I mean? There was a time at one of our children,

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I can't remember who it was and that's probably good, but it was one of the boys, but they were asking

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Elizabeth for milk. As a parent, when you have multiple children, like a little bird squawking at you from multiple angles while you're trying to do things, there are times where you hear what they're saying and your brain is in a completely other place, somewhere else, and you're staring at them with a bovine expression on your face to where you understand they communicated with them but your brain hasn't kind of kicked in or whatever.

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But one of our children were asking her for some milk. I often do this with my kids to where they ask me something and I look at them and I was doing something else and they're staring at me like, what's wrong with you?

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Can you respond? One of our kids was doing this and they were young, they were pretty young at that point, saying, hey, can

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I have some milk? After multiple attempts, they just kind of got exasperated and they said, get the milk!

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Mom, get the milk! Now, this is obviously inappropriate for a child to talk to their mother in that kind of way.

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You may understand on a human level that that makes a kind of sense to a person living in a fallen world, but the problem is just to say that in authority relationships in the

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Bible, commands go down the authority ladder, requests go up, and this is a consistent pattern in every authority relationship.

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So Luke 7, 8 says this, the centurion is looking at Jesus, and the context is he's asking him to heal his servant, and Jesus is basically saying, hey,

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I can come to you to go heal him, and he's looking at Jesus and saying, hey, you don't have to come.

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All you have to do is just say the word and he'll be healed. I understand this how, well, Luke 7, 8 says, for I too am a man set under authority with soldiers under me, and I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.

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So that's, the reason why I'm bringing this up is just to establish that in every authority relationship, he's saying,

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I am a man under authority. I know how authority works. How does authority work? Well, the person who is in authority over the other person, he exercises that authority by saying to one, come, and he comes, to the other, go, and he goes.

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This is why, as you read through the Bible, you'll see, in every authority relationship you find yourself in, in Ephesians, they all work the same way.

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So wives are told to be subject to their own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him

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Lord. Being subject to someone means placing yourself under their authority. The word there, hupotessa menai, means to subject yourself, to obey.

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That's what it means. As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. Being a leader involves exercising authority, and the way that you exercise authority is you tell people to do certain things.

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And certainly, you can tell people to do things in a commanding, self -centered way, or you can tell them to do something in a sacrificial, other -centered way that is, is, has set itself towards God's glory and for our good.

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But the point here is just to say, whenever you exercise authority, you give instructions. When a husband asks his wife to do something, she should understand that to be a command that she's supposed to follow.

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It's not a request that's optional for her, right, that she can take or leave.

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It's not really the way it works. When a husband is in the legitimate authority of his wife, when he says, hey, can you do this, she should understand that to be a command.

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Children are told to obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right. When parents ask their children to do something, give them instructions to do, a child should treat that as if, not, not if it's just a suggestion, hey, can you clean your room, right?

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I may phrase that in the form of a question. But if I were to say that to one of my sons, they should interpret that to mean, not, do

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I want to clean my room? But as a command from me, and therefore a command from God, that they need to go clean their room right now.

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The same thing is, the same thing is true of servants. Servants are supposed to obey their earthly masters with fear and trembling.

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What I'm trying to suggest is that commands always go down the authority ladder. No matter how they're phrased, they should be treated as commands.

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Requests go up. So Luke 17, 7, well any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep, say to him when he's come in from the field, come at once and recline at table.

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Will you not rather say to him, prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink afterwards?

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You will eat and drink. Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, we are unworthy servants.

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We have only done what was our duty. Jesus, his own example related to these things is to say in John 15, 14, you are my friends if I do, if you do what

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I command you to do. Over and over and over again, Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. You say that I am your master and Lord, and you're right, for so I am.

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When we come to Christ, we come to him acknowledging he is Lord, and that means he's an authority over us, and that means he gets to call the shots, and whatever he says goes.

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And his authority is absolute over us in a way that a husband's authority over his wife is not absolute.

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His husband's authority over his children is not absolute. There are limits to it. A master's authority over servants is not absolute.

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Government's authority over citizens is not absolute. God's authority is absolute. Christ's authority over us is absolute in that way.

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Whatever he says goes, and it's right for him, because he's an authority over us, to give us commands.

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And it would be wrong for us to approach God in prayer in such a way as to essentially say, get the milk, exclamation point, right?

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When we come to God, we come to him not making demands of them, but making requests.

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So Esther 5 -4, there's an example of Esther coming to the king, who is her husband, making a request.

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And Esther says, if it please the king, let the king and Haman come today to a feast that I prepared for the king.

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Esther 7 -3, the queen answered him, if I found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request.

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Commands go down the authority ladder, requests go up the authority ladder. The point is to say, should a husband ever listen to his wife, they obviously shouldn't listen to their wife, i .e.

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obey them. They obviously obey them instead of God. They obviously shouldn't listen to their wives, meaning place themselves under their authority and yield to their commands.

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I mean, there's a very limited sense in which they should in relation to conjugal rights, but putting that caveat aside, a husband is a legitimate authority over his wife.

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He should not be obeying her will in that kind of way. She's perfectly within her rights to make requests of him that should be treated as requests.

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So there's that. So should a husband ever listen to his wife? Well, they obviously shouldn't listen to them, meaning obey instead of God.

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They obviously shouldn't listen to their wives, meaning obey their wives, meaning place themselves under their authority.

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But they certainly should listen to their wives, i .e. appropriately hear what their wives concerns are in order to understand.

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So here's the point, that God is omniscient and we are not. You know, God doesn't learn anything from us.

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God's understanding of us is perfect, is complete. His understanding of us is perfect and complete before the foundation of the world.

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He doesn't really need to do any work whatsoever to understand us. You know, sometimes parents will say to their kids, you know,

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I understand you better than what you do. And I would say that as kids get a little bit older, that card seems to lose a bit of its effectiveness.

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I mean, there's a sense in which some of that might be true, but also a certain sense in which they may not have enough information to know really what's going on with you.

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But the point here is just to say that as it relates to God, God's omniscient. He knows all.

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He doesn't learn anything from you. He doesn't need any new information from you. He understands your situation perfectly.

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He understands when you're making excuses for things that you shouldn't be making excuses for. He's able to read the entirety of your messy situation and all the variables that go into that messy situation.

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He's able to read the entirety of that situation, perfectly divvy out all the rights and the wrongs, and execute perfect justice with your situation.

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Everything He does for you, because He's a good Heavenly Father who delights to give His children good gifts, everything that God does for you is done for His glory and for our good.

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There is no sense at all in which we can give Him information that He doesn't have in order to help

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Him to better govern our lives. His governance of our lives is absolutely perfect.

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It's absolutely based on perfect understanding that is flawless.

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He doesn't need to ask questions of us. In fact, I mean with Jesus when He was living here on the earth, we see over and over again

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Jesus, particularly in the Gospel of John, claiming that He didn't need man to testify about Himself because He knew what was in man and knew what they were capable of.

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He feeds the 5 ,000. He understands that after He gives them His speech about the importance of eating

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His flesh and drinking His blood, that many of them were going to depart because they weren't following Him with sincerity.

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They were following Him just because they wanted Him to provide for all their basic needs in the moment.

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They weren't interested in spiritual realities. The point is to say that God's omniscient and we aren't. As a husband, you're not omniscient.

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Your knowledge of your wife is not absolute. You actually need to ask questions in order to understand where she's coming from.

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Because you're living in a world designed by God, God has introduced some difficulties in male -female communication that show their head every time you basically try to have male -female conversations.

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There's been plenty of situations where me, on the basis of my limited knowledge, see my wife behaving in a particular way and jump to some pretty grand conclusions about why

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I think she's doing what she's doing, taking her behavior, filtering it into certain patterns of her behavior that I've observed in the past, jumping to remarkable conclusions about what's going on.

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I remember one time I came home and she seemed to be pretty short with me.

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I didn't really know why she was being so short with me. I started feeling pretty irritated about the fact that she was being short with me.

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I decided to confront her about why are you being so short with me.

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She kind of looked at me and I don't know the exact way she worded this, but she said something along the lines of, you know what

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Tim, not everything is about you. I just got off the phone with my brother, who is an atheist.

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We had a tough conversation here. I'm a mess in my brain right now.

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The point there is just to say that God's omniscient, we aren't.

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Husbands certainly should listen to the wife's meaning appropriately, hear their wife's concerns in order to understand with the knowledge that understanding is hard and it takes a lot of work.

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The Bible repeatedly points us to the reality that if you give an answer before you hear, it's folly and shame.

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The Bible repeatedly tells you that the purpose of man's heart is deep waters and the man of understanding will draw them out.

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The Bible repeatedly tells you the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two -edged sword, able to pierce through the divisions between joints and marrow, able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart, meaning

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God has given us his Word in order to help us understand the way the world works, help us to understand other people, to give us wisdom and insight how to deal with them.

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You have to do the basic work of listening in order to understand. If you don't listen in order to understand, you might make a mess of things.

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There's been plenty of husbands throughout the history of the world who hear a few sentences, don't ask enough questions to figure out what's really going on, give some simplistic solution.

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There's jokes about these things where guys are described as being Mr. Fix -its. The psychological literature here is not all that helpful because the psychological literature thinks that the answer to that is just that you listen to your wife in order to let her vent to you, get all her concerns off her chest with no expectation whatsoever that there's going to be any solution to any of it.

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Then you're supposed to empathize with it and validate it as being true. Then if you don't do all that, then you've failed at the task of listening.

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Functionally, you're living in a world that basically says a husband should never give his wife any solutions. All he should do is try to hear her and make her feel heard.

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That's not the answer to the problem of giving counsel too quickly. The answer to giving counsel too quickly is to do more work listening so you can give better solutions.

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Because if all you're doing is just getting your concerns off your chest, it's indistinguishable from indefinite complaining.

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There's no virtue in just sitting there sharing all the negative thoughts that you have in your brain without any filter, without any willingness to hear what to do with them.

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That doesn't help anyone. The Bible says a fool gives full vent to their spirit. It's not true, as the psychologists tell you, that if you hold certain things in, you're going to let them build up inside.

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Then one day you're going to blow up and go postal on everyone. I mean, there's a lot of things that you simply shouldn't say because it's not helpful to say.

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Not only should you not say because it's not helpful to say, you shouldn't even be thinking. Because the way you're thinking and the way you're feeling right now is not governed by the scriptures and the knowledge that God is there and that he's good and he has good plans for you.

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There are plenty of situations where your feelings are liars that are trying to help keep you and everyone around you held captive to ungodly attitudes of bitterness, shame, hatred, discontentment.

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The point here is just to say that God's omniscient husband certainly should listen to their wives, meaning appropriately hear their wife's concerns in order to understand them.

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That's a work that requires a lot of effort and discernment and a lot of wisdom.

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I am using the word appropriately there, you understand, because there are times where a husband might tell his wife that we've heard these concerns already and we're telling these same concerns every single day because we're fighting the world that God made, we're fighting his providence.

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We need to think about these concerns differently, we don't need to just keep on rehearsing these same concerns, the same bitterness, the same discontentment over and over every day because we're poisoning the mood of our family, we're poisoning the mood of our home because sometimes it's not good to say everything that we think and we need to go to war against our thinking and our feelings.

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Just because you think them and feel them doesn't make them valid, it doesn't make them godly and doesn't produce the good that God wants you to produce.

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So certainly as a general posture, husbands should appropriately hear their wife's concerns in order to understand, but there are obviously limits on that defined by the

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Word of God itself and I'm not suggesting there's easy answers there. Lastly, should husbands ever listen to their wife?

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Well, let's go through our list. They obviously shouldn't listen to their wives, ie obey their wives instead of God.

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They shouldn't listen to their wives, i .e obey their wives, i .e place themselves under their authority. They certainly should listen to their wives, ie appropriately hear their wife's concern in order to understand and they certainly should listen to their wives, i .e

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appropriately hear and accept their request. So appropriately they hear and accept their request.

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Maybe you're familiar with the story of Abigail in 1 Samuel 25 -24.

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Is married to a worthless husband, Nabal, who had offended

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David. David was gonna go with all of his men to kill him. 1

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Samuel 25 -24, afterwards, you know, Abigail becomes the wife of David after this encounter, but 1

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Samuel 25 -24, she fell at David's feet. She said, oh, on me alone, my Lord, be the guilt.

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Please let your servant speak in your ears and hear the words of your servant. Abigail came before David, giving him a request because he was in a position of authority.

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Certainly, husbands should listen to their wives, meaning appropriately hear and accept their request.

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Again, when appropriate. Husbands should have a posture towards their wives that realize that it's more blessed to give than to receive.

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We should have the same mind that was ours in Christ Jesus who didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of sinful men.

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We are told on the basis of Christ's example not simply to look to our own interest, but also the interest of others.

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You're obviously living in a world right now that thinks the key to marital bliss is going to be found in you, in finding someone who shares all the same interests that you have.

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Guys can have some pretty funny expectations along these lines when they're considering pursuing a spouse.

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I mean, I remember when I was thinking about pursuing a spouse. I had a godly pastor mentor in my life that I would run some of these things by, and one of the things

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I ran by him was the fact that I really like sports. How important is it to find a wife who's good at sports?

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And he kind of looked at me and set me straight on that one. He said, if I want to play sports,

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I play sports with men. It's not going to be any competition anyways. It's not what a wife is for, it's just to be there, to be a mirror of all the things that you like.

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Pointing to say that husbands should have a posture that wants to give, and understanding that we should not just be looking to our own interests, but the interests of others.

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A posture that says I want the good of my family, I want the happiness of my family to the extent to which

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I can lawfully pursue it. God obviously didn't give authority to husbands in order for them to lord that authority over their family, meaning to use that authority.

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We think that lording authority over people means using it, period. That's not what it means. Lording authority over others means you're taking that authority and you're using it in a way to fuel your own self -centered desires.

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You're using your position as a club to force everyone under your authority to give you what you want.

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And that was the pattern of the kings that you see in the Old Testament. This is a pattern that Samuel warned the people about. If you get a king, he's gonna take.

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He's gonna take. He's gonna take your men and he's gonna take your women, he's gonna take your money, he's gonna take your stuff, he's gonna take your oxen, he's gonna take your sheep.

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That's what he's gonna do for himself. It's not to suggest that kings are bad, he's just warning them about the nature of how authority can be abused.

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Certainly husbands should want to appropriately hear and accept their wives' requests, but then if you've been in authority in any relationship before you realize that all requests are not equal, some requests aren't actually a request.

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Sometimes something might be worded as a request, but then if you don't do it, you realize very quickly that that request wasn't simply a request.

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That request was a demand that was packaged in the language of a request. We've seen some of those examples of that last week.

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But there's certainly many situations where as a husband, you should have a posture that wants to give.

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Hey, I should have a posture that says it's more blessed to give than receive. You might have that posture towards your wife where you're looking at her, you're trying to sacrificially serve her, trying to use your authority as a blessing for her, and you realize that there are times where she's coming to you with something that's so important to her that if you don't do it, all hell is gonna break loose and your life is gonna be made very, very difficult.

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I mean, in general, yeah, I think in terms of foreign policy it's never good to appease

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Hitler, is it? We don't negotiate with terrorists.

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You don't be predisposed to take offense at those comparisons. They are simply that, comparisons designed to tell you something about a principle.

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If you have a kid who is demanding their own way, the best thing you can do in those moments is not give them what they want, isn't it?

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Because if you give them what they want, you realize they have a tool they can use to manipulate you in the future if it's so important to where we're gonna fight over it.

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I mean, if you have two kids fighting over a toy that becomes so important to them, it's not the worst thing in the world to throw that toy in the trash and say, this is what we do with idols in this home.

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You're gonna make this into an idol, we're gonna throw it away. So you can learn to not make things into idols in that way.

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But there are requests that turn into demands, aren't there? Desires, there can be neutral desires.

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If you don't get what you want, they turn into a man. And you shouldn't respond to those. So certainly, husbands should listen to their wives appropriately, hear and accept their requests.

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And there's been many a man who's been blessed throughout history of the world by having a wife who comes to him with requests.

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There's been plenty of Abigail's in the world who have saved their husbands from incredibly, attempted to save their husbands from incredibly foolish decisions because of the wisdom and discernment given them by God because they see things that their husbands can't see because they have a different perspective than what their husband has.

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A lot of the requests that Elizabeth has come to me over the years and given to me have been requests that I might be tempted to dismiss at first because they're the kind of requests that are arising from concerns that she has related to her own responsibilities in the world and the priorities that are important to her as a fellow image bearer of God who's designed in a different way than me, who has different kinds of priorities than me.

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I could give you a bunch of examples about these. Some are somewhat embarrassing, but I'm happy to embarrass myself if it's helpful.

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I mean, I remember early on in our marriage, we weren't operating on a very big budget.

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And Elizabeth would constantly come to me with requests that we not make all of the hospitality that we provide to people the cheapest hospitality that we could possibly afford.

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And I'm just thinking about this in terms of pragmatic budget considerations, trying to keep the lights on and everything else.

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But I've learned over the years that there is a principle of selling the fatted calf and going all out with hospitality.

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It's more blessed to give than receive. I mean, those are things that I've seen over the years to where I'm kind of tempted to make it as cheap as possible but then she has a real biblical concern for hospitality and celebrations, feasting that's in the

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Bible that I don't have a category for. And at times, it's like I'm thinking like a provider and saying, okay, sure, we can have spontaneous feast and all that, but we have to schedule how frequent they're gonna be, right?

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Because of the priorities I have to try to keep things on the table. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the way marriage works.

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She has a different perspective than I have. And oftentimes, it's not just that my perspective is right because I'm the leader, because God put me in that position and her perspective is wrong.

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Often, it's like she has priorities that are important. I have priorities that are important. And what we need to do is

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I need to figure out how to, as the leader, prioritize both of those things.

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And it's not entirely true that in any situation, her answer is right instantaneously.

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My answer is right. As a leader, I need to understand her, hear her request. And there might be plenty of times where I'm not even accepting her request as given.

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I'm accepting that there's a concern that undergirds her request, and I'm accepting there's a concern that undergirds my perception of where we should be going, and I'm realizing that maybe

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God has put both of those concerns there for a reason, and I need to find another solution in order to make sure that we're not falling into a ditch either way, right?

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So a husband certainly should listen to their wives. I appropriately hear and accept those requests.

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So should a husband ever listen? Obviously, yes, and obviously, no, in certain ways as we've defined those things.

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So what do we do with these things, brothers and sisters? Well, Adam, he obviously doomed the world by listening to his wife instead of God.

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And this is obviously a message that the church desperately needs to hear today. It's a message that is the foundational message, like how did we get into this mess?

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How do we understand the world? How do you understand the world today? There's the same problem that's playing itself out all throughout history and is uniquely playing itself out right now.

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Adam doomed the world by listening to his wife instead of God. It's the message the church and the world desperately needs to hear.

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Romans 5, 12, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man in death through sin, so death spread to all men because all have sinned.

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The original sin of our human parents fell squarely on the shoulder of Adam because he was the one who was responsible for what happened.

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God held him uniquely responsible for the fall of the human race. You're living in a society right now where men have totally abdicated their responsibility and women have assumed it, okay?

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That's the basic problem that you can see in our world today that undergirds so much of what's happened. The men are not leading and the women are not following.

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And we are predisposed to think that that's a chauvinistic statement, that it's a misogynistic statement, that that's a woman -hating statement.

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If you deny the omnicompetence of woman and refuse to treat the husband as the ogre, buffoon, worthless guy who has nothing to offer in this equation, you're gonna be told that you're sexist.

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The problem, though, is that the basic human problem is that man abdicated his authority to woman and let us all into sin.

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That's the problem. And that's the problem that is so prevalent in our world today.

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So many of the social problems that you see in the world and in the church today are a result of the fact that men are failing to be the leaders that they should be.

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And they're almost universally listening to their wives with no filter. Elizabeth said of me when, it's a funny thing to say because it's something you might not expect, but when we were dating in the early years of our, we have our dating about to get married, people would ask her, you know, why did you want to get married to Tim?

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And her response was, he's the first guy who ever said no to me, right? That helped her to trust me somewhat, meaning that I wasn't a guy who was just gonna do whatever she said.

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Because she really, part of her didn't wanna be in charge, you know, as much as we're all sinners and we all want to fight authority and everything else, it's the reality that, hey,

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God's designed the world in a certain way. And if you're the kind of guy who's just, look, brothers in the room, if you're the kind of guy who a woman knows that she can just manipulate you and get you to do anything that she wants you to do without filter, she's not gonna respect you.

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She's not gonna respect you if she knows that you're just gonna do whatever she says. And the reason, she may want that of you and think that that's good for her, but she won't respect you.

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And the reason she won't respect you is because there's part of her that doesn't want to bear the weight of making all these decisions.

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I mean, just thinking about all the decisions that go into marriage and go into home life, it's complicated.

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Like being a leader is complicated and you have a generation of men who basically just, man, just,

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I'll give you whatever you want, just don't be mad at me, right? Don't be mad at me. I'll give you whatever you want.

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Be there, be available for me, we're good. You can call all the shots because I don't really want to bear that responsibility anymore and I don't want to upset you and that's their posture and that's not really the world that God designed.

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But that isn't really what Christ does for us, is it? Christ's our leader. He's an authority over us. He doesn't respond to us like that.

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Marriage is meant to be a picture of Christ's relationship with the church. Christ doesn't look to us and say, hey, whatever you want, that's good, man.

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I mean, aren't you thankful that Christ loves you so much he doesn't always do what you say? Aren't you thankful that Christ loves you so much he's willing to tell you no?

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He's willing to discipline you when you need it. He's willing to introduce trials in your life in order to help you to wake up and see that you're not smarter than he is, that he has a plan for you that's better than your plan for yourself.

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Aren't you glad that you could know that if you got your way at every point in your life with everything that you ask of God, I mean, have you ever done that?

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Have you ever taken a step back and just think about all the things that you prayed to God and asked yourself what would have happened if he would have said yes?

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And think about the mess that would have happened as a result of him saying yes to all of your ideas about what he needs to be doing, right?

01:01:04

Aren't you thankful that God doesn't always do what you say? We know that just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death's fed to all men because all have sinned.

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We also know that if, because of one's man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. We know that our first father led us into sin because he abdicated his authority in the world.

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He inappropriately listened to his wife, rejected his responsibility, and we all suffer from that.

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But because of one man's obedience, we know that we have life and we have hope, and the fall isn't the last word.

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And there's answers to all the difficulties and problems that we face in life.

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And I'm not suggesting that if you just trust in Jesus's sacrifice for you that your life will be effortlessly easy.

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There'll be no trials, there'll be no difficulties, but I am suggesting that there are answers to these things in this life.

01:02:08

You know that if you believe the good news of what Jesus Christ did for you, you can have peace with God despite the fact that there may be consequences in this life for your choices, some of which are fairly severe.

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At the same time, you know that Christ has done for us what he, what

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Adam couldn't do. He's done for us what we couldn't do. He was the perfect leader who never led us into sin, who never, as an act of love, betrayed

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God's priorities for us. He loved us so much that he was willing to do what was right before God, and was obedient to the point of death, and we have no hope apart from that.

01:02:58

Amen? Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for the opportunity we have to come and to listen to your words today.

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You know that you have spoken. You're there. You aren't silent.

01:03:10

Pray that you help us today to realize that your words are true, and your purposes will stand, and your words are true, though every man who sets himself in opposition towards those truths will one day be found a liar.