2. Marriage Pitfalls: Marriage Conference 2024 Session Two

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3. The Productive Household: Marriage Conference 2024 Session Three

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Good morning, it's good to see all of you again.

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Let's pray as we begin. Father, I'm grateful for your mercy this morning, grateful that Christ reigns and rules, that He is the

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Lamb and the Lion, that He conquered by His death, purchasing us and enabling us, empowering us to walk worthy of that calling.

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Pray, Lord, that you would help us to do so in our marriages and our families. Equip us, I pray, with the way to think about things, but also with right hearts that seek to live in obedience to you.

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We ask for this grace now in Jesus' name, and amen. All right, let me recap last night. Some of you may not have been here.

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Let me recap what we talked about there before moving into this first session of the morning.

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Last night I gave a little brief framework for thinking about the way that men and women, God created us as male and female and applied it to marriage.

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That framework was this, God's acts establish basic facts. God has done things.

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He's made us in certain ways that just are. It's an indicative statement of reality.

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Then second, God's commands fit those facts. What God says fits what He's done, and then our applications ought to fit those facts and commands.

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We didn't really get into that. We'll get into more of that application today. We focus mainly on these different facts.

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Facts of creation, things like all human beings are made in God's image and for His mission, as well as male headship.

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We looked briefly at Genesis where God created Adam first. Adam named

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Eve. He taught his wife the law of the garden. He was held responsible for the first failure.

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Those sort of things are indications that Adam was created as the head of his home.

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We talked a little bit about facts of nature, things like men are taller, men are more aggressive, men prefer status hierarchies, and women are more relational, maybe more nurturing because men are made to be fathers and women are made to be mothers.

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Those different callings then shape who and what we are. Then finally, facts of redemption,

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Christ died for His church and that relationship becomes the model for husbands and wives, which we looked at briefly in Ephesians 5.

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That was the first main part. Then the second was when we talked about what we mean by headship and bodyship.

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I'll just read this summary again of what the head does and the body does. The head orders and structures the body for its purpose.

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Puts things in order for God's purpose through His presence and His words and His actions. Then He empowers the members of His body to fulfill their calling.

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He's a provider. He empowers and provides so that His family, His wife,

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His family can fulfill their calling. He also maintains the body's boundaries. He protects and He represents the body and is responsible for the well -being of the body.

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Then the body, on the other hand, receives that presence from the head, the presence, the words, and the actions, and refines it, makes it better, providing feedback and input and counsel, wisdom to the head.

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Then the body glorifies the head's efforts, makes them fruitful, keeps in step, carries out the head's will, and amplifies and extends the body's influence in the world.

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The body receives in order to give more. That's what women especially do.

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So that's what we talked about last night. Today, I want to begin by talking about the ways that goes wrong.

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Okay? I want to talk about Genesis chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can open there to Genesis 3. And I want us to see some facts about the first failure, the first and foundational sin, how it worked.

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There's a particular pattern that God introduces us to in this opening chapters of Genesis that shows up throughout the

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Bible and that we need to be aware of, we need to be on guard against. So we'll look at this pattern, and then we'll look at God's response to the sin, what's the curse that God levies against human sin, before looking at how then

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He puts us back together and what He calls us to in terms of a courageous marriage individually and as a couple.

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So you remember that in Genesis chapter 2,

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God had called Adam to work and keep the garden. It's Genesis 2 .15.

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Adam was called to work and keep the garden, to protect it and to guard it.

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Okay? The garden is like a temple, it's like a sanctuary, and Adam is the first priest, and he's supposed to guard and keep and protect this garden.

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But when a serpent approaches his wife, this crafty serpent approaches his wife and blasphemes his

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God. Did God really say, you won't surely die?

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No, no. So he questions God's word, did God really say that? And then he denies it. That's not happening.

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God won't kill you. That's not true. Instead, He's trying to hold you back, right?

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He knows that if you eat of that tree, you'll be like Him. You'll be like Him. He's trying to hold you down.

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So the serpent blasphemes God. God is not a good father. God is a miser trying to hold you down.

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It's lies about God. When Adam, who as a priest is supposed to guard this garden, when he's confronted with a serpent speaking to his wife, he is passive.

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He just stands there. He watches it happen. And this is important.

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We know that he was there because look there in chapter 3, verse 6, the passage says that Eve gave some to her husband who was with her.

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Okay, that's the key line. It's not as though Eve was off on her own. There's some renderings of this story.

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John Milton famously in Paradise Lost had Adam and Eve separated for the temptation. They were separated and the serpent found

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Eve when she was by herself and she ate and then she came back having already fallen and said, here

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Adam. But the text says, no, Adam who was with her, her husband who was with her.

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He's standing there. He was with her the whole time and he did nothing. Now, this is a little in the weeds, but I think when the serpent said to her, did

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God really say? I can understand Adam pausing for a minute to see did she learn her

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Sunday school lesson? Adam had been responsible to teach her the law of the garden because she wasn't there when it was given.

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And so Adam is going to see, does she know the word of God? And she responds, no, we can't eat of it. And she adds this little, neither shall we touch it.

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And there's questions about why she adds that. We won't get into that. Neither shall we touch it lest we die. So she gets it right.

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And at that point, Adam, she said, good, she got it right. And when the serpent says you won't die, he ought to have done something. At that point, this is no longer a friendly conversation with some sort of angelic beast.

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I don't know how we think about the serpent, right? Is the devil inhabiting a beast of the field perhaps?

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But whatever is going on at that point, it's over and Adam needs to step in and he doesn't.

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He fails. He ought to have picked up a sword to kill the dragon and protect the girl, but he doesn't.

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He's passive, he abdicates. He neglects his God -given responsibilities.

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Okay, so that's step one. This is a pattern. There's three steps to it. That's step one, abdication. Step two, this initial abdication, this neglect leads to greater evil because after Eve seizes and eats that forbidden fruit, she turns and offers some to her husband and now

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Adam has a choice. And notice here that his choice is different than Eve's. The temptations for the man and the woman here are different because Eve wasn't around when

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God gave that command. She learned it from Adam. And the serpent exploits that, you might call it a weakness, in order to deceive her, okay?

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So she's heard from one creature, don't eat from that tree because you'll die.

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And now she's hearing from another creature, you won't die. So she has to choose between two creatures.

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Does she listen to her husband or does she listen to this serpent? And perhaps it's an angelic,

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I would presume it's an angelic guardian type serpent. Satan's masquerading here, right? So which creature do

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I listen to? Adam is not in that position. He can't be deceived about who accurately speaks for God because he heard it from God himself.

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Does that make sense? This is why Paul in 1 Timothy will say, the man was not deceived. The woman was deceived, the man was not deceived.

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He was not tricked. She was going, well, my husband said this, but this angelic guardian says this.

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This angelic being says this. So who do I listen to? Who speaks for God? She could be deceived.

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Adam, at this point, it's just his wife has eaten it and now he has a choice. He has a choice.

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His choice is between his God and his wife. That's his choice. Between bone of his bone and the one who made his bones.

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That's his choice. And he chooses her. He exchanges, this is the biblical language for this, he exchanges the glory of the immortal

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God for a creature. That's what God says when he punishes Adam. When we get down there in chapter 3, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree of which

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I commanded you, you shall not eat. You hear that? You listened to her, not to me. You chose her, not me.

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You would rather have her without me than me without her. If given the choice between the God of who made you, the

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God who lavished you, the God who loves you, and your wife, you chose her. The biblical term for this is idolatry.

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This is high -handed idolatry. And to connect the dots, this is where that abdication, passivity, and neglect always leads.

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We drift, and we drift, and we drift, and eventually we're faced with the big decision, and when the moment of choice comes, we seize sin with a high hand.

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I'd rather have her than you, God. That's the second step.

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Abdication leads to idolatry. Abdication leads to idolatry. Pattern's not yet over, though.

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Where does idolatry lead? Well, idolatry gives way to blame -shifting.

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So when God confronts Adam in his disobedience, he comes down,

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Adam, where are you? And Adam shows up, oh, I might as well do this.

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This is fun. I gave you one of my wo -man joke last night. This is my other one. So this is parentheses.

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This one's free, okay? This one's a free one. How's the joke go? Okay, there's a pastor who's noticed that one of his parishioners has stopped coming to church, hadn't been there in a long time, and being a good pastor, he's going to go visit him.

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So he goes to the guy's house, and walks up to the door, and rings the doorbell, and nobody answers.

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He goes, I'll just ring it again. And then he looks over, and he notices in the window there's a little flutter of the curtains. And he's like, oh, he's home. He just saw me.

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So he says, okay, fine. And he pulls out his card, and on the back of the card he writes

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Hebrews 10, let us not neglect meeting together as is the habit of some, okay?

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And then if you go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there's no sacrifice for sins, right?

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Leaves a nice little pastoral note on the back of the card, leaves it, and goes back. The next

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Sunday the guy's in church. And he says, oh, good, pastoral duty fulfilled. God brought him back, praise

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God. Gives his sermon. After the sermon he's standing in the back, and the guy comes up to him and he says, hey, pastor, good to see you.

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I just wanted to return this. And he gives the card back, and he's scratched out the

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Hebrews passage, and in their place has written Genesis 3 .10. I'll wait, right?

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I'd heard the sound of you in the garden, but I was naked, and I was afraid, and so I hid myself, okay?

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So that's my second youth pastor joke, I've only got two. So, but God, Adam says,

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Adam, where are you? I heard you were naked, and then this is the hand in the cookie jar moment, who told you you were naked?

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And Adam goes, shoot, right? Oops, I gave it away. I gave it away.

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And have you eaten of the tree that I told you not to eat from? And note, this is the key moment, okay? Adam immediately passes the buck.

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The woman, you gave me. She gave me of the tree, and I ate, okay?

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This is important. You have to think about this, okay? This is Eve's fault. It's God's fault.

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This is what's amazing about this. There are literally like three beings on the planet right now, okay?

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It's like there's God, there's Adam, and Eve, and Adam's like, all I know is that it's everybody's fault but mine.

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I know that things have gone terribly wrong, and I just want you to know, God, that the one person who had nothing to do with any of this is me.

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The woman that you gave me. If you didn't want this to happen, why'd you give her to me?

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And I want you to think here, this is important. Think about what Adam blaming his wife means here, okay?

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We think, oh yeah, blaming, okay, kids blame, we blame, blame, blame, blame. But what was the consequence for eating from that tree?

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It's death. In the day you eat of it, you will surely die. So when Adam blames her, he is effectively saying, kill her, not me.

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Kill her, not me. He's supposed to protect her. And instead, he says, no, no, you protect me.

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He exposes her to judgment. He's supposed to die for her, and now he's demanding that she die for him.

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And then, of course, she follows him, faithful wife, right? Follows him.

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God turns to her and says, what have you done? And Eve said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. So Adam points a finger at God and his wife, and then

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God says, well, what about it? And she says, him, the serpent, it's his fault, okay? Eve imitates

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Adam in the blame game. This is the pattern, okay? Abdication leads to idolatry, which leads to blame shifting.

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That's the biblical pattern. And it shows up again and again in the scriptures, okay? We won't have time to go into these, but if you want to go study them on your own, in Exodus chapter 32, the incident at the golden calf, okay, the same pattern reappears with Aaron, okay?

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That passivity, that idolatry, and that blame. Later in 1 Samuel, with Saul, when

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God tells him to go wipe out the Amalekites, the same pattern reappears, abdication, idolatry, and blame shifting.

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Both Aaron and Saul say to God, you know the people, their hearts are, you know, come on, come on, you know the people, the people,

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God, they're terrible. It's their fault. I was just standing here, and this is my favorite, Aaron, after he literally takes their gold, forges a golden calf, and then leads them to bow down and worship it,

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Moses shows up and says, what are you doing? And he's like, I was just standing here,

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I threw the gold in, out popped a calf. It's what he says, out, just out popped a calf.

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I was minding my business, and then the people started bowing, you know the people. This is that pattern, okay?

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This is the pattern. And it's one that we need to attend to and try to interrupt at every step along the way. We'll come back to that, okay.

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So that's sin, that's how the sin happened, abdication, idolatry, blame shifting, and now we need to see, how did

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God respond to this? How does God respond to this sin? And we often say that God cursed

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Adam and Eve, okay, God cursed Adam and Eve. But if we pay attention, that's not quite true, okay.

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It seems significant to me that as you read through God's words, there's 14 and following, the only person that is cursed is the serpent.

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So look in verse 14, cursed are you, okay. It's the serpent that's cursed.

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With Adam and Eve, we'll come back to the curse of the serpent, so focus on God's curse in relation to Adam and in relation to Eve.

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Because the curse is specific to each of them, okay. The consequences of sin aren't identical for the man and for the woman, and it's supposed to instruct us, okay.

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So, to understand the difference between them, so we need to remember something about how they were created.

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I mentioned this briefly last night, but Adam was taken from the ground,

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Adam was created from the ground. In fact, he's named after the ground. The word for ground in Hebrew is adamah, and so Adam was taken from the adamah, you hear that?

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Okay, that's part of, I didn't get into this last night, but that's part of how, where did Adam learn to name his wife? And it's like, that's where he learned it.

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God took him from the adamah and said, that's the adamah, you're Adam, that's where you were taken from.

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And then he sees Eve, who was taken out of him, and he says, okay, then she's Esha, because she was taken out of Ish, you hear it?

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So Adam from the adamah, okay, that's how God did it. I want to be a good, faithful son and do what my father does.

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So she's Esha, taken out of Ish. He's learning, okay, he's growing.

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So Adam was taken from the adamah, the ground, and the woman was taken out of man.

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What that means is, I think, Adam was taken out of the ground and is oriented to the ground.

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He's to work and guard the garden. Taken from the ground, work the ground. She was taken out of him, and what's she oriented to?

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Him. She's a helper fit for him. So he's taken out of the ground and oriented to his origin.

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She's taken out of him and oriented to her origin. I think this is why

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Paul said, as we looked at last night, woman was made for man, not man for the woman.

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Her fundamental calling is him, and subsequently their children. And this idea that your origin determines your orientation, your origin determines your focus, your primary focus, is,

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I think, the biblical explanation for this natural tendency that everybody recognizes for men to be oriented outward, to look to the horizon, to want to subdue untamed lands.

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That outward orientation is because of this. Meanwhile, the female orientation, to be oriented to people and relationships, is also owing to this.

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This is the biblical explanation for that, okay? So that fact, where you were taken out of, determines your fundamental calling, is then explains why

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God curses in the way that he does. So when he curses the woman, look what he says,

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I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children.

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Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you, okay?

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So the pain of childbirth, and I think by extension childrearing, is multiplied. And then you have this desire for her husband, and her husband's sinful rule over her.

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So what's cursed for her? What will be painful? And the answer is her relationships.

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Her relationships are going to be very painful. Her work as his helper and ally will be painful, okay?

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God had created her to be a helper for her husband in this task of being fruitful, multiplying, filling, and subduing, the bearer of children, and now these things will be painful for her, broken.

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And that phrase, desire for your husband, there, is controversial.

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People wonder what does it mean. It shows up two other places in the Bible. One of them is Genesis 4 -7, right after, chapter later, and it's where sin is crouching at Cain's door, and it says,

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God says, its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. You hear the echo? It's the same phrase.

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So okay, so what does that mean? Sin is like this monster crouching at the door, wanting to possess Cain, and Cain has to crush sin.

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And that is what God says to Eve, that's the curse. Your desire will be for your husband, and he'll rule over you.

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The other place it shows up, though, is a very different context, Song of Songs, chapter 7, verse 10,

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I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. And you go, that's different.

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But there actually is that kind of a, how do those come together? The idea is a kind of possession.

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That's the common thread between both. Sin wants to possess Cain. A lover, in a good way, can want to possess his beloved.

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You're mine. My desire is for you. And so then when you bring those together, and you say, what's the curse for the woman?

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Is that apart from God, she will want to possess her husband in excessive ways.

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And this will take different forms. Different forms. One form would be neediness, and a hunger and a craving for affection.

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That could be one form that this desire for her husband could take. It could be in the form of manipulation, seeking to steer him in ways to get what she wants from him.

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It could be in the form of outright possessiveness. C .S. Lewis once described, he said, she was the sort of woman who lived for others.

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And you could always tell the others by their hunted expression. She's the sort of woman who lived for others, and you could tell the others because they were like, where is she?

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It could be in the form of just a desire to rule her husband, sort of the outright I'm in charge, girl boss.

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But in whatever form, without God, here's the curse, she will want more from her relationships than they can deliver.

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She will try to get more out of these relationships than they can deliver. She was made for relationship, for her husband, for her future children, but because God has been abandoned now, because of that idolatry, those relationships will now be more important for her, and they will inevitably disappoint, frustrate, and cause pain for her.

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And then the capstone is, is that she's now at the mercy of a man who just accused and blamed her in order to save his own skin.

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Your husband is going to rule over you, and he just literally tried to get you to die for him. She will want to possess him in the way that sin wants to possess

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Cain, and rather than a sacrificial headship, he will respond with a kind of hostility and domination, the same kind that we ought to have toward our sin, like when we're like, walk over the neck of your lusts.

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That's the kind of rule that's cursed. Okay, so that's Eve. For Adam, what's the curse?

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Well, look here. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

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Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you were dust, and to dust you shall return.

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So Eve was taken out of Adam, the relationship's cursed. Adam was taken from the ground, the ground is cursed.

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So all of those dreams of expanding the garden and taming the land and subduing the earth, those are now going to be very, very painful dreams.

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The ground is going to fight back. Those shrubs, right, these shrubs that were meant to,

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Eve's supposed to cultivate these shrubs, okay, now those are thorns and thistles. Labor and work were meant to be a delight and a joy.

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Now they will be hard and painful and vain. And then, of course, the ultimate vanity here is death, okay?

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You're going to return to dust. Adam, here's the deal. This is what God says to him. This is the curse in relation to Adam. You will work hard your whole life.

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You will sweat and bleed to eat and provide, and then you will die and you will not enjoy the fruit of your labor.

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You will pass it on to your kids, and as Ecclesiastes says, who knows what they'll do with it. So just as Eve will want more from her work, meaning her children, her relationships, than they can deliver, now

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Adam, without God, will want more from his work than it can deliver, okay?

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You get that? Right now, the work that was supposed to be a delight for him is going to be hard and painful, just like her work.

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And here's the irony, the tragic irony of how these two, they're different curses, but they work together, okay?

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These different curses will aggravate each other, okay? Work will be harder for him, so now he's going to have to pour more of himself into his work in order to be fruitful in his labor, okay?

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And this is going to pull him away from his wife and children, and so now her desire for him is going to be more frustrated, and as will her ability to be his helper and ally, or come at it the other way.

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Her desire is for her husband, she's going to have increasing expectations and demands of him, and as a result, he's going to pull away.

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He's going to throw himself into his work, because home is hard. And so now you have this constant tug of war in the relationship, and nobody wins, okay?

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And what's remarkable to me is that in like these four short verses here in Genesis, God has described like 90 % of marital conflict.

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That tug of war over, I need you more at home, but I have to labor in order to provide, but I need you more at home,

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I need more from you, you're not giving me enough, but the work needs me. And that tug of war, right?

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Where did that come from? It came from here. It came from this passivity, idolatry, blame shifting, and then

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God's response in the cursed, okay? And here's the reality. Apart from Jesus, that's all there is.

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Thank God that's not all there is. Before moving to kind of some solution and hope here,

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I want to talk about one other mutually feeding spousal trap. So you can see how that aggravates this.

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The sins of each aggravate the other. There's another that can show up that's related to this, okay?

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So because women, because wives are more relationally oriented than men in general, more emotionally attuned, more attuned to their emotions and the emotions of others, one of the dangers for wives is to wield those emotions in order to steer and influence their husbands, okay?

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To weaponize them, okay? And you can think of it, you pick your emotion here, okay? Anger, can be weaponized.

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Sadness, right? Weaponized. Fear, anxiety, all of these could be weaponized, okay?

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And here's the deal. Men will struggle to deal with intense female emotions. It's one of the most uncomfortable thing for men, is when women's emotions get intense, men tend to shut down, they withdraw, okay?

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And so you can see how those tend to, what is that? That's another form of abdication. That's hard,

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I don't want to deal with this, so I'm going to withdraw, I'm going to check out, I'm going to go blank and I'm gone. So blow up, shut down.

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Now it can work the other way too. You could have a husband who blows up and a wife who shuts down, it's not always one way or the other.

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But that's a common trap that falls into, and it's expressed here, okay?

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So under, and then here's the way that we can kind of baptize this.

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Under the guise of something like servant leadership, okay? Servant leadership, men should be servant leaders, and you're like, yes, amen, serve like Jesus.

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However, it easily can become, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, which is just another form of abdication, okay?

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It's the old joke in the, there's a movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you guys remember this movie? Where the wife says, well, the husband is the head, but the wife is the neck, and she can turn the head wherever she wants, okay?

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She can turn the head, okay, that idea, right, he's the head, he's nominally the head.

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He's officially the head, but she's the neck, and she can turn him. How? Well, it could be by nagging, could be by using her emotions to steer him, could be all sorts of ways in order to get what she wants and to steer sort of from the back seat.

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And if a husband, right, can fall into the trap of going, well, you know what they say, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, and that's my philosophy, just give her what she wants, under the name of servant leadership, okay?

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And this is the problem, it will frustrate both, because what a wife actually wants is a husband who she can follow, a man who stands up straight, who knows what he's about, who wakes up in the morning knowing, this is what

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I'm for, this is what God has made me to do, I'm gonna go take the ground, I'm gonna go do it. And she can say, I can get in step with that,

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I want to get in step with that, okay? But if she tries to wield, or if he abdicates, she's gonna try to manipulate him into leading, it's not gonna work, you cannot manipulate a husband into leading, he has to lead because God wants him to lead, okay?

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And so here's one of the big challenges, we'll come back in a minute to how do you get there, but for husbands, the call is, how do you grow in your ability to take responsibility for your household without being overwhelmed by, say, your wife's emotions?

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How do you develop the fortitude to go, I know that they can be intense sometimes, that's fine, they can be intense, how can you endure that and say, okay, this is my responsibility,

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I'm not gonna shut down and just pass the buck, and then when everything goes wrong, which it will, say, well, you know, she did, and they did, and the kids did, and I was just standing here, and out popped the calf, okay?

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How do you do it? It's your responsibility, okay? This is what it means to be the head.

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The job is yours, and a man who cannot stand up to his wife, cannot stand up for his wife, okay?

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Something that Pastor Wilson says all the time, a man who can't stand up, and standing up doesn't mean being a bully, it's not that, it's just, do you have the fortitude to go, this is, everything's going wrong, but I am trusting in the

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Lord, I'm planted on a rock, and this is my responsibility, and I'm gonna lean in, not run away.

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I'm gonna press in, I'm gonna have the hard conversation. Oftentimes, this is a reality, that servant leadership thing, we'll just give her what she wants, is the easy way out.

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It's actually the easiest thing in the world. The hard thing would be, okay, she's upset about something, and I disagree with what she's thinking, so rather than give in,

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I'm actually gonna hold my ground and have a sober -minded, clear, calm conversation about this.

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That looks suspiciously like work. And many men go,

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I don't wanna do that, so I'll just give in, and it frustrates wives, and it frustrates husbands, and everybody leaves frustrated, why?

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Because of this, because of what we just saw in Genesis 1 -3, okay. So that's the mutually feeding spousal aggravation.

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I wanna come back to the curse on the serpent, because this is where the hope comes, okay? In fact, it's important that the curse on the serpent comes first, because it shapes the way that we hear everything else, okay?

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The curse to Adam, the curse to Eve, first comes the curse to the serpent, okay? So the serpent is cursed to eat the dust, so when man dies, he returns to the dust.

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So what does that mean, okay? Well, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a lion, seeking those whom he, to devour, okay?

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So this is the serpent who tempted, becomes the accuser who accuses, and the dragon who devours.

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The serpent who tempted us to sin, now becomes the dragon who devours us, okay? In other words, human beings are dragon food.

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You're gonna return to dust, and the serpent eats the dust. And that was the whole story, there's the tragedy, okay?

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But in the midst of judging this sin, God mingles mercy. So I want you to see, in the curse on the serpent, the mercy to man.

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And this shapes how they hear it, okay? So number one, we see a war with the serpent. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, okay?

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And you say, what do you mean, mercy? It's like, it's mercy that there's a war. We may be dragon food, but there's a war, and we can resist.

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And this war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, opens up the possibility for us to choose sides.

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Which one are you? Right? Are you a brood of vipers? That's what Jesus calls the Pharisees. You brood of vipers.

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You seed of the serpent. That's what he's accusing them of. You're their father, the devil. Or is God your father, okay?

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God doesn't abandon us to be dragon food. He starts a war. And the question now is, which side are we on?

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Seed of the woman, brood of vipers. That's mercy. Second, you get the skull crusher. So the war is about all of Adam and Eve's descendants, but there will be one of these descendants, he, right, it's singular there, who will crush the serpent's head at great cost to himself, bruised heel, okay?

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And now the question becomes, well, who is this seed of the woman who will crush the serpent? Where is he? Who will give us relief from all of this curse?

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Who is going to put the world back to rights? And the rest of the Bible is the answer to that question, right?

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So over and over again, there's this, like, is it him, Noah? He's going to give us relief. Is it him? Is it him?

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Is it him? Is this him? And then finally, it's him. There he is, okay?

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That's mercy. Not only will there be a war, but there will be a skull crusher in this war.

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And then finally, the mercy is the new clothes. So Genesis 321, they had clothed themselves with fig leaves, and God kills animals and clothes them with their skins.

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And two things are happening here. First, this is telling us sin requires a covering, and covering requires death.

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Something has to die. Dying you shall die. In the day you eat of it, you shall die, okay?

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For sin to be dealt with, blood must be shed. So those animals had to die in order to get those new clothes, and that's meant to teach, okay?

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Okay? Is that enough? Can the blood of bulls and goats take away sins, or do we need more?

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It's a pointer. It's a symbol, and one that the Bible is going to take and run. And then second, there's a little wordplay in Hebrew that I think

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God wants us to notice. You don't notice it in English, but here's the Hebrew, okay? So here's, this is the word, the

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Hebrew word for animal skins, okay? The Hebrew word for that is the word or, okay?

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Or. But there's a homonym, you know a homonym is a word that sounds the same, it's spelled different but sounds the same.

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So like the word stare and stare, stare like you climb up stairs, and then stare like I look at you. They sound the same, but they're spelled different, okay?

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There's another word also pronounced or, but spelled different, okay? And it's the word for light, the

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Hebrew word for light. So there's a way in which I think part of what's being communicated here is that God intended to clothe

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Adam and Eve all along, He just, He was going to clothe them with or, light, with glory. If they passed the test, if they remained faithful to God, if they had, if Adam had killed the dragon to protect the girl, if they had resisted the devil's lies,

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I think God would have clothed them with or, with glory. And instead, because they sinned,

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He clothed them with or, animal skins. This is a diminishment, okay? But that clothing, the fact that He clothed them is a promise.

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I'm not going to leave you naked. I intend to put this to right. This is judgment mingled with mercy.

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And so then the ultimate judgment here is He kicks them out of the garden with broken relationships, painful labor, and a war with the serpent, and those are awful, okay?

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And the most, the biggest loss is they lost God. They lost God. But as He sends them out to walk their solitary way,

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He doesn't send them out without hope. So the skin's on their back, and the promise of that skull crusher is meant to give them hope.

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And here's one of the cool things about this. I think it did give them hope, okay? Remember yesterday, I mentioned that Adam named his wife twice, right?

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One when she was first created, Eshan, Esha, remember that? But he names her a second time, and it's significant that it happens after the fall.

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After they've been exiled. That's when we're told, right? Here it is.

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Now, Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

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He named, Eve is the word for life, it's the Hebrew word for life. He names her life. When does he name her that?

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After the fall, after the curse, after the exile, okay? Here's why that matters.

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So, in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And God confronts them and says, you're gonna die.

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You're gonna return to dust. But he also says, I'm gonna put enmity between your offspring and her offspring.

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And I can imagine Adam at that point going, so remember, they just got caught. You're gonna die.

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The first thing that God says to the serpent is, I'm gonna put enmity between your offspring serpent and her offspring. And you can just imagine with his head down, with those ridiculous fig leaves on him going, offspring?

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Offspring? We're gonna have kids? We're not gonna die right now?

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It's not over? Head perks up because of that curse. He heard the mercy in the curse.

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This is a sign of hope. All is not lost. God is not finished. There will be children. There will be a war.

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And there will be victory. And so, as they walk out of the garden and Adam says,

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I need to give her a new name. One that's just her name. He says, I'm calling her life.

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I'm calling her life. She's the mother of all living. There will be life. Death is not the last word.

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I think that's Adam. That's a sign of faith from Adam in the naming of his wife.

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He heard the promise and he says, I believe it. She's the mother of life. Okay. So that's the picture as they walk out.

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What does that mean then for us as we think about our courageous marriage? The first and fundamental thing that I want to stress here is the need for each spouse to take responsibility for themselves.

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So if you think about that pattern, abdication, idolatry, blame shifting.

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The thing that runs through each step that they should have done is to take responsibility for what

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God had entrusted to them. Had Adam taken responsibility at the front, we never get to steps two and three, right?

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But even if having failed at step one, he abdicates and say she eats it and he hands and he offers the fruit, she offers the fruit to him.

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At that point, he should take responsibility and say, no, I choose God. I love you, but I love

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God more. God is more precious to me. Obedience to God is more precious to me than you are. I would rather have him without you than you without him.

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That would have been taking responsibility. And then, having done so, and that would have interrupted it. We wouldn't have gotten to step three, right?

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But even there, okay, what could Adam have done? She's fallen. She's eaten.

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Oh no. Okay. Go put himself before God and say, God, I was standing. I should have done it.

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I let her, I let this conversation go too long. I didn't eat it. Like you said not to eat it.

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She did. I didn't. Take me, not her. Take me, not her.

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Isn't that what Christ does? He comes upon a bride under a death curse and says, take me, not her.

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I'll die for her. Just take me instead. And I think had Adam done that, I think

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God would have said, I've got an idea. We'll work this out. That would have been throwing himself on the mercy of God, sacrificing on his wife.

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And then, say you both sinned, when God shows up at that moment, instead of going, woman, you gave me. Woman, you gave me.

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God, it's all my fault. All of this is mine. That would have been taking responsibility.

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The first and fundamental thing that we must do as human beings who live in the hope of life, who live in the hope of that skull crusher, is to take responsibility for what

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God has entrusted to us. That means each of us individually are responsible for our thoughts, our words, our emotions, and our actions.

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I'm responsible for me. My wife is responsible for her. And then, as the head, I'm responsible for both.

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And you say, how is that possible? Well, it means I can be responsible for something without being to blame for everything.

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Because the responsibility means, if something goes wrong, whose responsibility is it to address it, to lean into it, to not just let it fester?

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It's a husband's. That's what responsibility means. You don't pass the buck.

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In order to do this well, it first means having your own self in order.

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You can't export what you don't have. This is actually one of a major failure in marriages, relationships in general, is when we try to export what we don't have.

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We want our kids to have more self -control than we do. We want our spouse to have more sober -mindedness than we do.

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Put your own self in order, and then you go on. So what does that mean? Sober -mindedness. Okay? Sober -mindedness is a key virtue that I want to come into you as sort of a fundamental thing.

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We'll talk more about this maybe in the next session as well. Sober -mindedness is the governing of your passions.

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The governing of your passions. Your passions, emotions, those are those instinctive, knee -jerk reactions to stuff, right?

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Something good happens, and you're happy. Something bad happens, and you're sad. You want something over there, and something else gets in the way.

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Now you're angry at this, right? I want that, and this is in my way. Now I'm angry. Now, we don't typically use those words, or I want a good thing, but something scary is going to prevent me.

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Now I'm afraid. That's fear. Fear is a passion. Anger is a passion. Desire is a passion. Got these?

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Okay. We don't call them that. We find ways. I'm not angry. I'm frustrated. It's like, oh, you just mean you're angry a lot, right?

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Frustrated is just anger on a low boil. I'm not fearful. I'm not afraid.

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I'm anxious. I'm not afraid. I'm anxious, okay? I'm not sad.

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I'm depressed, okay? We have other ways of kind of sanitizing those words, but those are passions, okay?

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Those are passions, and those passions are good. God gave them to us, but they're meant to be guided and governed by what is true and good.

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Emotions are good, but they're meant to be governed. It's supposed to be God over our mind and our mind over our passions.

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God rules our mind. Here's what's good and what's right. That governs my mind, and then my mind turns around and says, passions, time to get in line, right?

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Get in order. Be governed. I'm going to shepherd you, okay? That's the way it's supposed to work. Because of sin, we get turned upside down.

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God's out of the picture now. We rejected him, and now passions are on the show. My emotions are in charge.

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What I feel, anything, what I feel at any given moment is right, is good. And I'm just going to let my passions run it. And my mind then chases along after the passions, and you know what the mind is?

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The mind is the defense attorney, justifying everything that we just did, right? Making excuses.

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I just blew up, and let me tell you all the reasons why that was justified. My passions just ran the show, and let me explain to you why what

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I did wasn't really all that bad. Now, when other people blow up at me, okay, this is the pass -the -buck thing again.

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When other people sin, it's because they are wicked. When I sin, it's because reasons, okay?

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The woman you gave me, it's pass -in -the -buck. That's how we work. A major part of what

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God is restoring when he redeems us is turning that back around, taking responsibility, making us sober -minded so that we're not drunk on our passions, okay?

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Sober -mindedness is like, don't get drunk. So you can get drunk on alcohol, okay? You can also get drunk on your passions. So what is sober -mindedness?

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This is what I'm going to conclude with, and then we'll pick back up and apply it maybe in the next one. Sober -mindedness includes three things.

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A clarity of mind. Clarity of mind, okay? Our passions cloud our vision.

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I'm so angry I can't see straight. I'm afraid and I just shut down, right? I want something so bad that I can't think clearly, okay?

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Passions cloud our judgment. Sober -mindedness is when we cut through the fog and we sober up.

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We get clear about what we're facing, okay? Sober -mindedness is a clarity of mind, okay?

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In, let's see, this is 1 Thessalonians 5. He says, let us keep awake and be sober.

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Those who sleep, sleep at night. Those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But we belong to the day, therefore let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of salvation, okay?

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So drunkenness happens at night, groggy, sleepy, drunken, whatever. But you belong to the day.

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That's who you are. So sober up. Get clear. Have a clarity of mind, okay? Second, sober -mindedness includes a stability of soul.

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Clarity of mind, see clearly, and a stability of soul, okay? Sober -minded people are not easily tossed about.

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Just tossed about. You could be tossed by doctrine. Don't be like children, tossed by doctrines. Or you could be tossed by passions.

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Passion over here. Anger to desire. Fear, right, to sadness. Just running around. Passions just running your life, okay?

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Listen to this cluster of terms in Titus 2. Just hear the kinds of terms that are characterized.

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In this case, it's older men. Older men, Paul says, are to be sober -minded, dignified, self -controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.

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That cluster, that's what we're talking about. There's a steadiness to them, okay? If you're sober -minded, you keep your head.

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You don't lose your cool. You don't panic. You don't overreact, and you don't underreact.

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There's a ballast in your boat so that when the storms come, you're not thrown off, and you don't sink.

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Stability of soul. Final thing, readiness to act. Clarity of mind, stability of soul, readiness to act, okay?

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So you might think, oh, sober -minded people just stand there. Everything's blowing up, and they're just there.

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No, no. They're leaning in. They're ready to act, but they're not going to react. Know the difference between?

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There's a difference between reacting and responding. Reacting is that knee -jerk, passions -driven, impulsive, they did something, so I just did it back.

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That's reacting. Responding is, boom, it came, and now what does God want? Right?

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Reason, truth, goodness, right? The Spirit of God says, hold up, check that passion, and say, what would be appropriate, fitting, and good, and wise, and honoring to God here?

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Do that. So it might be a soft answer turns away wrath. Somebody gets angry at you, and you, ooh, anger could come, checked it, and now,

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I'm going to de -escalate this. It's a soft answer. Hey, tell me more. You seem really upset. Help me understand. And it's all of a sudden, the situation diffused as opposed to escalating.

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Readiness to act. Listen to 1 Peter talk about this in 1 Peter 1. Therefore, preparing your minds for action.

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Girding up the loins of your mind is the old King James. Gird up the loins. It's like roll up your sleeves, right?

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Put your workout clothes on. Gird up the loins of your mind. Being sober -minded, there's the phrase, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Christ.

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In other words, there's still emotion here, right? There's hope. But it's not just explosion of emotion.

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It's I'm setting my hope where it ought to be because I've girded up the loins of my mind.

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I'm not drunk on my passions, but my hope is fixed, and I'm ready to act.

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Later in 1 Peter, be sober -minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, right?

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But you have a clarity of mind. Your eyes are up, scanning for threats, right? You're stable.

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You're not governed by fear, okay? And you're ready to act. That lion comes. I'm ready to put it down.

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Clarity of mind, stability of soul, readiness to act. Both husbands and wives must have these qualities, and they must be increasing if you're to have any hope of rightly orienting to each other in a fallen world because the world is going to have all kinds of stimuli that are going to stir up those passions, that might make you shut down and walk away, abdicate, might make you commit idolatry and choose sin with a high hand, and it's certainly going to make you shift blame when everything goes wrong, okay?

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And the first and fundamental thing is hoping in God, trusting in Christ, governing your own passions so that you can lean in in a way that will honor

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God. It's a good place to stop and take a break here in a minute. We'll come back. We'll pick up with what does that look like for men?

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What does that kind of courage, sober -minded courage look like for men? What does it look like for women, and how do we build communities around that?

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So let me pray, and then I think Dan's going to come up and give an announcement. Father, we're grateful for your goodness.

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We're grateful for your word, which just rips open our hearts and exposes us. Lord, we confess that we too often abdicate, and we choose creatures over creator, and then we blame others when everything goes wrong.

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That's what we do. And we are so grateful, Lord, for Christ who took responsibility at every step, who owned it, who owned not only his stuff but us as well, and in doing so redeemed us from the curse that we stood under.