"Sin Breaks Marriage" Genesis 3 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Our world generally teaches the theory of evolution, the idea that mankind started low and through a series of events and mutations and natural selections and cosmic duck duck goose.

We have pulled ourselves up from the mire and are climbing ever so higher.

And it is Marks in every passing generation, which would have a morality superior to the generation before us, of course.

And the concept of evolution, we start low and we work up, and the increasing trajectory of the human experience is really without ends.

This generation has better morality than the one before us, and the next generation will know still better.

Human beings and their collective effort and collective worldview, evolution would tell us, has the capacity to continue this trajectory and continue to improve.

This simultaneously has the contradiction in it that human beings are really bad for the earth.

We present the culmination of the evolutionary model and trajectory, and yet we also present the most hazardous danger to our planet.

Now the Bible teaches really the opposite of every one of those things.

The Bible teaches that humans were given to earth not to ruin it, but to be stewards of it and to care for it.

The Bible teaches not only that human beings are not a threat to the earth, but their presence here is necessary to care for God's creation.

But more particularly, the Bible does not teach that people came to be through series, a long period of time and, you know, just different events and cosmic chance and mutations, but the people came to be with a direct creative effort by God.

That God made us intentionally, deliberately.

He crafted us and he crafted us well.

So well that at the end of it he could say, it is good.

In fact, it is very good.

Last week we discovered that it was not good for man to be alone, but it was very good when he had his help meet with him, when God created Eve.

Evolution teaches that people are basically in the same line of animals, but the Bible teaches that people are apart from the animals, distinct from them, made uniquely in the image of God for the purpose of ruling over the animals and all of creation.

But more big picture.

But the Bible really does turn that on its head.

The Bible presents that people were made in perfection with the ability to change.

People are not God, but they were made perfect with the capacity to change, and change they have, and that they decline.

They don't increase.

The things, in a sense, fall apart.

That they, the law of entropy is true of human civilization and societies.

The things go their own way with strife and conflict.

So if God made us good, in fact, very good, where did sin and death come from?

I mean, the foundational of the theory of evolution is that there has been a long period of time and chance and whatnot, and that there has been lots of death before Adam and Eve died.

Lots of death.

If Adam and Eve are real people, certainly there was death before them, animal death and even other hominoid death or whatnot.

But the Bible teaches the first death was not even a physical death.

Before anybody had died physically, there was spiritual death.

That's what we encountered this morning in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

We see how God made things well and good, and yet they changed, and they changed for the worse.

Man was made up top and came crashing down.

Sin is going to wreck the world, sin is going to wreck the goodness of God's garden.

Sin is going to wreck the goodness of marriage.

Sin is going to wreck human life, and sin is going to wreck creation.

Now, particularly in the context of our study over the next few weeks, we're talking specifically about how sin wrecks marriage.

I said last week that we were on a long runway getting up to Ephesians 5.

The section on marriage in Ephesians 5 begins with the statement that wives are to submit to their husbands.

And I say we have a long runway to get there.

And it's not because the long runway is only for the wives, and that, you know, it's very easy for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

You know, that's that's easy, you know.

Forget about that.

We don't need sermons on that.

That's no, it's that in our culture, in our world, that's not controversial.

It's not controversial to say husbands are supposed to provide for their families.

What is controversial is to say that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands.

And so that's why I meant by the long runway to get there.

When Paul writes to the Ephesians in Ephesians 5 and describes marriage to them, he's writing to them with the background of all that the Bible teaches on marriage.

And so we're spending a few weeks to get back into Ephesians 5.

And last week we saw how God created husbands and wives differently from each other.

Adam was given a command to subdue the earth.

Adam and Eve together were supposed to multiply and fill the earth to the purpose of subduing it.

And yet Adam couldn't do that by himself.

He couldn't, of course, multiply by himself, and he couldn't subdue the earth by himself.

He needs an army of people that's connected to multiplication.

To drive home Adam's function on earth, God made Adam out of dirt.

He was supposed to rule the dirt, and God crafted him out of dirt to drive home Eve's function as a helper to Adam.

Eve was made out of Adam's flesh.

She was made out of life because she was going to be producing life.

That was her calling.

And so Adam and Eve were a complementary.

There was no sin in the world, and so the concept of ruling was not in the world, nor really was the concept of submission in the world.

But certainly the concept of Adam as the leader was in the world, and certainly the concept of Eve as a helpmate, which is how she's described in Genesis 2, was in the world.

And that is evident in the world by how they were called by God, how they were made by God, even.

Certainly there is gender distinctions in this.

There's distinctions between husbands and wives, between male and female.

Distinctions evident by Adam.

When he opened his eyes and saw Eve, he didn't confuse her with one of himself.

He didn't say, It's a friend for me.

He said, This is a helper for me.

She is different, and yet she is like me.

And so when Genesis 2 ends, all is well in the world.

There's one marriage in the world, and they are happy with it.

They're stoked.

There's no marriage counselors in the Garden of Eden.

Everything is well.

Genesis 3, though, is where things fall apart.

The commentator A.W.

Pink writes, quote, Genesis 3 is the most important chapter in the whole Bible.

And, you know, commentators like preachers often say that about whatever passage is in front of them.

However, I think Pink is right on that point because without Genesis 3, this is one of those chapters that if you remove Genesis 3 from the Bible, you can't put the Bible back together again.

So many chords throughout the Bible flow out of Genesis 3.

They rendezvous again at the end of the book of Revelation.

The Bible becomes extremely confusing if you don't have a solid understanding of what's happening in Genesis 3.

Genesis 3, you're introduced to the devil, you're introduced to sin, temptation, Genesis 3 talks about how temptation works in the human mind and in the human heart.

You're introduced to death, you're introduced to why snakes are so creepy and weird.

Granted, the Bible doesn't hinge on that little point, but it is in there.

Conflict in marriage is introduced in Genesis 3.

Pain in childbirth.

The concept of work and difficulty is introduced in Genesis 3.

The concept of works righteousness, people working for their salvation is introduced in Genesis 3, and how impossible it is to do just that.

The concept of atonement and sacrifice for sin is introduced in Genesis 3.

The concept of God is the initiator.

The gospel is introduced in Genesis 3 with God's prophecy that he will crush the devil's head, that there will be a seed of Eve.

The virgin birth is introduced in Genesis 3, along with the human nature of the future Savior.

There is so much in Genesis 3 from the cross that he will have his heel struck by the serpent all the way through to the tree of life where the book of Revelation ends.

It's all coming out of Genesis 3.

So this is why it is not an exaggeration to say this is one of, if not the most significant chapters in the whole Bible.

You fail to understand Genesis 3, and the rest of the Bible is not going to make a lot of sense.

And so this morning we have an impossible task to look at Genesis 3.

I was looking this week at some preachers that I like and respect and seeing how they preach Genesis 3, and most of them preach it in like a six or you know uh eight-part series, Boyce from you know first press up in uh Philadelphia, and he preached like a 12-part series through Genesis 3.

He had three sermons in the first, you know, two verses of Genesis 3.

Uh so we're not gonna do that.

We're gonna bypass a lot of the things I said are in Genesis 3, and we're gonna focus specifically on marriage and how sin and temptation leads to conflict in marriage.

The story begins, really gets going in verse 1 here, where the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that Yahweh God had made.

We find out in Revelation 12 that the serpent here is the devil.

This is discussed by both Isaiah and Ezekiel, who describe that Satan fell from on high.

When you look at Psalm 8, Hebrews 1 and 2, you put the pieces together and you see that the devil wanted dominion on the earth.

He saw the earth, uh, and he saw that it was pleasing to him, and he wanted to be the ruler of the earth.

And yet, instead of giving the earth to an angel, which is what the devil was, the Lord gave the earth to Adam, made Adam out of dirt, and caused him, called him to have dominion over the earth.

This provoked the devil, of course, Isaiah says, and the devil rebelled against God and brought a third of the angels with him, and the devil was cast from heaven and went to the earth for the purpose of attacking Adam and Eve.

This is why the devil hates people.

The devil doesn't just hate Christians, the devil hates people in general, because people in general have been given dominion over the earth, which is what he wants.

He tries to bargain or negotiate with Jesus in the temptation for that authority.

The devil, of course, has a minimized authority over the earth now, before it is finally and ultimately given to Jesus Christ as the real Lord of the earth.

But in the meantime, the devil is exercising his limited authority on the earth by attacking Adam and Eve.

And so he goes into the garden, he takes the form of a serpent, a snake, and he says to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

I've heard people say, you know, did all animals talk in the garden?

Wouldn't have Eve.

All animals probably talked, otherwise Eve would have been surprised.

There's no sin in the world right now, there's no deception in the world.

This is brand new, okay?

Eve's gonna be surprised by everything is new for her.

It's not like she's met a non-talking snake before, you know what I mean?

So the snake begins.

Did God actually say?

And here's really where sin is introduced to the world.

Before Adam and Eve sinned, you get the devil who is casting doubt on something that God said.

The devil begins, introduces sin into the world.

Now, sin had begun in heaven, of course.

The devil has already rebelled in heaven.

But now on earth, the devil is asking Eve to doubt God's word.

Did God really say?

The way the question is worded is really where the action is here.

The devil is asking Eve to sit in judgment over what God has said.

Nobody on earth had done that before.

Eve now finds herself by virtue of the question, the judge over the truthfulness of God's word.

This is the introduction to sin, where people think that they can rule over the veracity, the truthfulness of what God declares.

Now, the devil begins by asking about eating from the tree.

Now, the tree does not come out of left field here.

We've had a lot of discussion about the trees.

All the trees were given to Adam and Eve for food.

This is how God designed it.

They were allowed to eat.

Everything was designed for them for their good.

Genesis 1.29, all the plants were given to them as food.

That's repeated in Genesis 1.30.

Genesis 2, verse 9, they were to have food from all the trees of the earth.

Genesis 2:9

Genesis 2.16, they may surely eat from any tree except for this one tree.

The devil, of course, is aware of all this.

And so he asks, You shall not eat it.

God actually said you shall not eat of any tree in the garden.

He is turning God's word on its head, making it sound negative.

When every time God had mentioned the tree before, it was always positive.

Eat whatever you want, eat whatever you want, eat whatever you want.

It's all good, it's all good, it's all good.

Stay away from that one.

The devil, of course, starts with the negative.

With the negative.

And you know how this is sin works.

You know, you tell your children, you guys can go outside, you can play anywhere you want.

Play anywhere in the neighborhood, go to the pool, play volleyball, play tennis, just don't get on the trampoline.

Shunk trampoline.

This is what's happening in Eve's mind right now.

And the devil, of course, has introduced this.

The woman says to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said, You shall not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden.

That's all true.

Everything she said is true.

But she adds this phrase at the end Neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

I imagine it's possible that God had said that to Eve, that you don't eat it, also don't touch it.

I mean, the the words, the conversation between God and Eve that's recorded in Genesis 2, is not exhaustive.

Certainly God communicated more to them than is recorded.

And so it's within the realm of possibility that God did indeed say that, and yet it's not recorded by Moses.

Moses does not record that.

So if it was said, Moses intentionally has not brought it to us.

It wasn't significant in the instructions.

It was, but it seems more likely to me that it wasn't said.

I'm trying to give Eve a little bit of the doubt here, but it seems more likely that that wasn't said, and that Eve is actually adding to the words of God in her answer to the devil.

Proverbs 30, verse 6 says, Do not add to God's words lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.

Proverbs 30:6

Long before Solomon wrote that, Eve is acting it out right here.

She is passing on to the serpent this negative prohibition that you shall not eat the tree in the garden, but adding to it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

And so you see the poisonous effect of sin right now.

It's starting to contort even the kindness of God and his prohibition.

God didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from that tree, because they would die, spiritually, of course, leading to physical death.

And so the command was actually for their good.

But Eve is starting to doubt even that, adding a different prohibition to it.

We can't even touch it.

That's not a good idea to touch it, right?

Even if God didn't say it.

If God says, eat whatever you want, just don't eat that tree, it's probably not a good idea to touch that tree.

Right?

Don't eat it.

But can I touch it?

Can I look at it a lot?

How much can I look at it?

How long can I wake up every day and go check on it just to make sure it's okay?

And can I hold the fruit in my hand?

Well, this would lead to you eating it.

But this is the way the sinful mind works.

Am I supposed to stay away from that?

The sinful mind asks questions, then I just like to look at it a lot.

The serpent says to the woman, verse 4, you will not surely die.

So this is a lie.

The devil begins by lying.

It's interesting that people will try to do work to explain how the devil was not actually lying.

People that are quick to call evil liar are slow to call the devil a liar.

But the devil is lying, they will surely die.

Every human death since then is a result of believing this lie that the serpent tells right here.

The devil is absolutely lying.

What started as an innocent question did God really say is getting to the death of God's goodness in the world.

The devil continues, verse 5, God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Now, this is the worst kind of lie.

It has a veneer of truth on the outside of it.

Eve's eyes are going to be open when she eats the fruit, and she is, in a weird, twisted sense, going to know the difference between good and evil.

But she will be drawn towards the evil, ashamed of the good, and horribly confused.

So the devil wraps his lie with the wrapping paper of truth, and Eve falls for it.

Now, why does Eve fall for this?

By the way, knowing the difference between good and evil, that's called conscience.

Adam and Eve didn't have a conscience at this point.

They had no voice given to them by God to steer them away from the wrong because there was no wrong.

So when the devil says you eat the fruit, you're going to be able to tell the difference between good and evil, that's conscience.

And so it's, you haven't, you're in the ability right now to appreciate how much of a lie this was.

Because you know what this is.

You know what the devil's talking about.

You know what a conscience is.

And your conscience does tell you the difference between good and evil.

But does your conscience make you obey the good?

No.

It does not.

It does not.

So when Adam and Eve are in their innocent state in the garden, they have the capacity to do good.

They obviously have the capacity to do evil, they're going to do it in a second.

But they didn't have a conscience warning them away from evil.

You have the capacity to do evil.

And you have a conscience that convicts you of it.

You lack the capacity to do moral good apart from the grace of God.

And so what the devil says is just it's the worst kind of lie.

Verse 5, God knows when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you'll be like, God, knowing good and evil.

Verse 6, this is why the woman believed the lie.

She saw that the tree was good for food.

So notice her standard, notice her decision-making flow chart here.

What's the first question?

She does not start with what did God say?

She's begun to doubt that.

She's making the decision now to listen to God or not listen to God.

She doesn't start with the character of God.

Is God true?

Is God powerful?

Does God want my good?

Is God holy?

Does God speak the truth?

I mean, those are good questions to ask when tempted for sin.

She doesn't ask those questions.

Instead, she asks, does it look good?

She is going through the decision-making process here with the object of what she desires, not with the object of God.

She's not making this decision in light of the Lord.

She's making this in light of her own desires.

So the tree does look good for food.

Yeah, it looks tasty.

It was a delight to the eyes.

It brought her her joy, that phrase delight to the eyes.

Her eyes lit up like she really wanted it.

That tree was to be desired to make one wise.

There's a lot of distance language in there, isn't there?

It would be desired.

Like there's people would desire it, possibly to make them wise.

Which is very different than it'll make me wise.

Do you see the difference?

Picture this with clothes.

I might like that jacket because I desire it to make me look skinny.

Which is very different than saying the jacket would make me skinny.

Do you see the difference?

She's looking at the tree, oh man, that looks good.

That looks tasty.

And it looks like something that I would desire to make me wise.

So she's starting with the surface level, then the desire level in her heart, her affections, her appetites, and now to her intellect.

She's working outside in.

Do you follow that?

Skin to heart to mind.

Totally turned around.

Totally turned around.

I said this a hundred times going through Ephesians 4.

Do you remember the process of sanctification goes head, what you know to be true, heart that affects what you love, hands that affects what you do.

This whole car is driving in reverse right here.

Oh, I would like it because of its touch and what it looks like on the outside, and that's gonna affect my heart and my desires to ultimately change my intellect.

This is all backwards.

It's not good.

Because she's doing this whole decision-making process backwards, she took its fruit and ate it.

I said I was gonna skip a lot, but it's just a powerful lesson on sanctification.

Don't follow Eve's decision-making process.

Start with thinking about God, not about your sinful desire.

Start with what does God say about this?

And is God true?

Is God holy?

Does God want what's best for me?

Not, do I want this?

Do I think that would bring me joy?

Do I think that would be nice to touch?

Nope.

Wrong, you're on the wrong page.

And then start with what do you know to be true about the Lord?

How does that affect what you love in this world?

That should affect what you do.

Don't start with what do I want to do?

How do I get myself to love it?

And then what should I think about that in retrospect?

Eve's doing it all backwards.

And here, this is so wonderfully crafted by Moses.

At the end of verse 6.

She gave some to her husband who was with her.

Well, that's that's insane.

And he ate.

You know, you wonder why did the devil go to Eve?

You assume until you get to the to that verse right there, you assume she went the devil went to Eve because Adam wasn't around.

He waited until she was by herself and the devil pounced on Eve.

That's what you would assume in the reading of this.

Oh no.

Adam is right there.

Why did the devil go after Eve?

Paul says, 1 Timothy 2, that the woman was more easily deceived.

And I don't think what he means by that is kind of a surface level reading.

I don't think he means that women are generally more easily deceived than men.

The point here, you have to remind yourself, what is the devil attacking?

The devil is attacking the fact that Adam has dominion on the earth.

That's what he's after.

Adam is going to exercise dominion through his marriage with his wife.

The devil is trying to destroy the foundational building block of human society, which is marriage.

It's what God designed for human life and human flourishing.

That's what the devil is after here.

The devil's not after the tree.

The devil doesn't care about the fruit.

The devil has a bigger target in his radar, and that target is marriage.

He's undercutting the way God designed marriage.

And so Adam was given to rule the earth.

Eve was to be his helpmate.

The devil is after that relationship by approaching Eve, having Eve act outside of the protection of her husband, and having Adam abdicate his role as leader.

The devil undercuts all of it.

We know Adam wouldn't have said no.

We know Adam would have sinned also because he sinned also.

The reason for this attack is to reverse, to turn upside down what God designed in marriage.

So when Paul says that the woman is more easily deceived, he doesn't mean that she's more gullible.

He means that if the point was to flip marriage, it requires that the wife be the one who is attacked.

When that happened, verse 7, the eyes of both were opened.

They knew that they were naked.

So right away you see that sin has entered the world and it's entering the world.

The first manifestation of sin in the world is between Adam and Eve's relationship to each other.

Before they were naked and not ashamed.

Now they are naked and ashamed.

Now they're aware of that.

Suddenly there is a division, a distance in their own marriage that was not there before.

The first realization of sin in the world is the separation between husband and wife, the shame brought between husband and wife.

It wasn't designed to be this way, and yet there it is.

Their conscience afflicts them.

We'll see that in a second.

They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Oh, that's a weird approach.

Fig leaves?

They're doing the best that they can.

This is where you really see works righteousness enter the equation here.

We've now created distance between ourselves.

Distance, of course, between us and the Lord.

The right thing for them to do would be to go seek out God.

That would have been the right response.

Alright?

You know this with children, a child breaks something.

What's the child supposed to do?

Go tell you.

Go tell the parents.

You're at somebody else's house and the child breaks something, they gotta tell you, so you can tell the other person, hey, my kids broke this stuff, you fix it right there.

You don't hide it under the couch and hope they find it in three months and forget who was over that night.

That's Adam and Eve's approach.

Hide it.

Don't go to the Lord.

We broke something God gave us.

Let's move along and hope he doesn't find us.

Let's sew together fig leaves.

Maybe he won't notice.

As they stitch us together, I said this is works righteousness.

This is thinking that they can make themselves appealing or pleasing before the Lord by their own efforts.

It's not going to work.

They then hid themselves, verse 8.

From Yahweh God, God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, which is a you know a way of describing the fellowship that Adam and Eve had with the Lord.

As Yahweh God was walking among the trees of the garden, the men and his wife, middle of verse 8, hid themselves.

They're hiding from God.

It's so foolish.

You can't, I mean, you can't hide from the Lord.

This is Jonah's style foolishness.

Maybe if I go in the ocean, he won't be able to find me.

Adam and Eve are hiding from the only two people in the world.

I mean, they can't blend in here.

So God, Yahweh, calls to the man and says, Where are you?

Now remember that this is one of the questions here that's not designed for God's knowledge.

God knows where they are.

This is designed for Adam and Eve.

They're hiding from God, so God realizes this.

Hey, it's like the kid playing hide and go seek.

Can you see me?

Where are you?

Why are you hiding?

God knows.

God knows.

And they answer in verse 10.

I heard the sound of you in the garden, I was afraid.

I was naked.

I hid myself.

This is their conscience.

This is their shame.

They're shame before the Lord now.

You don't think the Lord has seen them naked?

He said, Who told you you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?

Who told you?

Another profound statement of their conscience.

Their conscience is what told them.

God is aware of this.

And yet God doesn't leave them hiding in the garden.

He doesn't leave them in their sin.

God initiates the pursuit of them.

God calls them.

God summons them.

God is always the seeker.

This is a principle throughout the rest of the Bible.

In relationship to human fallenness, God is always the initiator of salvation.

God is always the seeker.

People don't seek for God.

No one searches for God, not even Adam and Eve.

People do not search for God for salvation.

People hide from God and make loincloths for themselves.

But God always is the initiator in salvation.

And that is true here.

He calls them.

He asks them, who told you you were naked?

He asked them, did you eat from the tree?

God knows these things.

He knows they have a conscience now.

He knows that the devil did this.

He knows they ate from the tree.

This is all about marriage, and he's exposing it.

Verse 13, Yahweh God said to the woman, What is, or the man said, sorry, verse 12, the man said, The woman you gave to be with me.

She gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.

Notice the absolute blame shifting in this.

The woman you gave to be with me.

She gave me the fruit.

Now this is true.

God did give Adam the woman, and the woman did give Adam the fruit.

That is all absolutely true.

All absolutely true.

But let me give a more present-day modern example.

Okay?

I came home from a trip this week.

I come in the house, and my wife was out with some friends, and my my girls greet me, and uh they take out the ice cream from the refrigerator.

We had like three different ice cream containers that were like mostly empty, and so they take them out, and you know, mommy's not home, and so we eat the rest of the ice cream out of the cardboard containers and leave them on the table.

And then mommy comes home and she's glad to see me, and you know, all this, and then the ice cream's all over the table and empty.

The kids that you gave me said there's ice cream in the freezer, and they took it out.

And so, yes.

Now, you should laugh at that because it's all true.

The kids that she brought into this world gave me the ice cream.

But I'm responsible here.

I'm supposed to be exercising authority over them, not the other way around.

And that's what's with Adam's answer.

The woman you gave me.

That's true.

Why did I give her to you again?

What was supposed to be going on in your marriage?

We'll return to that in a minute.

Verse 13, or verse 12.

Uh, sorry, verse 13, Yahweh says to the woman, What is this you've done?

The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

The woman also pushes the blame down to the devil.

So Yahweh begins with the curse.

He's going to curse the devil.

We'll end with that, so skip that verse now.

Now he's going to go to the woman, verse 16.

To the woman, God responds.

I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing.

In pain you will bring forth children, your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

This is the consequence.

I'm not calling it a curse for Eve.

This is the consequence of her sin.

Because sin is in the world, this is what's going to happen.

Childbearing will be extremely painful for her.

In pain you will bring forth children.

It is talking about the labor of children, labor of childbirth, but it's not limited to that.

It's talking about the life of raising children.

It's going to because it's repeated.

It's not saying the same thing twice.

I'll multiply your pain in childbearing.

Also, in pain you'll bring forth children.

This is the life of the mother will be a life of pain and difficulty.

Of course, there's joy in children.

Of course, there's joy in bringing children to the world.

But there is pain and there is difficulty.

Mothers get sick.

But it starts with pregnancy.

Mothers get sick all the time.

Many mothers go in the hospital.

Before the invention of modern medicine, mothers died all the time bringing kids into the world.

Kids died all the time.

You know, you read biographies of famous Christians.

I'm always struck about this.

Reading these biographies, you know, they had, some of them had several wives because their wives died in childbirth.

It's not uncommon to see, you know, the wife had nine children, three of whom survived.

That's normal world existence.

And there's the pain in raising the children, there's the pain the children inflict on the parents, and as they rebel when they get up and grow older.

It's a life of pain in bringing forth children.

Nevertheless, they will desire their husband.

Nevertheless, they will desire children.

Nevertheless, they'll desire relationships with their husbands.

Some of the ESVs that many of you have, I think even the Pew Bible say their desire will be against their husband, and that's a fair way to render it too.

There's a preposition in the Hebrew there that means against, contrary to.

So it could easily mean that their desire will be to overthrow their husband.

Like Eve did in the temptation.

She acted apart from her husband against what the God had commanded her husband.

She acts against him.

So it's possible that's what's meant here.

Regardless if it speaks of her desire to keep producing children or her desire to go contrary to her husband.

The end of verse 16 is very clear.

He will rule over you.

This phrase is used the very next chapter in Genesis, chapter 4, when God rebukes Cain.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

It says, Sin is crouching at your door, its desire is for you, its desire is to master you, its desire is contrary to you.

Never left Cain, you must rule it.

You must exercise dominion over it.

And so what you see here is setting up for chapter 4.

The implication is clear that wives are going to have a life of difficulty because of children, pain in childbirth, and they will be submissive to their husbands.

Now I mentioned that submission did not really exist before this, but certainly the idea that the husband was the leader and the protector did exist before this.

Eve was made as the helper for Adam, but now because sin is in the world, you have contrary desires.

Now because sin is in the world, you have rebellion, you have sin in both the husband and wife's heart.

And so now there's this concept of ruling is the word.

And I wish there was a softer way to say it, but that's that's the word.

Not to Adam, verse 17.

Because you listen to the voice of your wife, you've eaten the tree.

I commanded you don't eat of it.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

So now God is cursing the ground.

Earlier we'll end with this, he would curse the serpent, but now he's cursing the ground.

In pain you'll eat of it all the days of your life.

Thorns and thistles that are bringing forth for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

So this is similar to what happened with Eve.

Eve was supposed to be a helper to her husband.

Her husband was supposed to be her leader before the fall, but now because of the fall, because of sin, it will be difficult.

The same thing is true here.

What was a blessing for Eve, that she would be a helper to her husband, becomes filled with difficulty.

The same thing is true with Adam.

The trees were given to Adam to eat as a blessing to him, but now because of the curse, it will be a difficulty.

What God designed his blessing will be hard.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

In pain you'll eat of it.

There's no choice for Adam.

He can't decide not to work.

He can't decide not to cultivate the ground.

He must work.

He must labor on the ground for food.

If he wants to feed his wife, if he wants to feed his children, he has to work.

And the ground is not going to willingly give up his fruit.

The ground is going to fight against him.

The ground's going to go to war against him.

The ground doesn't want to yield to mankind.

And that's because of sin.

The ground doesn't have a volition.

It didn't willingly sin here.

The ground is subject to the curse.

And Paul describes this in Romans chapter 8 because of the curse.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Creation doesn't willingly want to help out.

And Paul puts it differently in Romans 8 in a very insightful way.

In Romans 8, it implies that creation doesn't willingly give its produce to sinful people.

The sun doesn't want to light up your path so that you can go sin.

The air, the oxygen, doesn't want to fill your lungs so you can do sinful things with it.

So creation has this bent towards God, and it doesn't want to help you sin, including the food.

But Paul tells the Thessalonians, man don't work, man don't eat.

So you gotta go to work.

And you gotta eat.

And no, I don't think this is limited just to farmers.

Like farmers are subject to the curse.

They get work hard and get calluses in their hands, and this is this is mankind.

We live in much more of a technologically driven society now.

You're more like especially in our area here, you're more likely to know a government contractor than a farmer for sure.

But being a government contractor is subject to the curse.

I asked a friend of mine who worked at the Pentagon what he did all day.

And he said, I push against my office wall like this, knowing there's somebody on the other side pushing it back at me.

And the two of us push and we just make sure we take lunch at the same time, we go home at the same time, and call it a truce.

And both of us will rotate out in two years and go do something different.

I mean, that's the curse.

That's it's hard at work because people have contrary desires to you.

You think you're doing what's best for the Air Force, and then the guy on the other side of the wall thinks he's doing what's best for the Air Force, and the two of you guys want different things, and so you butt heads and there's conflict, even though you're both trying to do the best thing, you you don't get along.

That's the that's the curse in the government contractor worlds.

In a sense, it's easier to battle the curse in the fields, right?

Mow the grass every week.

Cut the vines back, plant trees and water them and eat the fruit.

But it will be hard.

People have to work hard for food now.

Verse 19, the sweat of your face you'll eat bread until you return to the ground.

Out of it you are taken, your dust, and to dust you shall return.

And the fact that God wraps this up with dust is highlighting the key point from Genesis 2 and 3.

This is the key point I wanted to make for you this morning.

Adam was made to rule the earth and to produce food.

To drive that point home, he was made out of dirt, and now in sin he is cursed in the dirt.

He was supposed to rule the earth, he was made out of earth, and he is cursed in the earth.

His calling by God is to the earth.

He was made by God, commissioned by God out of the earth, and now he is cursed by God in the earth.

The same thing is true with the woman.

She was called by God to bring life into the world.

She was commissioned by God out of life, made by the flesh of Adam, and now she was cursed by God in life.

It will be painful to bring forth children.

So this the idea that there is a difference between men and women in marriage, in husbands and wives in marriage and in the world, is not a post-fall reality.

It existed before the fall as identified in how they were made earth, flesh, what they were made to do, work the earth, produce life, and where they experience the curse.

In work.

And in childbirth, in life.

This, of course, has all kinds of implications for human life and marriage.

All kinds of implications for difficulty.

Somebody who wants to be married and isn't married has difficulty in their life.

And the wrong approach to that is, well, therefore, marriage can't be a source of happiness.

No, marriage is a source of happiness, which is exactly why the person who desires it and doesn't have it is so afflicted in their heart.

Or people who the Lord hasn't given children to.

The right response to that is not to say, well, that means God did design people for children.

No, God did, and that's why it's so heartbreaking and there's so much difficulty in it.

Because of the curse.

When you sin against God, you can't blame Adam and Eve.

But when work is difficult or you can't do it, because it's difficult, you can blame Adam and Eve.

When you desire children and the Lord's not giving them to you, and that makes the desire even harder in your heart, it's not your fault.

You can blame Adam and Eve.

You really can.

They brought sin into the world.

And I say they brought sin in the world, you know how the Bible describes it.

The Bible doesn't say they brought sin in the world.

The Bible says sin entered the world through one angel?

No.

Sin entered the world through one snake?

Also, no.

Through one man.

Sin entered the world through Adam.

But Eve sinned first! Well, Adam was supposed to be.

Subduing the earth.

He was supposed to be subduing the animals.

This is on him.

He should have stepped up and intervened between the devil and his wife instead of sat back and watched passively.

He should have interjected himself.

He should have stood for what the Lord commanded.

So sin entered the world because remember, it was not about the tree.

It was about subverting marriage.

It was about turning marriage on its head.

So the devil attacked Eve, of course, to turn it on its head.

And Adam should have interjected it at that point.

But because Eve said yes, marriage is flipped upside down.

And so sin did enter the world through one man.

It did.

And that's why God shows up in the garden, and God does not say, Eve, where are you?

He doesn't say, Wife, where did you go?

Isha, I'm looking for you.

He doesn't say Isha, he says, Adam.

Adam, where are you?

God calls Adam.

And then he ends with Adam.

You are going to die and go to the dirt.

You're commissioned for dirt.

You are made from dirt.

You are cursed in dirt.

You'll live in dirt working hard.

And when you die, you're going back to the dirt.

Adam understands this.

Adam didn't go to seminary.

He didn't study the parallelism in Genesis 2 and 3.

He didn't read Genesis 2 and 3.

He lived it.

But when he's done, notice he understands this is all about marriage.

Look at what he says in verse 20.

The man then called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Adam understands.

Yahweh God made Adam and his wife garments of skin, clothe them.

So God killed the first animals.

The first death came from him to cover sin.

Again, the contrast, you can't cover your own sin with works righteousness.

You can't stitch together fig leaves, and all of your attempts to be pleasing to God are just that.

It requires sacrifice to atone for sin.

Only God can cover sin through the blood of a sacrifice.

And that's what happens here.

He skins animals, he covers the sinners, he hides the tree.

Verse 22.

Behold, the man has become like one of us, God speaking in his triunity.

Now he must reach out his hand, lest he reached out his hand, take one of the trees, the tree of life, and eat and live forever.

So he hides the tree of life.

Yahweh God expels Adam and Eve from the garden to work the ground.

Notice that it's man that was sent out of the garden specifically.

Of course, they both went together, but man was the one called to work the ground.

He is sent out of the garden to do that.

He drove out the man singular again to the east of the Garden of Eden.

He placed a cherubim and a flaming sword, turned every way to guard the way from the tree of life.

The tree of life, of course, is not in the earth anymore.

The flood reoriented everything.

And the tree of life disappears.

The tree of life, though, is not off the pages of Scripture forever.

You'll find it again in Revelation 22, where it stands in heaven for the nations, the healing of the nations to eat from the tree of life forever and ever and ever.

There will be no sin in heaven, but the tree of life is there.

God didn't destroy the tree of life, he put it in the storage.

He brings it out again in the new heavens and the new earth.

We'll end with the curse to the serpent, verse 14.

Yahweh God said to the serpent, You've done this.

You brought sin in the world, serpent.

So you're gonna go in your belly.

Much more to say about snakes.

Lots of illustrations and stories, but we won't give them today.

Verse 15.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He'll bruise your head.

And you'll bruise his heel.

Again, offspring tied to the woman here.

Here's where the virgin birth is prophesied.

He doesn't say I'm gonna put enmity between your offspring of the devil and Adam's offspring.

He says I'm gonna put enmity between Eve's offspring.

Her seed.

The word seed, in the rest of the Bible, the word seed is always used as the male seed, never the female, except for here.

This is a prophecy of the virgin birth.

The woman will bring forth a seed into the world, and this seed will be fully human from Eve, and this seed will bruise the devil's head.

The devil will be crushed by a man, a man born to a virgin, but this savior will be struck by the devil and have his heel bruised.

This, of course, plays out perfectly in the cross.

Jesus, born of a virgin, lives the perfect and sinless human life.

He does all that we couldn't do.

He is the true and the better Adam.

He becomes the head of the human race.

All those who are in him have eternal life because our federal head, Jesus Christ, did not sin.

He crushes the devil at the cross.

He will bind him and cast him into the fire for a thousand years in the kingdom.

But on his way down, he is struck.

The devil did strike him.

He did die on the cross and rise from the grave three days later.

Lord, we're thankful for the prophecy of marriage in here.

Knowing that men and women are created differently and that we have so much conflict in our world because of that.

What a gift marriage is to us.

And how easy it is to use it in rebellion against you.

I pray specifically for the married people in our congregation.

I pray that their greatest joys in life would be found in the home.

Their greatest friend would be their husband or their wife.

Their greatest delight would be in their own house.

Where the husband fails to lead and to protect, becomes passive, the wife desires to rule and exercise authority over her husband.

Where there's pain in the household because of children.

We know this is the curse at work in us.

But we know that even through the curse, you bring blessing.

Even through cursing the ground, you bring joy in work.

Even through the pain of childbirth, you bring joy in children.

Even through the curse to the devil, you bring eternal life through Jesus Christ, crucified on a tree, brings us to the tree of life.

We're grateful for him.

It's in the name of Christ we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.