Applying the Gospel to Wives

Well, good morning, everyone. just a few announcements as, we continue, in our service. if you have already, we've got a men's retreat coming up November 17th and the 18th. If you've already signed up for the men's retreat, and yet you have not paid, I have a note here that says we need your money today.

So either pay today or find someone who can pay for you and promise them that you'll pay them back and. if you would like to come to the retreat and you have not yet signed up, Mike Barry said it's not too late. If you beg him, he will. He will include you on the list.

If you wait too long though, you're, you'll miss out on a t-shirt, that we're making for the guys that are coming. Also, November 20th, as we mentioned last week, there's going to be a, a special dinner, a meal provided for the needy. and the homeless in our community, and if you would like to help, in this particular ministry on November 20th, then contact Cindy Okamura, and on the inside of your bulletin under ministry opportunities, the second item there has to do with the food pantry and.

Cindy Okamura's name and phone number is there and so contact her if you would like to help in this ministry.

Also, Project Angel Tree, there's an announcement in your bulletin regarding that, providing an opportunity for you to purchase a, Christmas gift for a son or a daughter of someone who is in prison, and it's a tangible way to share the love of Jesus with. with someone going through a difficult time in their life, so consider that opportunity as well. We'll be saying more about that in the days, to come. we're happy to have two guests with us this morning, Ronald and Emily Needham.

Why don't you guys stand here from Hawaii. Two pillars of our church that we have been without for a few months now and it's good to have the pillars back. but Ron said it was the right move at the right time and God has confirmed, their, decision and they're very happy there. Ron's mother is extremely happy there, and has a renewed zest for life and now is wanting to live to 100.

which he wasn't quite feeling that way before. So, we miss you guys, but it's, it's great to have you, have you back. well, for our message, this morning, let me have you guys, turn in your Bibles to the Book of Genesis. Genesis.

Oh, I. just to give you an idea of what we're doing over the next, 3 weeks, we're gonna be talking about this, most important subject of marriage. And, today, I'm gonna be saying some introductory things, about marriage, and then next. sunday, we're gonna be, in the text going verse by verse through Ephesians, and next Sunday, we're gonna cover verses 22 to 24, and the second half of verse 33, and I will be bringing it to the wives.

All right? So, advanced warning, ladies, be on your best behavior this week. So that when I preach to you next week, you're like, yeah, I got it. I've been doing that.

Men, you have 2 weeks' advance notice because you need more time to change your behavior. And 2 weeks from today, I'll be preaching to the men from verse 25 through the first half of verse 33. And please don't, don't be reluctant to come if you're feeling like a failure. In your marriage, as I myself often feel, do not be afraid to come and hear the word of God.

I will be speaking as one fellow sinner to other sinners, and, we will be extremely careful to cover everything in the grace of God and reminding ourselves of the gospel, which is for fallen sinners like us who fall short of God's perfect, standard. and so you're not gonna be feeling condemned. you definitely won't be feeling that from me, in terms of the signals I give you from, the pulpit. but we wanna bathe in the grace of God and yet see his standard, and there's nothing better guys than grace motivated obedience.

Amen. And so we'll savor God's forgiveness and His grace for where we fall short and that awareness will only, motivate us to live up to God's standard in a better way than we've done before. What I wanna do today though is to say some introductory things on the subject of marriage that, and I do this for, a few reasons. Number one, it'll set us up to understand.

Ephesians chapter 5, and the verses that we're gonna be looking at verse 22 and following, why does Paul say what he says in these verses in Ephesians 5? Why, when he speaks to wives, why does he speak to wives 1st, #1. Number 2, when he speaks to them, why does he say submit to your husband? why does God even give us instruction at all on marriage?

Don't we just do what our heart tells us to do and it just comes naturally? why does Paul say what he says, in Ephesians 5 to husbands and wives? What we're gonna look at today will help us to have an understanding. Of Ephesians 5, it will also set us up to understand why Ephesians 5:22 and following is so utterly important and why you ought to be desperate to know what God in His word says to husbands and wives.

If you're married. what we're gonna go over this morning, hopefully will generate in you a desperate desire to know what God says in Ephesians 5. If you are single, I hope to alarm you today. I hope to frighten you.

I hope to bring you to a point where you are terrified of yourself, terrified of your future spouse, terrified of this thing called marriage to where you are on the edge of your seat by next Sunday, saying, God, tell me how we can have a good marriage in this desperately fallen world. Also, I give you this message today. As an admission to you of some of the basic truths that I wish I would have known before I got married, my wife and I have commented to each other in recent years how appalling.

Was our naivety, our ignorance, our arrogance, and even our carelessness going into this thing called marriage.

We were raised in Christian homes. We had many good marriages around us. We heard thousands of sermons, some of them on the subject of marriage. we went to a Christian college where we took Bible classes, we learned even more about marriage.

We even got premarital counseling from a solid pastor of a solid church, and yet we didn't have a clue. And it's not because that information wasn't given to us, but what we did here we're like yeah we got that we got that yeah we pretty much felt like we knew what we needed to know and with hindsight our ignorance is appalling. and so I wish that someone had sat me down and told me what I'm going to tell you today before we got, before my wife and I got married and so if you're single, please, please, I hope 20 years into your marriage you say I am glad that Pastor Milton was my pastor back in 2006 and he prepared me for what marriage is all about.

and so hopefully this message will be a help to you and so I want to give you five truths today that you absolutely must know about marriage if you're going to have a marriage that succeeds in fulfilling God's design, for you.

Some of these truths are uplifting, especially the last one, but some of these are shattering. and very discouraging, but we will look at them anyway, and we're gonna spend much of our time in the book of Genesis, which is where it all started, the good and the bad all started, and we're gonna see what ramifications that has about marriage and what we need to know about it. The first truth, guys, about marriage that you need to know is that God invented marriage. God invented marriage.

We live in a society today where. A lot of people believe in evolution, we just evolved once we were just a bunch of amoeba and we evolved into monkeys and then from monkeys into cavemen, and then as cavemen we walked around, speaking in a series of grunts and dragging our knuckles on the ground. And as we became more and more sophisticated, we ended up creating this institution called marriage and because man has created it, it's created by man and for man, then it's up to us to define it.

And it can continue to evolve through the years and the centuries.

That is wrong. The Bible teaches us that God invented marriage and because God is the inventor of marriage, it is his intellectual property because God invented marriage, he owns exclusive rights to this thing called marriage. Hence, when two people covenant together to become husband and wife, God in that moment releases them, releases to them the right to be husband and wife, to be married, and it is to God. That that couple must answer, not just Christian couples, any couple, whether they know God or not, whether they're atheist or not, there is a third party involved in every marriage in every society that is God.

It is his intellectual property. And when you enter into the institution of marriage, you enter into something that God owns. It is his property. When you make vows, God is present.

He hears those vows you make to one another. He views those vows as being made to him, and it is to him that you must answer for how you comport yourself in your marriage relationship. God is the inventor, hence the owner of marriage. And we see this in the book of Genesis chapter 2 where, where we go all the way back through history thousands of years to the exact moment where God created and invented marriage.

Look at what it says in Genesis chapter 2 verse 18. God's, through the days of creation at the. He's creating, the vegetation and separating the light from the darkness and the dry land from the seas and what have you. After every day of creation, God is looking up on what he's done, saying, behold, it is good.

God loves what he sees. He loves the work that he is doing. However, on the 6th day of creation, after creating Adam, a perfect human specimen, That any of us would have looked at and said, wow, that is good. God looked upon his world without the institution of marriage.

He looked upon Adam, verse 18, then the Lord God said, it is not good. It is not good for the man to be alone. So I will make him a helper suitable for him. In other words, I will make him a helper who will correspond to him.

All right, Adam was perfect in the sense of being flawless, but he was not perfect in the sense of being complete. He needed a completer, so God created a woman to complete him. So look what happens. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the men, and something men love to do, he slept.

by the way, how many of you, I asked this in the first service, how many of you are married to men that when they hit the bed at night, they can be sound asleep within one minute? Raise your hand. OK, my wife's hand. Is up.

She says she has seen it happen within 15 seconds. well, the origins of this skill and ability that men possess go all the way back to Genesis 2. so Adam slept and while he was sleeping, God took one of his ribs and then the passage says he closed Adam back up. verse 22, and God fashioned it, that rib into a woman and then brought her to the man.

And so Adam wakes up, and before his eyes is this beautiful, perfect woman that has been fashioned fresh from the hand of God, and God gives the woman to Adam. Verse 23, and the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman. And by the way, the Hebrew word is Isha.

I want you to remember that she shall be called Isha because she was taken out of ish, OK? She shall. be called Isha because she was taken out of ish, which is the word for man as opposed to female. Verse 24, for this cause, God pauses in the narrative, and he speaks to all of us about this marriage and all marriages.

For this cause, God says, a man shall leave his father and mother. And shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. They shall become one, a unit, spiritually, emotionally, all the way down to the physical part of who they are. And so God is the one who thought of marriage.

It's not that God created Adam and he created Eve and then. They're hanging out together and they get to talking and they come up with this idea and they go to God and say, hey, God, we're thinking about maybe some way that we can come together and become one and we're gonna call it marriage. And here's, here's our explanation of it. What do you think?

Can we do this, please, please. And God says, OK, no, that's not how it happened. God thought of marriage. He invented it.

He created it. And he offers Eve as a gift to Adam, so that they can become one flesh. Now, because God Is the inventor of marriage. He owns the institution.

It is his intellectual property, and that leads us to the 2nd truth, and that 2nd truth is that God provides us with the only definition of marriage that matters. All right? Boy, does our society need to hear this message. because God owns this thing called marriage, he can do with it what he wills.

He can open it up to whomever he, he wills. He can make whatever rules that he wants to make in terms of role distinctions. He can tell husbands to do whatever he wants to tell husbands to do and wives to do. Whatever he wants to tell them to do, and God gets to define marriage however he wants to define marriage.

And in the scripture, God provides for us a definition of marriage. And guys, it is the only definition of marriage that matters. Genesis 2:24. God says, for this cause, and I shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his Esha, someone of the gender.

that was taken out of the man. A man, as opposed to a female shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to a female, his wife, and they shall become one flesh. That is the biblical definition of marriage that God provides for us. We live in a culture today where there is a deliberate attempt to redefine marriage.

People are discontent with the fact that marriage is between one man and one woman, and they think it should be simply it is a union of two people who fall in love or who love each other, opening up. The way for what they call homosexual marriage. In fact, the Massachusetts Supreme Court two years ago said that the traditional definition of marriage, which by the way is based on Genesis 2:24, lacks a rational basis. Number one, they said.

and number 2, they said it discriminates against homosexuals. My response to that is, yeah, it does. God's definition of marriage is very discriminating, all right? think about it.

It's one man marrying one woman. Suddenly now, once you get married, God now discriminates against every other person on the planet. No one else can get into that union that you have with you and your wife. It is, very exclusionary, and this is.

God's definition of marriage and what? How I define marriage doesn't matter. It shouldn't, it shouldn't matter to you how Milton defines marriage or how other people define marriage and what they might suggest the only definition that matters is God's because he's the one who owns exclusive rights to marriage. It's his intellectual property and his definition is the only one that matters.

If our society continues to move in the direction it's going and ultimately. Allows for what they call homosexual marriage, even if our government and everyone in society calls that marriage and the courts call that marriage and even many churches call that marriage, God never will call that marriage because it is outside of his definition of what marriage really is. And so truth number 1 about marriage is that God invented marriage. Truth number 2, God provides us with the only definition of marriage that matters.

Well, there's a 3rd truth that I want us to look at today, and that is that suffering and evil. You look at all the suffering and the evil that is in our world today, the tsunamis and the hurricanes and the earthquakes and the death and the mayhem. And the ruin that those things bring, you think of all the commission of acts of evil in our lives from day to day and in our society as a whole and all the ruin that that brings not only in this life, but also in the life to come.

Look at all of that package and understand that suffering and evil came into the world because of some breakdowns within the first marriage relationship.

Some things began to go wrong in just a matter of a few moments in that first marriage relationship. Between Adam and Eve and those breakdowns conspired to produce the very first sin that brought on the fall of man and all of the suffering and the evil we have in our world today and let's look at Genesis chapter 3 and see how this unfolds, and then we'll try to sweep together the breakdowns that occurred in the marriage union. Between Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:1, Adam and Eve are in the garden.

And by the way, God had told Adam, before he was created, he had told Adam, you may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you may not eat of this tree. On the day that you do, you will die. God had said that to Adam. All right.

Understand that before Eve was created, Genesis 3:1. Adam and Eve are in the garden, verse 1. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he, the serpent said to the woman, indeed, Has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?

Now, understand what's happening here. at the first point of attack, the serpent, who is the devil, is questioning Adam's integrity. He's getting Eve to question Adam's integrity. The serpent would never go to, to Adam and say, Has God really said this?

Because Adam would say, of course, he did. He said it to me. But he goes to Eve, to whom it was communicated secondhand, and says, Did God really say? This, in other words, are you sure your husband was accurate in what he told you that God said?

You see how the devil is beginning to work. verse 2, the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. Now, there's actually two misquotes here from what God actually did say.

We all know the second one, God only said, don't eat of the tree. The day you do, you'll die. Eve is now saying that God said, you may not eat it or even touch it. All right?

So she's added, she's intensified the prohibition of God beyond what God originally expressed. But there's another misquote here. Look at verse 2. The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat.

Guys, what God said to Adam is, of all the trees of the garden, you may freely eat. Literally, you may gorge yourself on all of these other trees, and now gorge yourselves has turned into, well, he said we could eat. So what's happened is the extravagant generosity of God has been minimized, and the prohibition of God has been exaggerated, which you could already tell there's trouble brewing. even in the way this is happening, that's what leads to our spiritual falls many times.

We diminish our understanding of the extravagant goodness and generosity of God. We exaggerate the negativity of the prohibition, and that sets us up for failure. Nonetheless, after Eve expresses this to the serpent, the serpent said to the woman, you surely shall not die. What your husband told you that God said is absolutely not true.

You will not die. And now he impugns God, for God knows that in the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So now he's outright contradicting what God had said to Adam and that Adam had passed along to Eve. Verse 6, Eve is left standing there.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, so she's staring at this tree, she sees that it's good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and she ate. In violation of what God had said in violation of her husband's leadership, and then look at what happens next there's so much just in the next sentence and she gave also to her husband who was with her. And he ate, What happens is the camera in this dialogue is focused on Eve and the serpent, and all we see is them.

We think they're the only ones in the scene.

And we see this interchange taking place. He partakes of the fruit, and then suddenly the camera backs away, and there's Adam. He's there. From all indications, Adam is there on the scene.

He was with her and probably heard this interchange and never intervened. This is the first example of a passive husband. And then not only that, look at this, and she gave, this is the galling thing. She not only partook of the fruit, but then she took that fruit and she gave it to her husband.

And all we know is that she gave it to her husband from this passage, but we know from scripture that she didn't just take a bite and then hand it to her husband without a word. We know that she spoke to Adam, and she encouraged him, even exhorted or instructed him to eat it, because in Genesis 3:17, when God is pronouncing the curse upon Adam, God says, because you have obeyed the voice of your. Wife. So Eve would have offered Adam the fruit and exhorted or instructed him to eat this, and Adam obeyed her voice, rather than the voice of God.

And you put all that together, guys, and here's what's going wrong in just a matter of a few moments, Eve followed the serpent's leadership rather than her husband's leadership. Secondly, Adam was passive when he should have led his wife. Thirdly, Eve assertively led Adam contrary to the leadership that he and God had provided for her. And fourthly, Adam followed his wife's lead rather than God's.

There's an alteration in the dynamic of the relationship. Eve is not following Adam's lead. But now she's doing the opposite and she's now assertively leading Adam contrary to what he had attempted to lead her in, and what the will of God was, and then Adam follows her. Lead into sin.

And you think of all the consequences that that has unleashed upon the world all because of those fundamental breakdowns in a matter of a few moments in that first marriage relationship. I wish I had the paperwork with me here, but this week I was, I was running some math, you think of Adam and Eve and those few moments. If, if they look at the human race now and all the billions of people that have lived as descendants of them and all the evil, the mayhem, the suffering, and the heartache and, and, and sin that have issued from that decision, they, they would go back and realize what a fateful moment that was.

If we would have only thought at that moment how fateful.

this moment was. I know that they would probably think that and understand how fraught with significance that moment was. I was running the math on this and trying to figure that, my wife and I, we've had 4 children, and if they go on to produce, children, somewhere close to that number, hundreds of years from now, literally there will be tens of thousands of people on the planet alive who could trace their ancestry back to my wife and I. We are our own Adam and Eve, and there will be a lineage that follows.

And what legacy will we leave to them? With our marriage. The decisions that you And we make in the context of our marriage relationships are fraught with significance. The example we set that our children are likely to reproduce even unwittingly and unknowingly, the hurts that we may bring upon them as a result of wrong decisions we make in our marriage that end up being reproduced and affected, hundreds of years from now there will be tens of thousands of people.

Who are living with the legacy and the consequences of decisions we make in our marriage. And I say all that to just say. to those of you that are married. Every moment of your marriage is fraught with significance for the generations to come, and if you could somehow look at the world 500 years from now, if the Lord tarries and look at all of your lineage and your descendants, you would go back and realize, man, our marriage was significant, hugely significant.

Well let's realize that now and realize the magnitude of the consequences of the good and the bad decisions that we make in our marriage because Adam and Eve's decisions have had abundant abundant impact upon the whole world that has descended from them well if the first sins. were the result of breakdowns in that first marriage that conspired to produce those first sins. We're not surprised then truth number 4 that the institution of marriage got absolutely hammered as a result of the fall.

The institution of marriage took some severe blows and forever on Earth, is now different than what it would have been prior to the fall.

In fact, look at this. In terms of what happens to Adam and Eve, and hence the abundant impact even upon their own marriage and even all marriages. To the woman, God says in Genesis 3:16, I will multiply, and by the way, this is a literal translation. Of the Hebrew text here.

God says, I will multiply, really multiply your pain with regard to conception and pregnancy. In pain, you shall deliver children. And so we, we read that and we often think, yeah, he's talking about pain in the delivery process, and certainly that is involved, the spasms of anguish and pain that a woman goes through in delivering a child, that is a consequence of the fall. And by the way, let me ask you, does that affect the marriage?

in those moments, it does. it affects the ability of the husband and wife to get along with each other. I know of one woman that we're related to who, when she was in labor. With her first child, her husband was trying to console her and help her, and she was physically beating him, saying, you did this to me, and there was nothing he could do to be a help to her.

It affected their marriage in a negative way in those moments. I was thinking this week about how it affected our marriage on the, when, when our son Brendan was born 15 years ago. I get up in the morning. And my wife is sitting there banging her knees together, saying, I'm, I'm, I'm in labor.

We, I, I'm gonna have this baby, we need to go, we need to go. And she's sitting there with a curling iron in her hair. And, and I said, well, we need to go, we need to go. So we get dressed and we get in the car.

We're going to the the hospital, and I couldn't go fast enough for her. She's like, Speed up, you're going too slow. And so I sped up and then she was like, slow down, you're gonna get us killed. So like I, I couldn't do the right thing either way.

And then, on our way, we came to an intersection. And the light was red and silly me, I stopped at the red light, and she's like, what are you doing? And I said, I'm stopping, it's a red light. And she says, there's no traffic going through here, go.

So I went. Through the intersection and it turns out that her urgency was on target because she delivered the baby within 30 minutes after we arrived at the hospital. After that, if she says hurry, I hurry. but nonetheless, those are tense moments and they, they have, an adverse effect on the relationship in those moments.

Those of you that have not had children, you will understand. one day. But understand, guys, that in these consequences that are being spoken about, God is speaking of more than just once a woman begins her contractions and the labor pains start, pregnancy is included in this. The whole nine months of pregnancy, and the pains, the, the assault on the body that the pregnancy renders and the shortness of breath and all the other discomforts and pains and the hormonal.

Changes that go on, the crying for no reason, and, the morning sickness, all of that. He's talking about the full orbed experience of pain throughout the entire 9 months that is associated with being able to give birth to a child. And, also, I believe that included in this is not just the delivery, and it's not just the pregnancy. And I don't know all the ling ling on how to say this exactly right, ladies.

So just, I'm a guy, so give me a little bit of mercy. The biological processes monthly. That you have to endure, that have to do with the cleansing out of the old to make way for the descent of the new eggs so that conception is even possible. The hormonal changes that are associated with that, the pains, the mood swings associated with all of that.

All of that is tied to conception, pregnancy. And ultimately delivery. And all of that is a part of the fall. God says, I will multiply, really multiply, not just multiply in its quality.

But even multiply in the instances numerically throughout a woman's life thousands of times she experiences pains that are associated with this thing of conception and pregnancy and ultimately delivery. And by the way, this is not just, and, and does that affect marriage, by the way? OK, we'll leave it at that. And this is not just a curse upon Eve, but I'm sure it's on Adam as well, because he has to live with Eve as she's, going through all of this.

But what, before the fall, this didn't happen. These pains did not happen. And so it's a result of the fall, and it profoundly affects the marriage relationship. And then also look at what he says at the end of verse 16.

He says, and your desire shall be for your husband. And yet he shall rule over you. the word desire, there's a big question, what does God mean when he says to Eve, your desire will be for your husband? Does he, he mean you're gonna desire to be with him, you're gonna be attracted to him?

Almost certainly that's not what God means by this. we are blessed because There is one other place in the Old Testament where the verb desire with the same preposition is used in all of the Old Testament. And the only other occasion happens to be in the next chapter of Genesis. In Genesis chapter 4, verse 7.

When God is speaking to Cain, who was angry and jealous because God accepted his brother's sacrifice and rejected his own. And so, Cain is battling with anger and jealousy and already has murder in his heart. but look at what God says to Cain. If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and it's desire is for you. But you must master or govern or subdue it. The same two verbs are used. It's desires for you, but you must master it exactly the same.

as we see in Genesis 3:16, what God is saying to Cain is sin is crouching at the door, and it's violent craving is to subdue you. And control you, but Kane, you must subdue it, rather than letting it subdue you. And so you put that together, guys, with what God says to Eve in Genesis 3:16, what he's alerting Eve to is that inside of you, from this day forward will be. A violent craving.

To control and subdue and dominate your husband, but he will rule over you. In a way that is contrary to that violent craving within you to control and dominate your husband, the battle of the sexes begins right here in Genesis 3:16. Now, when you hear the Lord talking to Eve saying you're gonna desire to control your husband, but he is going to rule over you, does that dynamic show up in your marriage? Has it had any effect?

On your marriage, you don't need to raise your hand just contemplate that quietly to yourself. It has had an abundant impact upon marriage within every married woman is a strong desire to control and dominate her husband and when her husband leads and and. And governs her, it is contrary to that desire within her to control and dominate him. Now understand that those of us that women that have experienced God's grace, their desire, they have that sinful desire within them to control and dominate their husbands, but inside of the heart of every godly woman is a desperate desire to not be able to control and dominate her husband.

in fact, I, I was thinking this week about a pastor of our home church who had 2 sons and a daughter, and I am not recommending this to you guys. I, I see potential problems with this, but nonetheless, they did this and it worked for them and it illustrates my point. So what happened was they, they were trying to figure out she was, starting to date and. They wanted to find the right man and so this pastor of ours and his daughter worked out an agreement that when she would go out on a date, she would try to control the date.

And control the guy. And if she could control him, then she knew that that's not the guy for me. So she'd come home after a date and say, well, he's not the one, he's not the one. but finally, she went out with a guy who was an ex-Marine.

And they go out on a date and she tried the same thing to control the date. She absolutely could not. She came home and said to her dad, I found my future husband. And they got married and they have been married the 25 years since then.

what I love about that, even though I'm not recommending that and I wouldn't do that myself, because I'd be concerned about the reputation my daughter would develop, so please, I'm not recommending this, but what I respect about it is that this woman recognized that there was something in her that would want to do this, but she wanted to find a man. With whom she could not do this and that was the man that she wanted but nonetheless these things and this dynamic has a significant impact upon marriage and then also God begins to speak to Adam.

And he says this, then to Adam, he said, because you've obeyed the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you, and toil you shall eat of it all the day.

of your life, both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. In other words, you're going to die. As a result of these choices of sin that you have made.

And so let's sweep this together, the effects of the fall upon the marriage, the institution of marriage. Number one, the husband will have to work hard and be wearied as a result of his work. All right? Think about it.

Now, Adam's got to work harder and spend more time, that's time away from his wife when they could be. having heart to heart conversations. Now he's got work he's got to do. That work wearies him, so even when the work is done and he comes home at the end of doing all of his work, he is tired and weary and perhaps not always ready for the heart to heart talk that Eve might be ready for, that has a significant impact upon marriage.

Ladies, has your husband ever come home from work? You've been anxious for him to get home. He gets home, you're excited. You want to talk to an actual an adult, and have a meaningful conversation, but he's worn out and exhausted.

That reality is a consequence of the fall, and it does have a negative impact upon the marriage. And then secondly, the wife will experience pains associated with conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. Thirdly, the wife will have within her a violent desire to master her husband. Next, the husband will have to govern his wife contrary to her violent desire for dominion over him.

And lastly, husband and wife will age. And die And their marriage will die with them. Because of. Adam and Eve sin.

That all of us participated in because we were in Adam and Eve. Our marriage is impacted by that. we age and we die, ladies, that studly athlete that you married, you will watch him over the years age and his hair fall out and turn gray and his chest moved from up here down to his waistline and, and it goes all that goes both ways too, but we watch each other age and ultimately. Unless you die together at the same time.

One of you will be mourning the death of your spouse, and your marriage will die. In that moment, see, if Adam and Eve had never sinned, they'd be celebrating their 6000 year wedding anniversary about now, and they will look as beautiful today. As they did on their wedding day, the first day of creation. But because of sin, They aged and they died, and their marriage died with them.

I say all that to say, guys, that the institution of marriage. Has taken a beating as a result of the fall, and you are naive if you step into the institution of marriage without being aware. Of the severe blows that the institution has received as a result of the fall, and it's not that there's something inherently wrong with marriage anymore, it's that the two parties that are involved in the marriage have been so affected by the fall that the marriage is, is, is damaged from the get-go.

And we need to be aware of this.

this is exactly why Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:28. he says other things about marriage and very positive things as we're going to see in Ephesians chapter 5, but he's talking to single women and single men, and this is the best that he can say of marriage at this point in this letter. He says, if you marry to the guy, you've not sinned. I can say that you've not sinned in getting married.

And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life. That's a statement that would have never been made prior to the fall. This is a description of marriage post fall that when a man and his wife come together post fall, they're going to have trouble in this life and the word trouble speaks of affliction from without.

And anguish experienced within affliction from without affliction caused by the other party in the marriage upon you and you will experience anguish within as a result of the wrongs and the sins that your married partner has committed and committed against you. think about it this way, guys. The Just imagine yourself single for a moment and you are a depraved sinner in the theological sense that every single part of your being has been contaminated by sin. And inside of you is a thing called the flesh that always wars against the spirit.

Whatever the spirit wants you to do, you have a flesh inside of you that always wants to do the opposite, always. and you have that inside of you. And if all you ever had to deal with was that inside of you, just in your own person, you would have your hands full, right? How many of you have gotten on top of that victory and you're always, always defeating your flesh?

Nobody So that's a handful. Well, then, you with the sinful flesh. Marry another person with a sinful flesh, and you become one. Now for the rest of your life, you have two sinful fleshes that you have to deal with for the rest of your life.

And what, when the two sinful fleshes come together and fuse, sparks fly. And there are depths of depravity that are inside of you that you never knew were there until you get married. Amen. I've had people say to me in my counseling office, I know it's my husband's fault because I never had an anger problem before I got married and now I do.

People have said that to me and I've had to say to them, you have had an anger problem, you just did not know it. It was underneath the surface and now you have a husband that's pushing all the wrong buttons and is bringing that crud to the surface because God wants you to see it and deal with it, but it was there. The marriage merely magnified the problem and brought to the surface those depths of depravity. And this may sound wrong to you guys, and I, and I'm erring on the negative side today.

Please know we got 3 weeks of this, and I, I have a goal. I want to set us up to really appreciate the positivity of Ephesians 5. But one of the things that I try to do when I do premarital counseling is I, I try to blow the cover off. Of I, I, I try to expose for example to the girl, the fiance girl, the truth about this Mr.

Perfect sitting next to her and educate her that he is nowhere near what you think he is and he is a depraved sinner and I try to let him know the same about her and that there are depths of depravity in both of them that they don't even know about themselves. and they're going to join their lives together. And now be responsible for the sanctification and growth and holiness of the other person for the rest of their lives. It's hard to think that way on one's wedding day, the groom is standing down here and here comes the bride without any spot or wrinkle every hairs in place, her makeup's on.

she is as beautiful as it gets, and yet she is a depraved sinner. And, a groom would do well to remember that as she's walking down the aisle, there goes, here comes a sinful woman. And I will right now be assuming responsibility for her growth and holiness for the rest of her life. That may sound harsh to think that way, but what?

I'll tell you what's even harsher for a husband and wife to get together thinking the other is Mr. and Mrs. Perfect and have that dream shattered and not know what to do about it and think, what, this isn't working, we just need to end this this isn't working out for us. No, this is all a result of the fall.

And somebody needs to stand at the gate of the institution of marriage as Paul does and say, hey, you wanna come in here? Nothing wrong with it. You're not sinning, you're gonna have trouble, you're gonna have trouble in this life. Just be aware of that truth number 5 that Paul gives to us, not Paul, well, actually Paul does give this to us, but truth number 5 ending on a positive note.

In spite of the fall, in spite of the fact that as a result of the fall, the institution of marriage has been hammered as a result of that, in spite of this fall, and the fallen world that we live in, God has some wonderful purposes for your marriage now in this fallen world, and it's a wonderful plan. It's not that, well, it's been damaged, and we're a bunch of depraved sinners and so it can never work. No, the message of the New Testament is God has a wonderful plan to even redeem your marriage in this life, and he has some wonderful purposes for your marriage.

And look what these purposes are.

And by the way, I'm gonna give you 3 purposes as we close today. And the 1st 2 are purposes that are derived from general statements in the New Testament. And then the third purpose brings those two together, and it's an explicit statement of Paul in Ephesians 5. Purpose number 1 of your marriage is to glorify.

Glorify God, to glorify God. what, so many people, they come into marriage, and it's all about them. If I get married, then I'll be happy, I'll be fulfilled. And they look to their spouse to meet those needs.

what guys, marriage has more to do with God than it does you. And God is no much, not so much concerned about your happiness, as much as he's concerned about his glory, and your holiness and growth and holiness. God is up to something way larger than you experiencing fulfillment at the hands of your spouse. God's ultimate agenda in creating the institution of marriage and then allowing you to get married is that you might glorify Him.

In Romans 11:36, Paul says, for from him and through him, and to him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. In other words, we can put marriage in that marriage comes from God, it comes through God, and ultimately it is to God.

It serves his purposes, and his purpose is that he received the glory forever. Amen. And so, God has allowed you to get married, so that you might glorify Him and reflect His glory. A second purpose.

In your marriage is to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ, to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ. In Romans 8, God says, or Paul says, we know that God causes all things to work together for good. To those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. What he's saying is every single thing in your life, and that would include marriage, God is using.

All of those things to work those things out for your good and that good is to conform you to the image of Jesus, all right? So you may get up in the morning and your agenda is I just wanna be happy today. I wanna be fulfilled. I'm gonna expect my spouse to do this and that for me God's agenda every day is to grow you in holiness and to conform you to the image of a son even when you're not all that interested in that.

Agenda of God. And so, that's God's purpose for your marriage. in the context of marriage, you learn how to serve, you learn how to be Jesus-like in loving your imperfect, sinful spouse. You get to learn how to be Jesus-like and forgiving your spouse when they have done wrongs against you and give grace to them when they have failed and let you down and disappointed you and not done something that they should have done or they've done something against you that they should not have done.

also, through your marriage, God deliberately intends for your marriage relationship to bring to the surface crud. That's been in you all along, but you never knew that it was there, but God gave you a spouse who knows how to push the right buttons, or should I say the wrong buttons that exposes sin in your heart and idolatry in your heart so that the light of God's grace can shine upon it. You can see it for what it is and you can grow through that. That is God's agenda for our marriage.

He is concerned about your holiness. He wants to grow you in holiness, and there's something about marriage that demands the best from us, but it often brings out the worst in us, hence the trouble in this life that Paul speaks about. In 1 Corinthians 7, there's something about marriage that accelerates the process of God conforming us to the image of his son as sin is exposed in ways that would have never been exposed if we were single so that we can see it and grow thereby.

Now let's bring those two purposes together into one in Paul's explicit statement.

In Ephesians 5, this is the last slide we're gonna look at this morning. Purpose number 3, and this could even, you could state that this is the one and only overarching purpose of your marriage in the eyes of God. And that is to reflect the glory of Christ, the glory of his church, and the glory of the relationship between Christ and His church. To reflect the glory or the beauty of Christ, to put the man in a position where he can reflect the glory and the beauty of Jesus Christ, the woman in a situation where she can reflect the glory and the beauty of the church, and so that both of them together can display the glory of the relationship between Christ and His church.

Guys, understand that it's not like God created the human institution of marriage, and then he's in scripture thinking, now, how can I express the relationship of Christ to the church? I know, I'll use the analogy of marriage to express this. That's not what the Bible teaches. What the Bible teaches is that God first had in his mind the relationship of Christ to the church and the marriage in eternity.

And all of the beauty of that God created the human institution of marriage. As a mirror image. Of that that is the true marriage it is the only marriage, by the way that will survive for eternity all of our human marriages are but a foreshadowing of that ultimate marriage. And what I wanna do in closing is I just want to read the text of Ephesians 5.

We're just gonna read it. I want you to see how Paul interweaves with his instructions to husbands and wives, the relationship of Christ to the church, to where it's almost confusing. It's like, Paul, are you talking about husbands and wives? Are you talking about Christ and the church?

but he's talking about both and look at how he blends these two together. And we'll just read it and next week we'll begin to exposit it. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body.

But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands and everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church because we are members of his body.

Now he quotes from Genesis 2:24. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother. And shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great.

But I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church. He reads, we read verse 31, a quote from Genesis 2:24. We think, oh, he's talking about the relationship between a man and his wife. And Paul says, actually, by the way, I'm talking about the relationship of Christ to the church.

Nevertheless, verse 33, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Well, may God guide us as we work our way through this passage in the coming weeks and learn what we need to learn to have marriages that thrive. That glorify God. In this fallen world.

In which we find ourselves. Let's pray together. Lord, you are the creator of marriage, not us. You have exclusive rights to it.

You're the one who defines it and your definition is the only one that matters. We look at the first marriage between Adam and Eve and we see some of the breakdowns and the meltdowns that occurred there, Lord, that conspired to bring sin and evil into the world. Even and how the serpent Lord began to slither his way in between Adam and Eve. Rendering Adam passive when he should not have been and getting Eve to even doubt the testimony of Adam to her as he represented the will of God for them.

Lord, we know from your word that the institution of marriage has received severe blows. It is not today what it once was before the fall, and yet, Lord, on the other side of the fall in this dark and fallen world, you provide a way for us as husbands and wives to succeed and thrive and truly glorify you. Displaying the beauty of Jesus, the beauty of the church, and the beauty of Christ's relationship to the church. Open our eyes, Lord, to see the mystery that is here.

That we would be inspired by the vision we see of Christ and His church, these gospel realities, and that we would seek, Lord, to follow, to mimic what we see in that vision inside of this mystery. And that our marriages truly would be a beautiful. Foreshadowing. Of that ultimate marriage to come.

As we discuss these things in our care groups tonight, Lord, guide us, deepen our thinking in these areas. As we process together and continue to learn in the coming weeks. We ask all of these things, Lord, in the name of Jesus. And all God's people said, Amen