Knowing What Is Good For You Series

OPENING

SENTENCE: I can remember when I was still in High School my sister was watching a romance movie where the handsome main character was telling his beautiful recently discovered true love the depth of his everlasting love.

INTRODUCTION: While I was trying to hold back my natural guy gag reflex my sister let out a loud and deep sigh of longing. In that simple sigh, she communicated what almost every high school girl wants. The desire to be loved by someone who will sacrifice and care for her through thick and thin. We see it in romance novels and movies like Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast. They are popular because of this universal appeal.

Yet, it seems the ideal and the reality seldom match up. While the girl thinks she is marrying a prince charming she often finds out what she really married was a frog. Most of us realize early on that much of this romantic idealism was never the norm- even in the garden. But, it seems that in the last few generations a growing disillusionment has caused us to abandon the “love forever after” ideal altogether. This is no more visible than in the state of marriage in North America.

A recent Pew Research study showed that while most Millennials want a loving, lasting relationship only 26%, a number less than any other group in history, are pursuing it through marriage. In the last 60 years, our culture has moved from divorce being extremely rare to being common. This uncertainty of lasting marriages leads to cohabitation as the norm to “test” the relationship. Even that has changed- the millennials ages 18-32 have abandoned both.

What happened? Why have younger people become so afraid of marriage? Certainly, the answer includes the lack of stable role models and the economy is less certain. But, beyond that, we all seem to instinctively know that something is broken in us. The fact that this brokenness is denied or misunderstood sets us up for failure because we misdiagnose the problem.

TRANSITION

SENTENCE: Last week we saw that after God created marriage He called it very good.

TRANSITION: So, we know there is a God-given ideal of what was or could now be. Yet, something tragic happened to make it far less than His ideal. It is a tragic event that our culture has forgotten and because of it severely impacts our relationships.

SAY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY: This morning I want us to revisit what went wrong and pose the question, “What is the root cause of destructive conflict in our marriages?” We will learn that we have rejected God’s desire for us because we believe we know better than Him. And, when we act our plan it fails- and then we mistakenly think we can fix it on our own.

TEXT: Genesis 3:1-7

THEME: Marriages are strengthened when we face up to our rebellious self-obsession.

What is the root cause of destructive conflict in our marriages?

I. We falsely believe we know better than God what is good for us. (1-4)

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.

A. We question the reasonableness of God’s command.

We must remember the setting of these verses. God created this wonderful world with everything we need to thrive and be happy. At the completion of the creation of woman he oversees the first “marriage” and then gives His assessment- “It was very good”. The two enjoyed a perfect relationship with each other- each with complementary roles to play in the relationship. The man was a loving leader and the woman was a nurturing “helper”.

As Matthew Rueger says, “Adam, he was more complete with her than he had been without her. She was of his flesh, and he would cherish her as he did his own flesh. This intimate loving relationship established before the fall into sin was a union of two different beings with different roles within the family but of equal importance to each other and to God. The problem of sin did not change God’s intent for marriage to complete man and woman in a lifelong union of love and respect.”

So what happened? We see the problem begin to unfold in this passage. First, we find Satan visits the garden in the form of a serpent. The Bible often speaks of Satan as a real personal entity who is an invisible, evil force intent turning our hearts against God.