In just a little over two weeks, Mary and I will celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary. And when people ask me how we’ve stayed married that long, I tell them it is because I have learned the two most important words in the English language – “Yes Dear”. Obviously, I say that with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The real reason we’ve experienced nearly 37 years of a very fulfilling and enjoyable marriage relationship is that I have a wife who understands and lives her life based on a Biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood.
But, as I’m sure all of you have experienced in your relationships, both in and outside of marriage, it is not always easy to live according to God’s design for manhood and womanhood. Certainly our marriage, as good as it is, has not been perfect, primarily because of the times that I have failed to live up to God’s design and be the man that God designed me to be. Perhaps I’m the only one here who struggles to live according to God’s plan, but my guess is that all of us experience some difficulties when it comes to being the man or woman that God has designed us to be.
Certainly one reason it is so hard to live according to God’s design is that our culture not only fails to value that design, but actively works against it on so many fronts. Unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, the church is not immune to those pressures and I fear that even those who claim to be followers of Jesus and believe in the Bible have often been deceived about what it means to be a man or a woman from God’s perspective.
So this morning as we continue to learn more about God’s design for manhood and womanhood, we are going to deal with what is undoubtedly the most prevalent and damaging misconception about that design. In an attempt to fight back against many of the abuses that have been justified by a perversion of God’s design for men and women, some have suggested that the roles of men and women that we find so clearly defined in the Bible are a result of the fall of man described in Genesis 3.
That is why the foundation that we established last week is so important. That is why it was so critical for us to go back to the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 to establish God’s original design for manhood and womanhood prior to sin entering the world.
So let’s take a few moments to review what we learned last week and then we’ll move on to Genesis 3 and see how sin perverted that design. Let’s begin with our bottom line from last week:
[Let people “fill in the blanks”]
God’s design:
Man and woman have equal worth…
but
different work
Because man and woman were both created in the image of God, they both have equal worth in God’s eyes. At the same time, however, man and woman are not totally equal in every aspect of their existence. As we saw last week, the manner in which God created man and woman indicates that God gave them distinctive work. Men and women have different roles.
Unfortunately in our culture, we often tend to associate personal roles with personal worth. Because we pay people in certain professions more than we pay those in others, we tend to esteem certain jobs and roles above the others. I think that is one reason we’ve seen so much emphasis on “income inequality” in our country recently. In reality, the fact that we don’t all make the same amount of money is only a problem if we somehow use our salaries to measure our personal worth.
Had God wanted to, He could have easily created us all completely equal. He could have given us all the same physical abilities, the same intellect, the same circumstances in life. But God doesn’t do that. But the fact that we are not equal in those areas says nothing about our worth. The fact that I’m not capable of being an NFL football player or an NBA basketball player or a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon says nothing about my intrinsic worth. It just means that God designed me to be different than those who have those capabilities.
The same is true when it comes to our God-given roles as men and women. Our worth before God is not determined by our work, but rather by the fact that each of us – man and woman alike – has been created in the image of God.
Last week, we looked at some of the evidence we find in Genesis 1 and 2 that proves that the different work for man and woman was something that was established by God prior to the fall of man. I want to follow up on just one aspect of that evidence in a little more detail this morning. We’re going to look at two verses that will help us do that:
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
(Genesis 2:18 ESV)
The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
(Genesis 2:20 ESV)
There is one phrase that we find in both verses that is going to be the key in helping us to determine the work that God ordained for man and woman in His original design. Can you identify that phrase?
[Wait for answers]
That’s right: “a helper fit for him”. Notice that it was God’s idea to make a helper fit for Adam. That was not Adam’s idea. And since sin had not yet entered into the world, the idea of woman as a helper cannot be a result of sin.
So if God designed the woman to be the helper, what is the work he assigned to man? We hinted at that last week from the evidence that we gleaned from Genesis 1 and 2. Once again, this all occurred prior to the fall of man as recorded in Genesis 3, so again this is God’s original design and not a result of man’s sin.
We could sum up the work of man with another word that begins with the letter “h” – head. So with that in mind, here’s our bottom line for this morning:
God’s design:
Man is the head;
Woman is the helper
This idea of man’s headship was illustrated and confirmed by several aspects of the creation accounts, particularly the more detailed account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis 2.
• Man was created prior to woman. Before the creation of Eve, God placed Adam in the garden to work and keep it. He also told Adam that he could eat the fruit of all the trees in the Garden with the exception of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There is no evidence God ever gave that command directly to Eve. The implication is that God entrusted Adam with the responsibility of passing that command on to his wife.
• God gave Adam the responsibility of naming woman. As we saw last week, Adam recognized that the woman had equal worth – she was “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” – but the fact that God entrusted Adam with the responsibility of naming her also indicates a position of headship in that relationship.
• The fact that God called Eve Adam’s “helper”, confirms the idea of Adam’s headship.
When we look at Genesis 3 in just a moment, we’ll see that the way God deals with Adam and Eve after they sin also confirms the idea that man is the head and woman is the helper.
I think that a lot of the opposition to this concept in our culture comes from a misunderstanding of what it means for the man to be the head and the woman to be the helper. Some of that confusion arises merely because of what those two words convey in the English language. Perhaps we would be better off to use different terms, but I’ve been unable to think of any that would be better. So what we have to do is to make sure that we define those terms the way that they are defined in Scripture and not according to our own pre-conceived notions. We’ll continue to do that in the weeks to come.
But for now, let’s just remember that “headship” does not mean “superiority” or “dominance” and likewise “helper” does not mean “inferiority” or “weakness”. I really like the way Raymond Ortlund, Jr. defines Biblical headship:
In the partnership of two spiritually equal human beings, man and woman, the man bears the primary responsibility to lead the partnership in a God-glorifying direction
Before we go to Genesis 3, let’s review one more time the bottom line that we’ve developed from Genesis 1 and 2 that reflects God’s original design for manhood and womanhood prior to the fall:
God’s design:
Man is the head;
Woman is the helper
Now let’s got to Genesis 3. Since I mainly want to focus on how God deals with Adam and Eve due to their sin, I’m going to begin reading in verse 8:
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
(Genesis 3:8-13 ESV)
Evidence that man is the head and woman is the helper:
• God deals primarily with Adam
Although Eve is the one who was deceived by the serpent, when God comes to seek Adam and Eve, who are hiding, He does not summon both of them but instead specifically calls for Adam and then confronts Adam about their sin. I think it is significant that even though Eve was the one deceived by the serpent and the one who actually took the fruit, God deals with Adam first.
And Adam’s first response, not surprisingly, is to shift the blame to God by claiming that it was the woman God had given to be with him that had given him the fruit. I think almost anyone who reads those words of Adam naturally sees them as his hypocritical attempt to save face before God. That is because I think most of us intuitively recognize that Adam, as the head in this relationship, is the one who ultimately bore responsibility to lead their partnership in a direction that would glorify God.
God had given Adam the task of caring for the garden and the command regarding the one fruit he was not to eat. Since we find no evidence that God had ever given that same command to Eve, I think it’s fair to assume that God intended Adam, as the head to both pass that information on to Even and to lead her to obey God’s commands.
So ultimately, Adam is responsible for what occurred. which is why God deals with him first. And, as we’ll see in a moment, when God reveals the consequences of their sin, His words to Adam are about three times longer than those He has for Eve.
I think the evidence in Scripture indicates the serpent attacked Eve first, not because she was inferior to or morally weaker than Adam. His evil intent was not just to get Adam and Eve to sin, but to completely undermine God’s design for manhood and womanhood. His goal was to get Eve to make the same fatal mistake he had made when he rejected God’s headship and attempted to hijack that role for himself. He understood that if he could just get Eve to assume the role of headship that God had ordained for Adam, then he could completely subvert and pervert the relationship that God intended for them.
So we see that God’s response to Adam and Eve’s sin confirms our bottom line:
God’s design:
Man is the head;
Woman is the helper
Now let’s look at the consequences to man and woman as a result of their sin. What we’ll find is that God’s blessings, which He laid out in Genesis 1 and 2 will now bear His judgment. The blessings are not removed, but the result of the fall is that the God-given work of both man and woman is tainted by sin and therefore becomes much more difficult.
Since, as I mentioned a moment ago, God’s judgment on man is much more significant than that on woman, let’s look at that first:
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:17-19 ESV)
It’s significant that God condemns Adam first, not for eating the fruit and violating His command, but rather for “listening to the voice of his wife”. According to God, Adam’s first sin was that he had abandoned his headship. And that naturally led to the second sin of eating the fruit.
As a result of that sin, man is going to experience two significant judgments:
• First, his work is going to become difficult and painful. It is not work itself that is the curse as some have suggested. God had given Adam the task of working the garden even before Eve was created. But now that task which was to have been carried out in a beautiful garden in which Adam and Even had intimate fellowship with God, a task which was meant to bring joy and fulfillment, was going to take place outside that garden and be difficult and frustrating. The ground that God intended for Adam to subdue would now overcome him.
• The second judgment is even more significant and destructive. As a result of his sin, Adam is going to die and return to dust. It is quite instructive that, as we’ll see in a moment, this death sentence is pronounced on the man, but not on the woman. She was obviously going to die, too, as a result of her sin, but God seems to be reinforcing the concept of the headship of man here by making it clear that to a large degree the well-being of both man and woman is dependent on man as the head.
Let’s turn now to God’s judgment on Eve. Although it is much shorter than Adam’s judgment, it is a bit harder to understand and thus it has often been misused to try and discredit the idea that man is the head and woman is the helper.
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
(Genesis 3:16 ESV)
Notice that God’s judgment impacts the two areas that were intended to be a blessing to Eve – being a wife and a mother.
• The first judgment is that child bearing will be characterized by pain. The privilege of bearing children that had been given by God for the joy and fulfillment of the woman would still do that, but now that miraculous event would result in pain that was never part of God’s original design. Frankly, I’m glad I’m a man because the difficulty of work and even death have to be much more tolerable.
But notice God’s mercy here. Not only will the woman still be able to bear children, it is through that process that God will provide the means for the serpent to be defeated once and for all through the birth of His Son, Jesus to a woman.
• The last part of verse 16 is much more difficult to deal with:
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you
Since Scripture is always the best commentary on Scripture, let’s go to another verse in Genesis where nearly the identical wording is used:
If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
(Genesis 4:7 ESV)
Although it is pretty easy to see the similarities between these two verses in our English translations, in the underlying Hebrew the wording is even closer. In Genesis 4, where God is speaking to Cain, the meaning is pretty clear. God tells Cain that sin is crouching at his door and that its desire is to overpower him, defeat him, subdue him and make him a slave of sin. So if Cain wants to avoid that fate, he must get the upper hand on his sin – he must rule over it.
So if we take that clear meaning from chapter 4 and apply it to God’s words here in Genesis 3, when God says that Eve’s desire shall be for her husband, the idea there is that the result of her sin is that she will desire to overpower and subdue her husband.
According to God’s command in Genesis 1:28, the woman, who had equal worth with man because they were both made in the image of God, was to rule over the rest of creation along with the man. But she was not to have dominion over her husband. So when Eve usurped the headship of Adam in her dealings with the serpent, she perverted God’s design for manhood and womanhood and as a result, part of her judgment is that woman would now desire to subvert the headship of man and to rule over him.
The second part of that curse - that her husband “shall rule over her” - is a bit more difficult to understand. It actually has two possible meanings. On one hand, it could have the effect of saying that even though the woman will desire to rule over her husband, the husband must still exercise his role of godly headship in the relationship.
The other possibility is that God is saying that in response to the woman trying to usurp the husband’s role as head, the husband will attempt to dominate and subdue her. Personally, since this is somewhat ambiguous, I tend to think both possible meanings are applicable. There is certainly no doubt that we observe both things occurring in our culture – men who exercise godly headship as well as those who attempt to subjugate and rule over their wives in an unhealthy way
So what we find is that the fall did not establish God’s design for manhood and womanhood – in fact it actually was the result of Adam and Eve failing to live according to that pattern. As a consequence of that sin, God’s design has not changed. God’s design of man as the head and woman as the helper is still the standard.
It is God’s desire that the partnership between man and woman serve His purposes, not the sinful, selfish desires of either member of that partnership. And that can only occur when man and woman love each other as equals, but not in the same way. A man is to love a woman by making that partnership a platform for displaying God’s glory and the woman is to love the man by supporting him in that godly undertaking.
Sin has made that a much more difficult task, but certainly not an impossible one. I think that Adam recognized that. Instead of turning away from God’s judgment in bitterness and despair, he leaves Eve, and us, with some hope. Near the end of Genesis 3 we find these seemingly insignificant words:
The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
(Genesis 3:20 ESV)
I really believe this is an indication that Adam understood what was at stake in his relationship with Eve. In effect, Adam is saying to Eve, “I believe in God’s design for us. And He, in His mercy, has given us another chance to get it right. And because it is through your seed that all mankind will have the opportunity to experience true life, I give you a new name – Eve – life giver. With that name I express my trust in God and my honor for your role as a woman.”
Today, all of us have the opportunity to do exactly what Adam and Eve did there. Even if we have totally messed up God’s design for our lives as men and women, we have a chance to start over. We can make a commitment right now that from this day forward we’ll live our lives according to God’s design for manhood and womanhood. We can choose to live beginning this very moment based on the idea that man and woman have equal worth but different work and that God created man as the head and woman as the helper.
And, as we’re going to see in the next few weeks, that design, while it is critical in marriage, is also applicable and has a tremendous impact on our lives, even if we’re widowed, divorced or single.
I’m convinced that having a biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood and living according to that design would dramatically transform our culture and is the key to dealing with many of the hot button issues that divide us in this country today. But I also know that we’re not going to convince people of these truths by attacking their lifestyles or calling them names.
Instead I believe that we have to attempt to influence our culture from the inside out. We have to begin to live according to God’s design individually and to pass these truths on to our own families. And then from there we have to embrace these truths as a local church body as we encourage and assist each other to live out our Biblical manhood and womanhood in our everyday lives. From there we need to join with other like-minded local churches to promote this kind of lifestyle. And I’m convinced as we do that, we’ll begin to have an impact on our culture – maybe not right away and maybe not all that noticeable at first. But I certainly think it’s worth the effort don’t you?
