Male and Female
Transcript
Well, good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. I have two brothers, and we're all married, and our wives were all pregnant this year, so that we were going to have, there was going to be a baby born in January, in March, and in May. And my younger brother, and their family was going to have a little boy. Our family was going to have a little boy, and my older brother was going to have a little girl.
And I grew up in a family with three brothers. My dad's a real intense guy, and honestly, when we first went to have children, people were always like, we just really want a healthy baby. And I'm like, yes, absolutely, we're in the zone right now in our church family where a lot of people are having children, and that is what we pray for. And the Lord willing, that works out, and sometimes it doesn't. And that was absolutely a prayer, but I also was like, I'll just be honest with y'all, like I wanted a boy. Like I just, I'm praying healthy, but I want boys.
And the truth was that Phillips is, we don't know anything about girls. Like we always liked them, but we didn't know anything about them. Like grew up in a situation where it was just like, I didn't know, so we started having a son. I was like, cool, I feel like I got this. Like be mean to him, he'll turn out okay. Like that was my thing.
My wife's been correcting that. But, but, so my brother goes, they're having a little girl, and they just had her, she's a precious little girl. And I went to him, and I was like, yeah, I said, you know, like you've got to develop like a healthy, biblical, godly picture of womanhood in your head so that you can help your daughter grow up. And he looked at me and said, why on earth would you say that to me right now? He's like, is this their first child? He's like, I'm just trying to figure this stuff out.
Why would you, he's like, I'm not like laying awake thinking about that tonight. Like I, you know, and it was just like a, it's the truth that right now we both have little babies and they, they, you know, you expect, I expect, we expect very little out of them right now. It's like, we want you to eat. We want you to sleep. We want you to poop. That's about it.
Like it had been a couple of days and our son hadn't pooped yesterday. We said, Hey man, we set some goals for you. You need to poop today. Like that's, like, that's a goal we have for you. And he crushed it by the way. Uh, and, uh, but that's the truth is that right now what's expected out of little infants is, is the same.
But at some point, as we continue to help them grow with our, my sons, I'm going to have to begin to point them into here's what biblical masculinity is. Here's what healthy biblical manhood looks like. And at some point it's going to diverge from my brothers who both have daughters and they're trying to train them. Here's what you ought to look like in biblical femininity and womanhood. And there's, there's been some pushback on this, that all of this is just cultural, that the idea between femininity and masculinity and manhood and womanhood is just, we're just, we're all the same, but we've just been sold on this.
And I read a study on the BBC. I thought this was really interesting that when they polled men and women to, uh, understand kind of how they view themselves, how they think about themselves, what, what's true about them. Um, and had them, everybody fill this stuff out that, uh, men and women vastly understand themselves very differently that they, when they would answer these questions, it was like, okay, there's a huge gap between, uh, men and women in, in all these areas. And then they did it across the globe. And what they found was that in more traditional societies in Africa and Asia, where they have a more traditional home structure, where they have a less egalitarian society, that women have less freedom, they found that the differences between men and women were actually less that in places where there's a more egalitarian society, where there's more freedom, where women are allowed to have more roles that they actually diverge more so that rather than having a more, a more progressive society.
And we suddenly realize, oh no, men and women are the same. What we've begun to realize is that the more progressive the society, the more we, uh, display the differences between men and women. Now that matters immensely to what we're going to look at today. Grab your Bibles, go to Ephesians chapter five. We're spending a decent amount of time in this one passage because it has a lot to say and it has a lot that we need to hear. Um, and I'll explain why we're going to approach this the way we're going to, um, after we read it.
So let's read it together. It's Ephesians chapter five. It'll be on page 569 in this blue Bible. If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you. Um, the, the Bible is the most stolen book in the world, but if you take one with you, it won't be stolen. It's our gift to you.
Take it with you. Um, if you don't own a Bible, we want you to have one. Ephesians chapter five, verse 22 wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife. Even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the words so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.
Well, we'll stop there. I, what, what we could do as we come to this text is it begins with wives submit to your husbands and then it goes to husbands and it gives a very distinct different commands based off of are you male or female? It just draws a line in gender in, in a marriage relationship and says, okay, men, husbands do this. Women, wives do this. And it's just drawn down a biological line. It doesn't say, all right, when y'all get together, figure out who's best at.
It doesn't say take an IQ test, figure out who's smartest. It doesn't say, uh, you know, check out, check out your bench press max and see who can do that. And now y'all can decide, like, it doesn't do that. It just says, uh, you male, all right, you do this or you, okay, do that. And what we could do as we approach this text is we could just read it, say, this is what it says. Let's obey it.
That's fair. That's a perfectly appropriate way to approach the Bible. That's the way my wife approaches the Bible. She's just like, says it. I'm good. I just got to figure out how to do it.
And I love that about her. That's not how I approach the Bible. I approach the Bible and I'm like, it says it and I know I ought to figure out how to do it. But what, but why does it say that though? Like I have this, there's this tension where it's like, I know I ought to follow it, but I got, I got more follow-up questions to try to understand this. It helps me if I understand where it's coming from to follow in a more, uh, to like following a little better.
Now I know I ought to obey and there's sometimes I don't get all the answers I want, but, but I approach it that way. And so rather than just jumping right in and saying, all right, wives, let's talk about how to submit. And then the next week, all right, husbands, let's talk about how to, how to love like Christ loves the church. What we decided was it might be better for us to just investigate this idea of headship in marriage. So it says, verse 23 for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior.
This is a concept that was brought up earlier in Ephesians where it says that Christ is the head of the church and the church has been presented to him. Um, and so this idea of headship in marriage drawn on gender lines is something that I think it'd be helpful for us to understand before we try to try to apply it. So what we're going to do today is we're going to try to trace this through the scriptures. We're going to try to understand where headship comes from, why it's drawn on gender lines as best we can. Next week, we're going to talk specifically to wives and, and understanding how to practically, what does it mean?
Submit. What does it mean when it says everything? Does it mean everything? We're going to talk about that. Uh, then the following, we're going to talk directly to husbands and we're going to spend a little bit time doing Q and a and, um, talking to about singleness, uh, and the, and the scriptures. And so if you have questions and hopefully we will, um, and honestly, I don't think I'll answer all of them.
So if you get frustrated, you feel like something was said poorly, uh, give me some grace, but ask some questions. Um, not now don't raise your hand. I won't call on you. I've done that before in a sermon, but we're not doing that anymore. Uh, you can send them in and there's the information will be, uh, we can see it later, uh, where you can send them in and go through our website. Okay.
That got rambly. Let's go. Um, when it, when the Bible talks about headship, it talks about in a couple of different ways. It talks about a preexisting pre-creation headship, a creation ordinance headship. And then it talks about the fall and a redeemed picture of headship. And right now what we see in Ephesians is pointing to the redeemed picture where it says that, that this is supposed to model Christ and the church.
This idea that Jesus loves and redeems the church, how he pursues the church, how the church relates to Christ. And it's pointing to the redeemed picture of headship, but it also talks about a preexistent one and a creation one. So we're going to look at those as well to try to trace this through the scripture. So, um, Corinthians, we're just gonna have it on screen cause it's short Corinthians. Uh, he refers to kind of the creation one and the preexistent one. So he says, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ.
The head of a wife is her husband and the head of Christ is God. And so what he's saying is like, you need to understand that some of this comes from how the world works and he ends with the head of Christ is God. So he's saying that God, the father is head of Christ. And I think this is very encouraging and helpful when we try to understand what it means for husbands to be the head of their wife. Okay. Theology quiz time.
Is Jesus better than the father? Has more value than the father? No. Does the father have more value? Is he better than Jesus? Is he greater than Jesus?
No. Philippians tells us that although Christ had equality with God, he didn't see equality as a thing to be grasped, but he submitted himself to God, the father so that Christ lives out a submission to the father's will, not because his value is less, but because he has a, he shows deference to the father and he has a different role. So that when it says that Christ, the head of Christ is God, what it's saying is that this is his existed. This idea, this concept, the way this works in the world has existed in eternity past within the Trinity between God, the father, God, the son, Holy spirit, but that Christ submits to the will of the father.
And then we see in the scriptures that the father uses that to, to lead and then to elevate Christ to a place above everything that Christ is elevated with a name above all names. And so that it's a preexistent picture, but it's also a creation picture. So if you'll see, uh, as he keeps going in this in verses eight and nine, we'll read 11 and 12 as well. Um, verse eight and nine for man was not made from woman. And we're going to read this in Genesis in a second, but woman from man, neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. And that makes sense.
Because if you were going to help a man out, you would create a woman, but if you're going to help a woman out, it just doesn't make sense the other way. All right. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman for as woman was made from man. So man is now born of woman and all things are from God. And so he tempers it. He says that this is the way it was created.
This is the way God designed it in creation. This is the way he, he set it up when he made things. And then he says, but it's not like, don't get cocky. This is, he also set it up to where we're consistently dependent and we're all dependent on God. So he tempers it.
But he does say that headship, this idea comes from creation. So grab your Bibles, go to page one. It'll be Genesis chapter one. We're going to spend a little bit of time in Genesis one, two, and three, and just kind of trace this out. It'll give us some understanding about gender in general. And then we'll apply it to marriage in specific.
So when you read about Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, they were both first man, first woman, as well as first husband, first wife. And so we learn things about marriage and gender from them. Um, and so we, we have to draw some, some conclusions out of their relationship to understand what's applicable where. So we're going to look at, uh, some things about gender in general and some things about, um, marriage in specific. So chapter one, I just want us to look at verse 27 and 28.
Um, chapter one, Genesis chapter one, he kind of, the, the author gives us like an overview of creation. It's a, it's a flyby kind of an understanding of here's how everything was created. And then in Genesis chapter two, it zooms in and gives a more, um, a more intricate picture of how that actually worked. So rather than just kind of saying, here's how it works, it zooms in a little bit. But Genesis chapter one says this.
So God created man, uh, and that word includes, um, both male and female. So it could be humanity. It's the way we use man. Sometimes we're talking about like mankind. So God created man in his own image and the image of God.
He created him male and female. He created them. So what it's telling us in Genesis one is that God, a kind of the sixth day of creation creates male and female. And it says, and God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So God takes man and woman.
He creates them. And then he says, y'all have a co reign over the earth that both male and female were made in God's image that anybody would try to take the Bible and say that somehow man is better than woman or somehow woman is better than man that gets its legs cut out from under it in chapter one of Genesis, that they were made both in the image of God and both called to have dominion over the earth, to co reign together, to subdue the earth. And then chapter two gives us a zoomed in picture of this. So if you look at chapter two, we're going to start in 13. And as we go, we'll pull out some pictures, some understanding of some things about masculinity, some things about femininity, but again, trying to understand this idea of headship and a little bit of why it's drawn on gender lines.
So the Lord God took the man. So he made the man first, took the man, put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. Now, as far as we know in the text, that's the only time God says that. So he says it specifically to the man.
And then when later, when Eve comes on the scene, we're to assume the man was supposed to have explained that and to lead in that well. But he takes the man, he puts him in a garden. And so he has a garden in Eden. And then he's kind of commanded that humanity together is to make the rest of the world look like the garden, to subdue it, to conquer, to slowly grow and to make the rest of the world beautiful. And he says that the man is to work and to keep it. And that's a small, helpful understanding of some of the call on masculinity.
Men are supposed to work. They're supposed to defend, to keep, to shield, to guard, to protect, and they're supposed to cultivate. So he's putting a garden and he's supposed to make it better. But that's a call on masculinity. To work, to defend, to keep, and to cultivate. If you're trying to understand a biblical picture of masculinity, it does not give us a lot of specific things.
It gives us general pictures. I think one of the ways, if you're a guy and you're trying to understand this, I think 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 are good examples of what the call on masculinity is because that's the call to eldership, which is a male office in the church. And it says, here's how to do that. Here's how to walk in that. And that's a helpful because it includes things like gentleness, which if I was writing out things about manhood, that wouldn't have made my list. Like I put aggressiveness on a list of manhood, but I wouldn't put gentleness.
And then the Bible corrects me. It says no gentleness and don't be argumentative and don't be fighting for fighting sake. And you can't be, uh, the Bible says not a striker, which means don't punch people. And it's like, okay, I'll take the correction. Like help me out here in trying to understand. But like, one of the things I'm doing with my son is trying to figure out what are things that are true about Jesus?
What are things that are true about God? Then they need to be like, I can say you ought to be kind. You ought to be gentle. One of the things I have to say to my son is I don't just say, don't cry or stop crying on my good days. Some days I do. Stop it.
One of the things I try to say to him is, hey, there are good things to cry about. This isn't one of them. There are things that are perfectly fine for you to cry about. Um, when we were going to go see Black Panther together and it was sold out, I just let him cry a little bit. I was like, that's sad, man. That's sad.
When, when we're at the house and I tell him to turn the TV off and he wants to cry, it's like, bro, you can't be crying about that. Like there are things to cry about. The TV turning off isn't one of them. Like understanding that there are, there's a biblical picture for masculinity, but it's general. It doesn't tell us things like, um, should know how to, I was watching the middle the other day and he was talking to his son. He said, there's six things every man needs to know how to do.
You know how to kick down the door. You need to know how to open a bottle without a bottle opener. Like he, he had this list. You need to learn how to whistle with your fingers. That list isn't in the Bible. Like there's not six things.
Well, that's going to be a bad if it gets away from me here. It's not six things, uh, that are specific to manhood as much as a general picture of the call. Then it says this, then the Lord God said, this is verse 18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. We're going to define that in a second.
Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. And in Hebrew understanding that helps show the man's authority over creation. The man gave names to all the livestock and all the birds of the heavens and every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs, closed up the place from the flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man. Okay. So he says, I need to make a helper fit for him. And then it just pauses. And he says, all right, let's name all the animals.
So he says, it's not good that you're alone. And just guys understand that was the first thing that was said about masculinity. Like this is mint conditioned manhood. He's as rugged and as manly and as designed. I mean, God formed him with his hands. And then God looks at him, sets him in the garden, gives him some instructions, watches him and says, nope.
This isn't going to work. And that's not just a comment on men in specific, like every man has to have a wife. That's a comment on masculinity and the call to, to subdue and lead the earth that masculinity needs femininity for the world to work properly. So then he says, I've got to make something that works. I've got to make something that helps him. And it's not the word helper is the, is the Bible word Ezer.
It is most often used to talk about God. So Psalm 33, 20 says, our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. Psalm 75 says, I am poor and needy. Hasten to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer.
O Lord, do not delay. Yesterday I was working on my car and Archer was being my little helper. And I gave him like a flashlight to hold and point where in the middle of the day, I just needed him to have something in his hands so that he would quit. Like he got a hammer and just started hitting stuff. And it was like, no, no, like here, hold this. And he's like, I need a better flashlight because he's sharp and could tell this wasn't shining on anything.
That's not what it means. He didn't look at man and go, you know what you need? It's a cute little helper. Someone make your sandwiches while you're doing stuff. Like that's not what he's doing. That's not what the word means.
It means a ferocious help. The help is a fine word. We've made it a little bit diminutive. We've made it a little bit short, but it's a ferocious help. It's like reinforcements. It's used that way in the Bible that these people were about to lose the battle and God and like they sent in reinforcements and then they won.
It's used of God. Now that's helpful for us to understand because the primary call is given to man. He's placed there first. He's given the call. He's told to do these things. And then God said this, you will be insufficient, but there is an amount of headship of leadership given to the man in this relationship.
And then he says, no, but this is incomplete and it won't work properly. The word fit. Some of you, uh, maybe it says I'll make your helper meet for him. If you have an older translation, um, the word actually translates into like opposite. I'll make something that's like him, but that's opposite him. And that's actually like God designed men and women to be different.
It would make zero sense if he just meant there needs to be four hands on this. No, he meant I need something different from this. He can only see a certain way. He's only going to approach this a certain way. I need something different. Uh, there's, um, I got a few quotes.
I thought were interesting. This is from the Stanford, uh, medicine. Let me read this first. This was a, it was a, uh, a feminist. Um, her name is Carol Gilligan. And she was one of the first people that began to kind of push back on the all men and women are the same stuff.
She was like, no. And, and isn't that helpful for feminists to step in that they wrongly say, no, they rightly say we're different. And then they wrongly say in women are better. And it's like, well, no, maybe at some things, sure. Not at all things. That's not how it's designed to work.
We're supposed to be different and we're supposed to be distinct from one another. It makes sense that God would not make them at the exact same. He made them distinct so that they can compliment one another. But she comes along in her book and a different voice. She says, one of the things that you see from very early on is that men think they are growing. They understand growth as becoming independent, separating attachment.
He says that most women, and this is all generalization, but most women consider themselves growing when they become attached. The more attachments they make, the more that connections they make, the more dependent they become and more people become dependent on them, the more they feel like they've grown. She says this starts very early on. There was an article from Stanford Medicine. I'm going to read a quote and then there's a quote inside of that. It says, social psychologists and sociologists poo-pooed the notion of any fundamental cognitive differences between male and female humans.
Halpern, a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College, in her preface to her first edition, Halpern wrote, at the time it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts and mistakes in the research and bias and prejudice. She's saying, I approached this and was like, the only reason anybody says women are like this, men are like this, is because they've got bad research or they've been socialized to believe that. After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles, I changed my mind. She says, the more research I did, the more I realized, no, they're made different.
And we get that from Genesis 2. That God designed femininity, womanhood, to be distinct from manhood. That he had a plan. There's a lot of, she had a list. I want to read this quickly. I thought this was helpful.
She said, these findings have all been replicated. Women excel in several measures of verbal ability. Pretty much all of them. Except for verbal analogies. Women's reading comprehension and writing ability consistently exceed that of men. On average.
They outperform men in tests of fine motor coordination and perceptual speed. They're more adept at retrieving information from long-term memory. Some of you are like, that sounds really true. Men, on average, can more easily juggle items in working memory. They have superior visuospatial skills. They're better at visualizing what happens when a complicated two or three dimensional shape is rotated in space.
They're good at correctly determining angles from the horizontal and at tracking moving objects and at aiming projectiles. I got to the end and I was like, yeah! Like, I see an airplane, I can shoot it with a missile. All right. I don't get to do that, but that'd be awesome. But there's all kinds of stuff.
They started realizing these differences between masculinity and femininity, between males and females, happened like they gave monkeys toys. And they realized that baby monkeys and monkeys do the same thing that baby humans do. Females, for the most part, like soft toys. Both monkeys and humans. Males like toys with wheels. Like, they would automatically separate and start doing stuff differently.
They found out there was a difference in the way infants react to things. That males most likely like moving things and females are most drawn to faces. And then she was like, and this continues, that males like objects and moving things. That distracts them. And females pay attention to faces. One of the things in here I thought was really interesting, they did brain scans on males and females and they made them remember something that was an emotional experience.
And they looked at their brains and the men's memory section lit up. And the emotion section didn't do much. And when they had females remember the same thing, their memory section and their emotion section lit back up. They felt the same stuff. Guys, if you've ever been in an argument with a female and she got re-mad over something that happened 12 years ago. The other thing they found was that when they had males and females sit and listen to noises and they listened to music and they saw how they reacted and then listened to white noise and they saw how they reacted, females responded the same to music as they did to white noise.
Males heard the music and pretty quickly ceased to hear the white noise. There's something about the male brain, they said, that is able to turn off unwanted acoustic stimuli. This is why I'll be sitting at my house and my wife will go, check. And I'll go, what? And she'll go, answer your son. And I'll realize he's been standing at my feet going, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.
He became unwanted acoustic stimuli. God designed men and women differently on purpose in order to complement one another. It's in us. Every single one of your cells. You can take a cell from any part of the body and it's stamped with either two X chromosomes or an X and a Y chromosome. That my wife's heart is a female heart.
It's XX on everything. And my heart is a male heart. XY on everything. Does it do the same thing? Yes. But God has placed it in us down to our courts.
Not that he just swapped out reproductive organs. It's that we are distinct on purpose. And so God designing this the way he did. Realizing that masculinity on its own. And this is creation wide. Not just in marriage, but creation wide.
Masculinity on its own would be incomplete. And designed femininity on purpose to complement that well. And then cut them loose to subdue and rule in the world. And this was beautiful. And it worked amazingly for like this much of the Bible. Oh, sorry.
I did that too big. This much of the Bible. Chapter 3. We have the fall. And that's where humanity rebels against God. And this gets broken.
This beautiful complementary design gets broken. And it's simple. The idea of complementary just means they go well together. They pair well together. It's like, you ever have a great pizza with a wonderful glass of chocolate milk? No.
You know how gross that was? Just to hear? Like my son drinks milk with everything. And I'm like, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. Milk's good. But bro, that's gross.
Like you just aren't doing this right. Like the idea that they go well together. They're meant to complement one another. And that's the way he designed this. And then this gets broken. It goes from being the appropriate things to drink with Italian food.
And this is a church. I'm not going to talk about it a whole lot. But just the appropriate things to drink with Italian food. And now we're all drinking chocolate milk with our Italian food. That's all I'm saying. It messes it up.
So here's what happens. A serpent comes in and she... The serpent begins to talk to Eve. And he tricks her, deceives her into rebelling against God. There was one tree that Adam and Eve weren't supposed to mess with. Adam's told this.
It was to assume he should have coached Eve up, led well in this. If God told her specifically, we don't see that in the text. And she eats the fruit. And she... Then it says she handed the fruit to her husband who was with her.
And so immediately all of us should have been like, what? Like he was just here. She's talking to a snake. He didn't... Like there's no teamwork here. He just was waiting to see how it shook out.
Then God shows up. When they do this, this is sin. Because God told them not to. And so now, rather than following his good lead, they decided we know what's best. They rebel against him. This is how all sin enters the world.
God shows up. He calls out to Adam. Again, we would see that there's a little bit of weight placed on the leadership of Adam. The headship of Adam. That this is already written into creation. That he's placing the weight there.
And he calls out to him. And he says, what happened? And Adam says, the woman that you gave me. She gave me the fruit of the tree. And I ate it. So Adam does what men begin to do immediately after the fall.
God, I'm pretty sure this is your fault and her fault. I was just there. It was her. And I don't want to say anything. Because I thought she was great when I first met her. She seems kind of defective.
Like you didn't do this right. Because you made her. I didn't... I was just pulling that out. So God curses the serpent.
He curses the woman. And he curses the man. He basically says, here's what's going to happen now. Because of this. To the woman he said. Verse 16.
I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. This is true. Like I said, my wife and I, she just gave birth. But he's about two months old.
We were in there. And she would say stuff like, I'm in a lot of pain. And the nurse would go, great. That's what's supposed to happen. She would say, I feel like I'm going to throw up. And she'd be like, oh, it's wonderful.
That means we're progressing. She was like, I'm starting to shake. My hands aren't working. She's like, great. The new mom shakes. And it was like, what can she say that's wrong here?
Like, you just are excited. And she actually looked at us at one point and said, this is the only place. Where nausea and blood and pain and shake. Like all the bad things are good here. And I was like, man, that curse wasn't playing around. And it doesn't matter how you go about having a baby.
And it doesn't matter if you have children or don't have children. And it doesn't matter. It's this for women is a pain area. Children as they grow. Children if you decided not to have children. If you can't have children.
Like this is a pain area. This is took something that was going to be beautiful and it's cursed. Then he says, your desire shall be contrary to your husband. But he shall rule over you. Some of your versions are going to say your desire shall be against your husband. Some of your versions are going to say your desire shall be for your husband.
It's kind of complex in how you read it in the Hebrew. And translators have to make different decisions. But one of the things that helps us understand what he's saying here is chapter 4, verse 7. Where God is talking to Cain. And he says, sin's desire is for you. Or sin's desire is contrary to you.
And you must rule over it. So it's the exact same, I mean, stroke by stroke phrase in the Hebrew. And so what he's saying is that sin wants to own you, rule you, harm you, destroy you. And you have to fight it. You have to have dominion over it. And so this good, beautiful, complimentary relationship that was going to happen in marriage and in humanity, he says, no, it's broken now.
That your desire is going to be contrary to your husband and he shall rule over you. And this happens between the sexes in life and it happens between husband and wife. And then to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife. And there he doesn't mean don't listen to your wife. Like I can't quote this to Anna and be like, I'm not going to be like Adam. I ain't trying to listen to you.
Like it, it's not what he means. Because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten the tree of which I commanded you. What he's saying is you didn't listen to me. You didn't follow me. You followed her. And you didn't lead.
You just, you just, you were just there. And you just tagged along. And you just completely abdicated what you were supposed to do. And rather than following me, you followed her. And rather than leading. And that's what he's saying when he starts off.
Because you listen to the voice of your wife. 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. And you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.
For out of it you were taken. I read that with a weird. 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. So death enters and work becomes toil. What was going to be good. He put him in the garden to work. And it was good work. It was like you know how work can be good.
Where things just work out. And they're nice. And you can look and say look at how good. That's the way work was going to be. And he says now you're just going to sweat. And it's going to be awful.
The ground is going to fight you. And men have you seen that? When you finally are like I'm going to do what God wants me to do. And I'm going to work. And I'm going to get up early. And I'm going to read my Bible.
And I'm going to leave my family. And I'm going to. It fights you. It is not easy. It will be done by the sweat of your face. Okay.
We have the pre-existent version. That beautifully happens between the father and the son. We have that woven into creation. When God says I want them to be different. And to show deference to one another. Equal in value.
Equal in worth. Both made in my image. Both needed to display what I'm like to the world. But I want there to be deference here. So he makes the man first.
He brings the woman from him. Paul tells us later that that helps us see. Why there's a weight placed on the man. And a level of headship in marriage. Now. In marriage.
Single people. That's not men to women. There is a distinct call on masculinity. And there's a distinct call on femininity. But masculine manhood does not include headship to womanhood.
Headship is only brought into marriage. So it's not like you're in your group discussing something. And you and some guy disagree. And he looks at you and says. Hey. I think you did just submit to me.
I'm a man. Get your Bible out. Pop him in the face with it. So let's go text bro. Like. That's not.
It's not man to woman. And. If you are single. Men. This does not. You're not incomplete.
Without a woman. This is masculinity and femininity on a grand scale. It's perfectly fine to want to get married. But get your stuff together. Get a job. Start carrying weight.
Men were designed to carry weight. One of the. My favorite sayings. I heard somebody say one time. Is that men are like trucks. They drive straighter with a load.
That you're designed to carry weight. Women. Single women. You're not waiting around all shucks. For a man to show up. So you have something to do.
You've been given. A call. To co-rule. And subdue. The earth. And there's one thing that's.
Designed. Innate in femininity. It's to see where things are broken. And begin to help. To see. This is why women lead so many organizations.
Where they just come along. And they go. Uh. The. There's a whole gap here. Where nobody's paying attention.
And nobody's making this better. And nobody's at work here. And they just go to work. And it's beautiful. It's a ferocious work. Also.
Learn your Bibles. Learn theology. I heard a pastor say. That's one of the best ways. To spray on boy repellent. You don't want boys hanging around.
Know your Bible. It'll scare them. Men will like it. Boys will run. Maybe they'll grow up. Come back knowing their Bible.
After you popped them in the face of yours. This was supposed to work. And be beautiful. And in some ways. This still shows up. That I feel like this shows up in my life.
Where God looked and said. No. Like. Chet needs Anna. For this to work out well. He needs her at work.
For him to. To. To help this. For him to receive. And to follow the way he's supposed to. That we're designed to work together.
There's so many places. Where she has just kind of posted up. And been like. This isn't okay. You're not thinking about that right. That's not biblical.
And just helped me grow. And just. I mean. Ferociously. Been a part of. Our family being healthy.
In so many beautiful ways. But it is broken. That this. Way this was supposed to work. Where. Men were supposed to lovingly.
Sacrificially lead. Carry weight. And women were supposed to be. A ferocious help. But we're told.
In scripture now. With a spirit of submission. In marriage. This is. We're talking specifically. To husbands.
Wives. There's a spirit of submission. With a ferocious. Labor. And men were supposed to lovingly. Sacrificially.
Head. Their families. Lead. Their families. That it's broken. That we were designed.
Men. Husbands. We were designed. To think of our wives first. The other day. My wife's mom was with us.
She had just had surgery. My wife was running out. To get her a sandwich. She was going to pick up sandwiches. Like you want a sandwich? I said no.
I don't want a sandwich. And then I thought. Well the sandwich shop. Is right next to. The pizza place. So I just called.
And ordered myself a pizza. And I called my wife. And said hey. I ordered a pizza. Will you go pick it up? And she said oh good.
In that moment. I realized. She wanted pizza. Pizza over a sandwich. But I completely.
Just ordered what I wanted. Not what she would have wanted. I didn't even. Like she didn't even exist. Other than the person. To pick up my pizza.
Y'all. Like this was. And I just was like. She said what? I was like. Well you're not really going to like that pizza.
I already paid for it. So. So ordered two pizzas. That's not how it's supposed to work. But there's something broken.
That I don't think of her first. That I don't just elevate her. That I don't sacrifice. That so many times. It just doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Let me tell you.
So if men were supposed to. As we take the two pictures. From Ephesians. And Genesis. If men were supposed to carry weight. To work.
To labor. To tend. To protect. To lead. With. Sacrificial.
Love. That's what we're told. In Ephesians chapter 5. Flip back to Ephesians. We'll spend the rest of our time there. With sacrificial.
Love. That Jesus begins to redeem this picture for us. So that Ephesians chapter 5. 25. Says husbands. Love your wives.
As Christ loved the church. And gave himself up for her. If that's what men were supposed to do. Let me show you how this goes wrong. In both directions. You will have men.
That just move into the. Complete. Curse of the fall. They carry weight. They work. And they rule.
They don't lead. They have dominion. They dominate. They oppress. They maybe use their stature. Both in the world.
Financially. Or their stature. Physically. To completely dominate. There's no love. There's no sacrifice.
It's just machismo. They just flex. Because it's broken. Or. You have men. Who completely.
Take on the sin of Adam. And abdicate. Maybe they're loving. And maybe they hide behind the idea of sacrifice. But they're not working.
They're not serving. Let me show you some ways. This is the guy who won't get a job. Lives in his parents basement. Can't find the right Job. Just.
It's easier just to not. You know. That didn't really work. He's not carrying weight. This is the husband. Who consistently just says to his wife.
Well if you care about it. You do it. You make that decision. He just punts on everything. She can just hold the bag for everything. If.
If that was a bad decision. She can deal with it. That'll be on her. When they disagree. If she disagrees. Rather than saying.
This is what I think is best. And leading. Even though it's more difficult. He just says. Well you just do it. Just whatever.
And they'll say stuff like. I just can't wait till this falls apart. So she can see I was right. It's like. Bro. That's abdication.
It's not sacrifice. You're holding her out. So that she can take a beating. So that you can then show that you. They were called to both. A sacrificial leadership.
We're going to spend. Oh. In two weeks. We're going to spend time. I'm just talking about. How does that look?
How do we do that? Women. If there's supposed to be. A ferocious labor. A ferocious help. Seeing what's broken.
And going to work. And complete complimenting. Where it's falling apart. And this will look different. All over the spectrum. But if there's supposed to be that.
With a spirit of gentleness. A spirit of submissiveness. Because there's headship. And you're deferring. Not weaker than. Not smaller.
Not lesser in value. But deferring. Let me show you how this goes wrong. You'll see women. Completely shift into. Submissiveness.
They're not going to say anything. They're not going to do anything. Just going to hang out. Let the man do his thing. You'll see them know. That their husband.
Or their boyfriend. Or whoever is making a huge mistake. They don't help. See my wife helps me. By saying. You know that's dumb.
Right? She doesn't say. You know you're dumb. That's helpful too. She says. You know.
That's dumb. Right? Y'all aren't doing. Like you. Yeah. Have you thought about.
Like. Hmm. She asks questions. She's gracious. On her good days. Hey.
I just was thinking. Maybe you hadn't. Like. Have you thought about this thing? Because what you about to do stupid. She doesn't just blow in.
And try to blow me up. She. But they just don't help. Just complete. Rob. Rob the world.
Rob their friends. Rob their company. Rob their husband. Of all that God poured in them. To be complimentary. And ferocious.
Or. It's just the curse. You're just contrary. Everything within your power. To undercut. To control.
To manipulate. You got different tools. At your. At your. Expense. Like there's.
Earlier it said. That women. Excel. In everything verbal. Except for analogies. So maybe when you're.
Just completely destroying. A man verbally. You're really hard to say. And you're also. Your face is like a dog. It's like I don't know.
Maybe you have a hard time. With that part. But everything else works. You will see. Women do this. In conversation.
Their husband will start to talk. And they'll lean. Look at them. And then give the verbal equivalent. If my wife began to speak. And I walked right over.
And just popped her on the face. And said be quiet. It's the verbal equivalent of that. You'll see men shrivel. My wife has more ability. To suck the life out of me.
Than anybody ever. And she has more ability. To put wind in my sail. And make me think. I could go tackle. A freight train.
Than anybody ever. My wife pumps me up. Primes me up in the morning. I could walk out. And I just will. What world.
You want something. And if she follows me around. Just cutting. And taking away. I'll shrink. And you'll see women.
That do everything. In their power. And maybe some of them are bigger. Maybe some of them are dominating. Maybe some of them. I got an aunt.
She can flex on you. She can put you down. A lot of them can't. But my wife weighs 100 pounds. And she can cut me down like that. But by God's grace.
She doesn't. You're meant to be here. With a spirit of gentleness. And an unwillingness. To not help. I'm in this.
I'm a part of this. This is going to be better. Because I'm here. And because God's gifted me. And because God's poured. His work in me.
Now. Real quick. Why? The Bible doesn't tell us. The Bible doesn't give us a real clear. Here's why men.
Here's why women. That's why it gets so convoluted. Where people are like. You know. Guys want to be like. Well I guess because men are better.
It's like. Bro. That's not in the text. But why? We don't know. But what we do know.
What I do know. Is that I need the Holy Spirit. At work in me. That's where Paul starts. This in Ephesians. Where he says.
Walk in the spirit. And he walks through this. I need the Holy Spirit. At work in me. To actually be able to do this. I can.
I can dominate. Without the spirit. And I can abdicate. Without the spirit. But I can't sacrificially lead.
Without Jesus. At work in me. And I'm assuming. I've never been a woman. But I'm assuming.
That's how that works over here. That you can just sit. Throw your hands up. And watch men do stupid stuff. Or you can manipulate. And control.
And do everything you possibly can. To reign. But. To submit. And help. To serve with gentleness.
And to be in it. You need the Holy Spirit at work. Last thing is this. When we do this. Men carry a weight. That is necessary.
For their growth. And females have a freedom. That helps them flourish. And it's beautiful. When you see this work. In a marriage relationship.
Where husbands and wives. Walk this out. And it displays. Ephesians 5 tells us. Christ. And the church.
That people see Jesus. In a way they couldn't otherwise. My wife and I. Do not know how to dance. We can middle school dance. We're married.
We can get a little closer. You know. We made up a random dance. That was just like. We just memorized some stupid moves. So that we could do something dumb.
And then get off the. Off the floor. But like. I don't know how to like. Do all this mess. And like the steps.
And I. You know. When we try to dance. I step on her. But have you ever seen people.
Who know how to dance. Dance. It's captivating. I think this is actually one of the things. That TV's messed us up on. People used to get together and dance.
And they had to learn stuff. All we do is like the cha-cha slide. And the electric slide. Which is just line dancing. Because they're like. Stomp.
Spin around. Wave your hands. We're all like. We're dancing. It's like you're following instructions. And some of y'all.
Not really. That's me. I can't even follow the instructions. That's like. Watch Matt. We go to weddings.
I got to watch. See what Matt Freeman's doing. And I do that. And when I spin around. If I'm on the end. It's over with y'all.
If there's nobody here. I don't even know what to do. I don't know what the cha-cha is. But if you've ever seen people. Who know how to dance. Dance.
It's beautiful. Somebody leads. Somebody follows. But you can't even really tell. It just works. And that's what this is supposed to look like.
There's supposed to be leadership. There's supposed to be submission. But when it works right. It's just beautiful. And everything's put on display. And what we're told is that Jesus shines through it.
The band's going to come back up. Our goal over the next couple weeks. Is just to try to figure out how to do that. How to dance well. How to dance well when your partner's defective. How to put Christ on display when it's difficult.
How to put Christ on display as you work together to do that. That's our goal in the next couple weeks. Send in as many questions as you have. We're going to try to study this text. And see how we can learn to walk in obedience. In a way that displays Jesus.
And displays his love for the church. To a watching world. With something that they don't have. Let's pray. God we ask that you would empower. The single females in our church.
To not abdicate their role. To make everything around them better. We pray that none of us would undercut their position. Or somehow communicate that they have less value. We pray that single men in our church. Would begin to carry weight.
Wouldn't just be male. But would be men. That honor and display. The glory that you've placed in them. As you've made them image bearers. We pray that we'd work well together on that.
We pray that you'd bless the marriages in our church. That we might dance in a way. That displays the glory of the cross. Help us grow in this. Be repentant. And open to following you.
In Jesus name. Amen.