I recall some conversations that
I have had in my own mind over the years where I ask a lot of
questions. You ever ask a lot of questions
of yourself? And you don't have the answer. There's no one listening
but you. So no one can give you the answer.
But I have asked the question before, what can God not do? What can God not do? Now most
people say, well, what is it that God can do? But I think
a better question is to say, what can God not do? And there's
a short list. There are some things God cannot
do. God cannot lie. He cannot fail. He cannot not be the High One,
God. And we could speculate and reason
through other iterations of those things. So if that's the truth
about what God cannot do, then everything else God can accomplish
according to His purposes and His power. And we've seen that,
haven't we? Remember, Genesis 1 and 2 are
written that we may know the power of God. Jesus says in John
17 that this is eternal life, that they know you, the one true
God and the Son whom you have sent. Part of knowing Salvificly,
God is that He grants us the wisdom and who is Christ Jesus
to see who He really is. And one of those true things
is His power. God is His power. His power is Him. And so we see the creation of
all things out of nothing. We see it good. We see the creation
of all life. We see the segregation, the division
of all life. We see the unity of all things
glorious and good. We see everything come together. We see man and then out of man
came woman and all is good. But God then says something not
so good in His Word at this time. Let's read together Genesis 2,
18-25. And then the Lord God said, it
is not good, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for
him. 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. 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. So the
Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while
the man slept, God took one of his ribs and closed up its place
with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man He formed and made into a woman, and brought
her to the man. And the man said, This is at
last bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called
woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall
leave his father and leave his mother, and the two shall hold
fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And the
man and his wife were both naked, and not ashamed. See? Everything is good, and
then there's something that's not good. Now, we've already
discussed this. We've already talked about this.
We already know the point of this text. Now, this is a part
in Scripture where, you know, this poetic narrative, if I will,
if I can say that for those of you who understand genre, This
is an illustration of the fact that God did something and very
brief specifics on what God did except that He made them. That's
all He wants to reveal to us. And the reason that He made them
is so that we could understand Christ and ourselves in Christ
and out of Christ effectively. This is where we need to make
special attention or take special attention to note that you cannot
just start with the book of Genesis and understand it. You have to
know the gospel. You have to understand that the
apostles tell us what Moses means. Even the Jews of Jesus' day did
not understand Moses. Remember in John chapter 5? where
they're talking with Jesus, and Jesus is talking with them, and
they're quoting Scripture, and talking about Moses, and all
the stuff that they've known, and all the centuries of heady
understanding of theology. And Jesus basically, and I'll
paraphrase here, said, if you understood Moses, then you'd
know who I was. If you understood Moses, and
if you saw and read Moses because you think that Moses will show
you eternal life, you'd see that he was talking about me. Moses
was talking about Christ when he said, in the beginning. Moses
was talking about Christ when he said, let there be life, light. Moses was talking about Christ
when he said that God formed the heavens and the earth. How
do we know that? John tells us that in the prologue
of his gospel narrative. Paul tells that very clearly
to the Hebrew Christians when he wrote the letter to the Hebrews.
Paul then also tells the Colossians the very same thing that Christ
by the Word of His power upholds the universe that He created
for His purpose and for His glory. But there's one element in the
context of the power of God that we often fail to wonder about,
and it is one of these central things regarding the good report,
the good news, what we call the gospel. The good news centers and sits upon the cliff
of humility. Creation exists in a state of
humility. It is unable to exist outside
of its Creator. Creation became in a state of
humility. It was not, then it was, beholding
to its Creator. Creation still exists in a state
of humility for it is upheld by the Word of His power. In
Romans 1, Paul makes it very clear that the power of God is
revealed in the creation of all that exists, but the true revelation
of the power of God in creating all things is simply to show
His humble sacrifice of Himself as the God-man to save His people
from their sins. And brothers and sisters, we
spend a lot of time trying to make things too difficult. I
promise you children are better theologians than all the PhD
friends that I have. They really are. And if you've
never sat down and taught the scripture with a child, you're
missing out because they will say things you go, I've been
working two years to try to figure out how to put that simply and
then just go, it just comes out. We make much of things that shouldn't
be made much of because we want to be the Creator. We want to
come to a place where humility is not our platform. It is not
upon that which we float and exist in the world. We want traction. We want teeth, we want hands,
we want to be able to climb and scale this wall of Christianity,
scale this wall of doctrine, scale this wall of deep theology,
so that we can say, aha! I have made it! By the grace
of God, of course. That's bologna! I have stronger
words, but rated G. It's bologna. Not to defame bologna,
for those of you who eat it. It's garbage. giving God credit
for our hubris. Let's stop thanking Him for our
arrogance. Let's stop giving Him the credit
for our incredible intellectual pursuits. These are idols. Worshipping not the very one
to whom they point, we're no different than the first century
Sanhedrin when we do those things. And we're all in the same boat,
see. We're all in the same boat. We all lack humility. The Pharisee, as Jesus would
tell the story of these two distinctly different and far apart peoples. the Jewish tax collector, the
publican who robbed his own people for his own profits, and the
Pharisee who worshiped and prayed and taught the Bible and corrected
error and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All this other
garbage. And he thanked God that he was
what he was and he tithed and he preached and he said blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You see what I'm saying? Folks,
those are the voices that ring in my ears from my childhood. about being dedicated to the
cause of Christ. You want to be dedicated to the
cause of Christ? Be lowly. Be quiet. Be patient. Be submissive. And then there's the publicans. The Pharisees said, oh, thank
you, God Almighty. Probably had tears flowing down
his face that I'm not like that sinner over there, that I'm not
like these sinners. Thank you, God, that I have all
the right answers. Thank you, God, that I can parse
the text. Thank you, God, that I can lead people to the truth
of the glory of your name. But they could not see the glory
of his name, you see. They could not see it because
they were blinded judicially because they were not in a place
of humility because God had not granted the mind of the Pharisee
in that story to change to see the humility of Christ in His
place in the grand scheme of the created world in the fact
that God in all of His glorious, awesome magnificence became a
nothing to save nothings. but the other man tore his clothes,
would not even dare look toward the sky out of fear of gazing
in the heavens." In a literal translation of what
the Scripture says, He says, He says, Oh God, propitiate for
me. That's what He says. Satisfy your wrath for me. That's a place of humility. And
there is nothing in us that will muster that. Even the believer
has not in them humility. We see it sometimes. We smell
it often when it gets too hot on the stove. But it does not
live there. The only humility that lives
in us is the new man who is Jesus Christ. The only humility that
lives in us is the brokenness of Christ's body and the spilling
of His blood and that to our account. It is an alien humility. Therefore, it is an alien righteousness. And that has everything to do
with this text. Because here we have the very place where
we speak in almost every culture of the world some semblance of
giving a husband and wife to one another in matrimony that
they would be together till death do them part. Do they part? What
kind of death? There's plenty. And this picture is a perfect
picture here in Genesis 2. And God has said that it was
good, that everything he made was good, but it was not good
that Adam be alone. Now, I'm gonna knock down the
walls of patriarchal misogyny because it is demonic. A woman
is not the property of her husband in any form or fashion except
that She belongs to him in the same manner, with the same fabric
that he belongs to her. So they are mutually each other's
as one person. The man is not the boss of the
wife, nor does she have to do everything he says to do. However,
there is a picture of headship there that we see clearly taught
because of Christ in the gospel. Christ, as the head of the church,
did not come to boss her into submission. He shut his mouth
and he died in his own flesh. to present her blameless and
spotless. And that's what will be there in Ephesians 5. That
is the role and the authority of the husband as the head is
to shut his mouth and die. All right. So, ladies and gentlemen,
we have a mess in America's church. We have a mess in America's church. And people who don't like that,
I really don't care because I'm not going to discuss it except
that the Word of God be our guide. You see? Well, you know, traditionally,
I don't care about tradition. Historically, I don't care about
history. Biblically, not logically reasoning
through text, literally reading the text teaches us this truth. And we got this idea of help
meat. Where'd that come from? You know what help meat is? A
little bit of TVP or a little bit more turkey to the meatloaf. That's help meat. And I know
I'm poking at traditions here, but I'm doing it on purpose.
Because what I don't want us to do is read into our psychological
abusive mentality that we've had all these centuries in the
context of husband and wife relationship into the very picture of the
gospel because it's not there. So I want to poke at them so
that in case they're sitting there as just a good adhesive
to your understanding of marriage, that at least you'll be on edge.
Well, that's the way I was taught by my mama. That's the way I
was taught by my daddy. It's like I was taught one time
by a very dear mentor, a very dear friend. And he said to me,
in the very beginning days of my ministry service, James, if
you ever have to say, I'm the pastor around here, you're not. You've no longer, you've all
of a sudden now not the shepherd, you're not leading anyone. In
a very humorous way, he followed up with that one time and he
says, a man that's walking And no one is willfully following
Him. It's just a man taking a walk. He's no leader. Willful submission
is the key. Willful submission. And we'll
see that. We'll see that. Because the Lord knows we need
to understand it. God said it's not good, so all
of a sudden it's not good. Why did God create Adam? To redeem
him. to show that in his state, as
we'll talk about that state in a moment, of innocence, that
there was nothing he could do to sustain his own life except
that God be his life. The power of God is God, and
God is his life. And then before this, we see
all of a sudden the creation of the woman comes right after
something, right? A negative command. Do not eat
of the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden, for the
day you eat of it, you will die. It is a guarantee you will die.
Now I'm going to give you a wife. This isn't coincidence. This
isn't just the order of the cards that Moses picked up off the
ground with a bunch of facts. This isn't a wild transposition
of some long story that he just decided to put a little flare
on and choose where it went. This is divine speak. This is
God Himself speaking through this prophet Moses, showing the
order in which we need to understand the existence of marriage, and
it's right after the command not to eat of this tree. Because
life is in the presence of God. Remember what we talked about
the last two weeks? Eden is a picture of God being the life giver.
That which God promises and God's power, as long as we remain in
God's power. But beloved, we don't have the
power, nor do we have the humility, even in innocence, to remain
in the power of God. We cannot do it. You cannot stay
in the love of God. You cannot stay in the life of
God. You cannot stay in the power of God. That's the whole point
of Him being God and we not being God, is that He has to keep us. He has to snatch us. He has to
sustain us. He has to capture us. He has to pull us out of darkness.
He has to pull us out of death. He has to cause us to be born
again. He has to command us to do the things that we cannot
do. And then in that command, just like He said, let there
be, then He did, and there was, when He commands His sheep to
hear the gospel and to know Him, they do. They do. In the Word of God, in the life
of the believer, we grow in our understanding, and we grow in
our understanding, but we must maintain humility and dependence
upon Him in every ounce of that understanding. If you don't think
God can pull a Nebuchadnezzar in your life and take away everything
you think you have, keep it up. And I stand here before you having
been humbled many times over by God in His loving hand of
correction, also known as discipline. You know discipline is love,
right? Not punishment. So God said, eat and live, eat
and die. But you cannot be alone. And
if you eat of Me and My promises and My power and you remain in
Me, you remain in My Eden, you remain in My presence, that's
what Eden represents. You remain in that which I have
created to provide for you. You shall surely live, but the
moment that you stray outside of this provision, you shall
surely die. Now, I want you to understand
that all is well with the world that I've made and it's all good,
but there's one thing lacking. And you don't understand it yet,
Adam, because you're not yet enlightened. You haven't had to be humbled
and you haven't had the arrogance of something that was of your
own flesh and blood now offering you something different. I mean,
this is powerful stuff, y'all. If there was, you know, adults
only in the room, we could get a little bit more clear on some
of these things as we move through it. But we need to pay attention
that this is God's purpose. God decreed and purposed the
fall. That's why He gave Adam a wife. To show him who He is. He's the wife. You're the wife. I'm the wife. Christ is the bridegroom. And it is not good that we be
alone. It is not good that we stay in the tending of a material
world thinking that we can affect our own life. It is only by the
promise and the power of God because in every way, even in
innocence without sin, we will eventually fall to pride and
to humility and to self-sufficiency because that is what creatures
do. We are not God. So this is a picture. Adam. Eve, Christ, the church, God,
creation, God creating man. All of this is a picture, a picture
of life coming from Jesus Christ alone. And this is before the
fall ever took place. And I remember years and years
ago as I was just really studying John's gospel in the beginnings
of my love affair with John's writing. And going back through
and just seeing, oh wow, that, that, that. My Old Testament
theology began to come to life and it just empowered me. And
I began to see, oh wow, after the fall, the promise of Christ.
There's the first promise of Christ. And the first promise
of Christ is let there be light. The second promise of Christ
is that God can separate the light from the darkness. The
third promise of Christ is that out of this chaotic thing, God
can create order and sustain life and create a place for His
people, for life, for His creatures, for things to live. This is the
promise of Christ. This is the promise of gospel.
This is good news. And then here, the creation of
man and woman in our image. This is the promise of Christ. And then, Adam, it is not good
for you to be alone. I will make an out of you, a
helper for you. This is a picture of Christ.
And we looked at that. If you missed last week, listen
to that message and see that picture. So we know that before
the fall ever took place, God has said it is not good that
you be alone. So the good news is that you
will not be alone. It reminds me of what Christ
prayed at the cross. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? For us to not be alone, Christ
must be alone. And bearing the weight of wrath,
and bearing the weight of justice, and bearing the weight of true
judicial righteousness from the Father upon Himself, in order
to be the bridegroom for His people, that His bride may come,
not as whores, not as fallen people, but as saints, clean
and pure. Clothed in the righteous glory
of His perfection. This is why this is written.
This is not a manifestation of biological existence. This is
a time for worship, a time for us to see life in Christ. God is good and all that God
does is good even when we see God affect things that are bad. When God put the tree in the
garden that He told Adam not to eat, it was good. Why? Because only God can sustain
His people. Otherwise, Adam would have grown
out of innocence and out of humility to think that all of his efforts
to maintain his life were by the work of his hands. Have you
not done that? Have we not done that? Eight or nine years ago when
I renovated my house, it's over 125 years old, and I had no air
conditioning, and I had like one power line, one plug-in,
one pipe, no closets. And I hung my back door, and
I was so proud. If you've never hung a door,
it'll make a sailor out of you. It's not simple, especially in
a house like that. Some of my door jams are this
way, trapezoids. And I shut the door and it didn't
work. I wiggled it, digged it, shimmed it, did everything, took
a little belt sander, got it, and when I shut that door for
the last time and it went click, just like it does now, click,
I said, oh, look at this, and I stepped back and I fell right
through the HVAC vent. into the ground, scuffed my shin
this far, skin came off, it was awful. First thing that popped
into my mind, pride comes before the fall. I literally, I just,
I sort of preached that to myself as I limped around for the, I'm
very accident prone when I'm doing work. Because of pride,
I think. But we're prideful. We would
take credit for our work. We want to step back and behold,
look what I, not look what God has made. Wow, I'm so blessed
to be in the presence of this. Look what I have kept up, God.
Look what I have done. Look at the fertilizer I added
to the... I mean, this hippopotamus is really keeping these things
green. Look at this. I have done a good job. By your
grace, of course. We can't do that. We're not court
jesters that trick the king. This is the truth of humanity.
Before we fell into sin, before we fell into death, this is true
of what a creature will do when given a will and understanding
and intelligence. Beloved, as I continue to preach
and I continue to think about things, I could not put on paper
all the things I think about. But the things that I think about
related to the stuff that I read in the text and contemplate and
pray over are not important. What is important is what the
text is preaching. And I want you to see this is
not an opinion piece of Genesis chapter 2. This is an apostolic
exposition of Genesis chapter 2. This isn't James' interpretation. There's no interpreting Genesis
2 because Paul does it for us. Jesus also does it for us in
the Gospels, to a small degree. Paul does it. So we yield to
the apostles' teaching concerning the Old Testament. We do not
read into the mystical ideas of interpreting deeper things.
There's no such thing as the deeper things revealed. The whole point of them being
deeper things, according to God in Deuteronomy, is that they're
not revealed, and that we cannot know them, and that we are not
going to know them. But the mysteries that are revealed
are as plain as the nose on our face. So don't believe me. Believe
the Christ that I preach. Believe the gospel that the scripture
exposes. Believe the text as it works
verse by verse and synergistically throughout all the 66 letters
that we have, let them work together in power. Is that not what Paul tells us
in Colossians to be doing? As we worship together, we think
about what we're supposed to be doing in worship and we come
up with all these different ideas, but what does Paul say? Paul
says, let the Word of God dwell in you richly. How do we do that? Through exhaustive studies, through
commentary, through ideologies, through logical inferences and
all sorts of reasoning? No, through simple hearing, reading,
and letting the Word of God rest. And then when we find our time
in those deep thoughts, in those reflective moments, in those
debative moments, we do not yield the authority of Scripture to
our own minds. we yield our minds to the authority
of Scripture, simply. And so in this text then, with
all that being said, marriage is a picture, just like creation
is a picture, just like everything else that we've seen is a picture
of Christ and the promise of redemption, marriage is a picture,
but it is an imperfect picture, just like everything else we've
seen. It is an imperfect picture, it
is a temporal picture, it is an incomplete picture, and it
is an unnecessary picture. And that marriage is not necessary
for salvation in the physical sense. Paul would even say, for
those who are dealing with strife in the world that we live in,
in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, for those who are dealing with just
their upside-down lives, you realize they weren't being persecuted
because they were so adamant about being right and so bossy. They were being persecuted because
of their continued love and intimacy for one another, because of the
humility of Christ shared with them by the Spirit of God. God
is not looking for heroes, warriors, or soldiers. The days of Joshua
died with Joshua. He's not looking for prophets
either, except those who can read with two eyes and speak
with one mouth, that which the apostles have already prophesied
concerning Christ. That's it. Copypasta. That's it. So marriage in this picture shows
a lot of things. Marriage is unnecessary. It was
necessary in the picture, but it's unnecessary today. We don't
have to be married in order to find redemption. Paul says that
marriage is temporal. Jesus says that marriage is temporal,
but it points to an eternal picture, and because it points to an eternal
picture, it should be held with the highest of honor. It should
be upheld. It should be sacred. That's why
we fight for marriage, right? And you'll see why in a minute.
There's a lot of things that I want to say today, and I don't
want to turn this into a 90-minute teaching. It's not necessary.
So, for the sake of simplicity, let me just say some things.
If you have questions about them, by all means, let me know. I'm
happy to walk through this stuff with you. But we already know
that life is found alone in the decrees of God's promises. God
said it. It is guaranteed. It is done. He proved that this is how He
works. He proved this is how His power operates and that what
He says comes to pass and what comes to pass can never be changed.
We do know that God decreed historically a creation, historically a first
family, historically a first marriage, historically a people
for His own possession, all these things, but they were temporary
pictures of an eternal picture. As it's been said often that
marriage is a microscopic picture of the macrocosmic reality of
Christ and the Church. And any other information about
marriage is unnecessary. because the very intimacy that
we find in the marriage is insufficient to show the parallel between
the intimacy of Christ and the church. And the intimacy that
we find in marriage, we learn to grow forgiving and forbearing
and loving and being hurt and hurting others that we might
also learn with our brothers and sisters in the assembly when
we have our assembly that we learn to love in the same way
Christ loved us together because the relationships of the assembly
are eternal. But the relationship of husband
and wife is not. Just like all the centuries of the tabernacle
and of the temple and all of the worship and all of those
things where we see the courts and the outer courts and the
inner courts and this place and that land and the Holy of Holies and all,
you can lay those exact same blueprints down and you can look
at the first part of Genesis and you can lay the Garden of
Eden inside of Eden, inside of the created world, etc., etc.
You can see that there is even a temple shadow in the creation
of the world. And in the very center of it
all, God meets man. And God sustains man. How is
this guaranteed for us? How do we know that we can have
eternal life? And moreover, how do we know
that we do have eternal life? Because God has said and decreed
His people will be saved from their sins, and He has effected
the work in Christ Jesus for them, and then He grants repentance,
which is saving faith in Him. It's a rest. It's a confidence. It's a temporary experience. That's what faith is. And it
wanes. It gets good sometimes, and it's
bad sometimes. And sometimes we think, I don't
believe any of this mess. And we don't even say that, even
in our minds, but by the way we act, speak, and live, it shows
we don't truly trust and rest in the decrees of God. Life is found alone in the decrees
and the promises of God. Not what we do with them. Not
how we relate to them. Not by how much we know of them.
Life is found in the promises of God alone. Life is then granted. Well, how
do I have life? Because God has decreed it. God
has promised it. Life is granted by the perfect
righteousness of justice. I want you to hear this for a
second. These words are equivocal. Justice is righteousness from
a divine perspective. But from a divine perspective,
true justice is always served, and it's always served red hot and vengeful. Why? Because he's
right and good in his judgments. And no human being No human being,
except Jesus from Nazareth, can stand under the righteous justice
of God without condemnation. So that when Jesus Christ stood
under the righteous judgment of God, there was no condemnation
due Him. He stood in the place of others,
and that would be the elect of God, those whom God has loved
eternally before the foundations of the world. And Christ satisfied
God's justice in that moment. In that moment, He died. Christ
said, it is finished. God has decreed, God the Son
has said in His human Flesh on the cross, it is finished. There's a decree, there's a promise
right there. To fulfill all the prophetic words spoken of Him
as we see even Peter saying, we do well to pay attention.
Life is granted by the perfect righteousness of justice. So
when God the Father executed justice because of our sin, On
the sinless one, righteousness prevails. Now what I just did
was quoted Romans 3 in paraphrased form, starting at verse 21 through
the end of verse 25. For the righteousness of God
is manifested apart from the law, because the law is a death
sentence. The law is a shadow of the perfect man, Jesus Christ.
It is not something we can obtain, nor will we ever obtain it. It is always imputed to us, Christ. For the righteousness of God
is manifested apart from the law, though the law and the prophets
bore witness to it as a temporary shadow like the first marriage
and everything else. But the righteousness of God
to be received by faith, which is a gift of God that changes
your mind, that's repentance. to know and to rest in the promises
of the decrees of God to satisfy His justice and His righteousness
in the death of Jesus Christ, whose blood has justified us. You see how many times we hear
these types of teaching? What does faith know? Faith knows
in a subtle and humble way how to rest in the promises of God's
decrees. So therefore, life is secured
by the work of Jesus Christ alone. So, life is found in the promises
of God that He decrees. Life is granted by the righteousness
of justice, the perfection of righteousness and justice, which
is poured out and secured by the work of Jesus Christ alone. And life is known by knowing
God through Jesus Christ. We know this truth by knowing
God. We read Genesis, we know Christ.
if we know Christ. We understand marriage, we know
Christ. Beloved, this really helps me be a husband, because
I know that my relationship with my wife is not a worldly one, but is a picture of a divine
promise. And so if I'm supposed to be
like Christ, as we'll see in a minute, if we get to it, I'm failing
miserably. I can't tend this garden. I can't
keep this. I can't make her perfect. She
sure is not going to make me perfect. Wow, it is about me
being a bride and being perfected and washed in the blood of Christ,
who is my husband, who will bring me all the way to glory by His
promises, not by my faithfulness. in that we exist in a state of
humility, see. So life is known by knowing God
through Jesus Christ. And I've got hundreds of texts,
2 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7. John 17, 3, all these things
we know. We know by seeing. In the face
of Christ, we know the Father's promises. We look to the true
essence of what God has revealed. He's revealed Himself as sovereign
Redeemer. And He's revealed Himself as
righteousness, which includes justice. But the only way righteousness
and justice is fulfilled in the life of the assembly is that
grace abounds. We'll get to that in a moment.
Well, that's actually the next thing I wanted to say. Life is
gained only by grace. Mercy. This is it. Life is gained only by grace. So our life, our sustenance,
our eternity is only secure because of grace. It's God giving us
that which we cannot earn or affect in ourselves. As a matter
of fact, it's the exact opposite of justice if you want to start
taking technical terms. But yet, in grace, righteousness
and justice still prevail because justice is satisfied in the grace
of God always because Christ, the sinless man in the perfect
image of God in the flesh, died in the place of His people. The
sins are paid for and God the Father cannot condemn anyone
for whom Christ died. So grace Life is gained only
by grace, and grace, beloved, is not offered to us. Think about
this for a second. God did not say, if you'd like
to live forever, I'm offering you this garden. I just don't
want you to eat over here, because, I mean, please, don't eat over
here. Don't eat over here. Don't eat over here. Is that
an offer of life? No, that's a promise of death.
It's what the law does. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Don't
touch. Don't taste. Don't look. Don't
say. Don't go. Don't think. Or you'll die. And we can't process that psychologically. What do I do? I'm standing on
a tightrope and the wind's blowing. 300 feet in the air. Help. Yeah,
we're going to follow our death. The only way we don't fall to
our death is that God in His power says, you're not going
to fall. I'm going to fall in your place. Grace is not offered, beloved.
God does not say anywhere in His Word, here's my graciousness. You just got to touch it. You
just got to take it. No, God explains that grace is
not a thing. Understand that, beloved. Grace
is not a thing. It's not a subset of spiritual
luggage that God carries around and goes, a little bit of grace
over here. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. Let me mail this guy. I won't take grace. I'll just
mail him some. Look at all the grace in the mail. What am I
going to do with it? No. Grace is the effectual work of God,
a.k.a. the power of God. So grace is
God, and God is grace. Grace is God's doing revealed
for His people in redemption. Grace is God's power. And God
said that His power and what it produced was good. Because what He has put together
and what He has promised in His decrees is eternally good. because
He will create it and sustain it. He will provide all the ins
and outs of what goodness really is supposed to be. And even in
this tiny imperfect picture that's about to unfold in this text,
we must understand that we have to rest in Christ alone, the
eternal husband of the true bride. And so now that the introduction
is over, let's talk about marriage. In Ephesians 5, go there real
quick. In Ephesians 5, we see Paul talking about this text
in Genesis 2. He says it is an incredible mystery,
and that this mystery, and I've read this a couple times already,
we know the text, it's not like we have to go through it a lot. Starting in verse 15, Let's look at verse 18. There's
a negative command there. Do not get drunk with wine. And
there's a context for that, but let's move on. For that is debauchery,
but here's the positive command. Be filled with the Spirit. Verse
19, as you're filled with the Spirit, there are things you
are also doing, which is addressing one another with singing and
songs. Those aren't specific types of
music, those three things. These address each other in songs,
singing, and making melody to the Lord with your heart, and
giving thanks always for everything to God the Father, in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence
for Christ. So here is the picture of the
church in submission. It's important because, oh my
goodness, do we have verse 22 as a proof text for our culture. And most of the cults of the
world would love Ephesians 5, 22. Out of context. So we are, as
the church, submitting to one another. What does that mean? Wives, submit
to your husbands, to your own husbands, as to the Lord. be subject to Him. Marriage is bound to a mutual
relationship, and it's temporary. The relationship with the assembly
is eternal, though it is temporal in this life, and it's a mutual
relationship. You're not here today for you,
you're here for the rest of us. You're here for the Lord's purposes.
And so marriage is bound, let me just give you some thoughts,
that the text teaches marriage is bound to mutual giving, mutual submission, mutual patience,
which makes the necessity of mutual reconciliation. We are to live in marriage in
that way because that's what the gospel is, right? The assembly
is centered on giving to one another, to submitting to one
another, to being patient with one another, and to reconciling
with one another, at all costs, according to the gospel. Paul
would tell the Corinthians that love, y'all think y'all were
loving, just like he told the church of Ephesus, like Jesus
told the church of Ephesus in John's revelation. Look at your
staunch doctrinal positions, but you're a bunch of losers.
and I'm going to destroy you and remove you from the earth.
I'm gonna remove your influence from the earth because you have
forsaken your love for me. So go back and change the way
you're thinking and remember your love for me by having love
for one another, even the foreigner and even the ones who you should
be patient. You should endure evil even with much patience.
Beloved, the Scripture doesn't tolerate anything else. You can
have every doctrinal position in the world correct. You can
know the heart of Christ verbatim with your mouth and mind, but
if you don't have love, you and I are worthless trash. And when we get upset, we go,
well, I'm just worthless trash. Good! We're at the beginning
stages of something great. Humility. Because as long as
James thinks he's something important to anything, I'm always going
to get in the way of everything. Marriage. Wives, submit to your
own husbands, as the church submits to one another. For the husband
is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, which
is His body. And Christ Himself is its Savior. Now, as the church submits to
Christ through submitting to one another, so wives also be
subject to your husbands in everything. Husbands, likewise, love your
wives as Christ loved the church. Christ submitted Himself to the
governing authorities of His enemies. Christ submitted Himself
to the Heavenly Father to do the work of redemption, not as
God Almighty, the Creator of the world, but as a lowly, ugly,
worthless human with no power to be seen, except when He began
to manifest His power for the sake of proving who He was, and
even when people saw that, they would not rest in Him unless
the Spirit of God birthed them anew. You see? It's not about
evidence. Apologetics is not about evidence.
It's about contextualized proclamation. It's about preaching and teaching
the text of Scripture. Not defending an argument. Debate's
never saved anybody. Debate has never been used by
the Spirit of God to open the eyes of anyone. Only the Word
of God will open the eyes by the Spirit. So here we have this
picture of Christ. How did Christ Save his bride. He gave himself up for her. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not demand its own
way. Love believes all things. I mean, we can go on and on. We're not suspicious of one another.
Husbands, love your wife as Christ of the church. He gave Himself
up for her, He died for her, that He might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing, and this is poetry, this is an
image here, the washing of water with the Word. So that He might
present the church, the assembly, to Himself in splendor without
spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be set apart and
without blemish. In the same way, this is what
Christ did, in the same way husbands should love their wives as their
own bodies, he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one
has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes
it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his
body. Therefore a man, how we see Moses,
God speaking through Moses now. Therefore a man, a direct quote,
shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and
the two shall become one flesh. Paul says in verse 32, this mystery
is profound. Mr. Micah goes, huh? That's not normal. That's not logical. That's strange. It's outside the veil of pop
culture. It's outside the veil of historical
culture. It's outside the veil of humanity.
That's right. It's a divine mystery. This mystery
is profound and I am saying That it, marriage, refers to Christ
and the church. So let each one of you love your
wife as you love yourself. Respect her in that way. Cherish
her in that way. Give to her in that way. Submit
to her in that way. Be patient with her in that way.
Reconcile with her in that way. And wives, likewise, see that
you respect your husbands. in the same way. There are not
different things for husbands and wives to do. It is a mutual
submission. And the only boss is Jesus Christ
and the picture of the gospel that He's presented through it. You don't know my wife, you don't
know my husband. I'm glad I don't. But I know the very fact that
you're standing up haughty Shows you're not humble. You see? And
there's nothing else to do. Well, my legs don't work. We
haven't walked in six years. You gotta stand up a little bit.
Let's help you stand up. I'm not standing up till my legs
work. Okay. Sit there then. The Gospel declares that God
gave the Son just as God gave and made Adam, God sent the Son,
who is the true image of God in the flesh. And then God prepared
out of Adam a bride for Him. God prepares a bride for Jesus
Christ out of His body. How does God prepare the bride
for Christ? Because His body was broken and
His blood was spilled, just like Adam's. Picture. And the Son submits to the Father.
The Father is patient with His people. The Son atones for His
people. And justice prevails and righteousness
reigns. Why? Why would He do all this?
To the praise of His glory. To the praise of all that He
is. To the praise of everything He's shown us concerning Himself.
This is why He does it. See, all that Adam had was good.
Everything he had was good. And Adam was innocent. Eve was
innocent at that moment. They were not righteous. Only
God is righteous. Only God is righteous. There's
no man except the God-man who has ever been righteous. Jesus
Christ is the righteousness of God in the flesh. No man has
ever been righteous. For if Adam were to be righteous,
he would be God. Adam was innocent of sin. Innocent
of the knowledge of anything but walking in the cool of the
day with righteousness. Imagine Jesus and Adam standing
in the midst of the garden and God, by His divine power, causing
the creatures of the world to come by that Adam might name
them. Why not just say, hey, Adam, there's a lot of stuff
I've made and none of them are suitable for you. I'm going to make something
for you out of you. Put you to sleep, okay? Even in our own will, there's
no way we could choose rightly, because there's no way to choose
rightly. God must be the chooser, God
must be the maker, God must be the sustainer. The gospel is
the power of God. Adam and Eve were one flesh,
they were complete, they were perfect in all human ways, in
their relationship, their DNA. And I'm a sucker for intellect.
And I couldn't imagine what a conversation with complete ignorance of many
things, but how amazing would it be to talk with the first
people in innocence. Don't know. Don't want to think
about it too long. So God ordained the fall eternally.
God conditioned it and purposed it. And all good things were
there, and as we'll see next week, the introduction to naked
and not ashamed is a very short-lived experience. And Adam having all good things,
the serpent knew that there was one thing he could do to get
to Adam. And it was the will of God. You
see, the marriage picture of being one flesh, and we understand
the biology of that, we understand the intimacy of that, but there
is a shared life that we share in Christ. There is a shared
love that we have in Christ, and there is a shared glory or
revelation of who we really are that we have in Christ. And just
as the creation in all of its order is temporal, it points
to the power of God. The garden is small and short-lived
and temporal. It's a picture that points to
the power of God as the life-giver. And just as the marriage of the
man and the woman, imperfect, it points to the perfect picture
of the power of God unto salvation, which is the report of His work
and power to save His people from their sins. And beloved,
because of that, Though we are ashamed and sinful because we
are married to Christ, we are not ashamed. We are not ashamed. Even when we struggle in this
flesh, we're going to struggle. Even when our faith wanes and
we don't know what we're going to do from day to day and we
cannot live the way we ought to live, and love the way we
ought to love, and submit, and give, and be subject to humility,
and we just stomp our little feet. Even if we don't act it
out, we do it inside, and we should be ashamed, but we're
not ashamed before the Father because Christ took our shame. He was stripped of His glory.
He was made naked. He was made bare in His flesh,
and He was destroyed by the righteous justice of God so that we could
be the righteousness of God. And that's what marriage points
to. And beloved, it goes a long way. It goes all the way to the
end. It takes us all the way there. And in just a few short verses,
the serpent enters the scene by the will of God, so that by
God's will, Adam and Eve would prove the power of their flesh. was not to humbly rest in the
promises of God's decrees, but to make themselves their own
creator, to find their own way to life, to be like God. Christ, God in the flesh, has
saved us from that very arrogance. Let's worship Him for it. Let's
pray. We thank You, Lord, for the picture
of the cross, the picture of marriage, the picture of the
garden. As You've recorded in Your Word,
Lord, we see it all. And we know that the only thing
with true effect is what Christ did on the cross. what Christ
accomplished on the cross. Not that He died, but He, as
the God-man, the sinless righteous man, died in the place of His
people. In the place of your people.
So that we now are not condemned. We are not ashamed to stand before
you in the throne of grace to say, Hey Dad. Hey Papa. and you lend your ear
and your heart toward us by grace alone because you are right in
doing so and it is good because our sins have been paid for and
our standing is a place of perfection and a place of righteousness.
And Father, our spouses, our friends, our relationships in
the church, we're all sinners, but we all, if we are in Christ,
stand in a place of righteousness. Lord, there is nothing for us
to condemn, because You have settled the record of our account
in the body of Christ, and credited our account with the righteousness
of Christ. So Father, I pray. I pray that
we can be a people who are giving, a people who are submissive,
A people who are humble, a people who are patient, a people who
are always about reconciling relationships with each other
because of Christ. Therefore, we do all that we
are able to do in our lowly flesh, by your mercy, to continue to
exhibit the picture of Christ in the church with the relationships
we have here. And ultimately, and to the very
end of it all, we praise You for Your mercy and grace toward
us. For only by Your grace are we saved. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you, church.