Genesis 3:16 (NKJV)
16 To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
For the last several weeks we have emphasized that God is the One who designed man as male and female. He created Adam, He announced that it was not good for man to be alone, He paraded the animals before Adam so that Adam would sense his incompleteness, He put the man to sleep and fashioned the woman from his rib, He presented the woman to the man as his helper. All this was God’s doing, God’s design.
So what went wrong? Why is it that we have strife and competition between men and women? Our text today answers the question clearly: strife between men and women is a judgment from God visited upon our rebellion. “Your desire,” God announces to Eve, “shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Though God had created Adam and Eve to live in harmony, now there would be strife. No longer would she willingly and joyfully submit to her husband but would desire to subdue him, to subvert his God-ordained position of authority. No longer would he lovingly guard and protect and nourish his wife but would oppress her. This relational strife was a direct result of our rebellion and explains a large swath of human behavior.
Why is it that a man oftentimes uses his strength to batter and abuse a woman rather than to protect her? Why is it that a man is willing to exploit a woman sexually? Why is it that he is willing to terrorize a woman? To treat her with benign neglect? Deem her his inferior intellectually, morally, spiritually, emotionally? Because of our rebellion against God.
Why is it that a woman oftentimes uses her beauty to seduce a man rather than to glorify him? That rather than submit to her husband’s authority she will seize that authority for herself, either by intimidation and threats or by whining and manipulating her way into power? Why is it that a woman will mock and scorn a man who is willing to lead and protect his family or will give a nasty look to a man who opens the door for her? Because of our rebellion against God.
The strife between male and female is a consequence of our sin, a judgment visited upon us by God Himself. But here is the good news. Because God visited this judgment upon us, He can also take it away. And when we seek His forgiveness through Christ, when we acknowledge that we have rebelled against Him and brought all this disaster upon ourselves and that our only solution lies in the Lamb of God who died for our sins, He will forgive us. And what’s more, He promises to enable us by His Spirit to recover the harmony that was lost in our rebellion. We can, through the renewal of the inner man, live in harmony one with another – as husband and wife, as brother and sister, as father and daughter, as mother and son, as brother in Christ to sister in Christ. We can, by the grace of God, learn to live in harmony as male and female once more. We can be a new humanity.
And so in order to achieve this, we must begin by acknowledging that it is our own sin that has gotten us into this mess. It is our own folly that has introduced tension where there ought to have been peace and concord. So reminded of our sin, let us kneel and let us confess our sins to the Lord. There will be a time of silent confession followed by a public prayer of confession.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Mature Femininity
Genesis 2:18 (NKJV)
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
In the last couple weeks we have learned that male and female together bear the image of God and that therefore God made males to be male and females to be female. This was his design, his intention, his plan. He saw that the man was alone and declared it wasn’t good. He decided to make a helper comparable to the man.
Because God designed you women as women what this means is that your fundamental calling in life is to honor and glorify Him. He is the Creator of all; further, He has sent Christ to redeem and rescue you, to restore you to the glory of your creational design. So what does this mean?
First, it means that because God is the Creator His Word governs and rules your life. Eve got you into trouble by questioning God’s Word and deciding for herself whether the Word of God or the word of the serpent were to be believed. She set herself up as judge. But none of us were designed to live this way – and it is the choice to live this way that has wrought calamity and destruction in the world – and which continues to do so. The so-called Battle of the Sexes has arisen precisely because men and women have refused to live in accordance with God’s Word and have instead lived according to our own.
Second, God’s word declares here that men and women were created to complement one another. God’s judgment that it is not good that man be alone reveals not only the complementariness that God designed for marriage but also for broader society. Whether the number of men and women would have been perfectly balanced in an unfallen world we are not told – but we are told that God designed man as male and female to glorify His Name and be for the benefit of all. Men as male and women as female were designed by God to complement one another, not compete with one another.
Third, God’s design for women, revealed here in the creation story, is that women were created, you were created, to help the men in your midst. God declares, “I will make him a helper suitable to him.” God created you to come alongside men and to serve, to assist. The exact way this will look will appear different in different situations but this is the basic calling – to be a pillar of strength and support and to enable the men in your life to be all that they can be. As John Piper has written, “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” So, ladies, how are you doing? Are you affirming, receiving and nurturing the strength and leadership of your husbands? Your fathers? Your elders? This is your calling.
And you men, are you being worthy men? “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” Are you stepping up to the plate and giving godly strength and leadership to the women in your life? This is our calling.
Reminded that rather than submit to God’s design for us as men and women, we frequently develop our own visions for what is good and right, let us confess our sins to the Lord. We will have a time of silent confession followed by a public confession. Let us kneel as we confess our sins together.
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
In the last couple weeks we have learned that male and female together bear the image of God and that therefore God made males to be male and females to be female. This was his design, his intention, his plan. He saw that the man was alone and declared it wasn’t good. He decided to make a helper comparable to the man.
Because God designed you women as women what this means is that your fundamental calling in life is to honor and glorify Him. He is the Creator of all; further, He has sent Christ to redeem and rescue you, to restore you to the glory of your creational design. So what does this mean?
First, it means that because God is the Creator His Word governs and rules your life. Eve got you into trouble by questioning God’s Word and deciding for herself whether the Word of God or the word of the serpent were to be believed. She set herself up as judge. But none of us were designed to live this way – and it is the choice to live this way that has wrought calamity and destruction in the world – and which continues to do so. The so-called Battle of the Sexes has arisen precisely because men and women have refused to live in accordance with God’s Word and have instead lived according to our own.
Second, God’s word declares here that men and women were created to complement one another. God’s judgment that it is not good that man be alone reveals not only the complementariness that God designed for marriage but also for broader society. Whether the number of men and women would have been perfectly balanced in an unfallen world we are not told – but we are told that God designed man as male and female to glorify His Name and be for the benefit of all. Men as male and women as female were designed by God to complement one another, not compete with one another.
Third, God’s design for women, revealed here in the creation story, is that women were created, you were created, to help the men in your midst. God declares, “I will make him a helper suitable to him.” God created you to come alongside men and to serve, to assist. The exact way this will look will appear different in different situations but this is the basic calling – to be a pillar of strength and support and to enable the men in your life to be all that they can be. As John Piper has written, “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” So, ladies, how are you doing? Are you affirming, receiving and nurturing the strength and leadership of your husbands? Your fathers? Your elders? This is your calling.
And you men, are you being worthy men? “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” Are you stepping up to the plate and giving godly strength and leadership to the women in your life? This is our calling.
Reminded that rather than submit to God’s design for us as men and women, we frequently develop our own visions for what is good and right, let us confess our sins to the Lord. We will have a time of silent confession followed by a public confession. Let us kneel as we confess our sins together.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Thank God for Women
Genesis 2:18-24 (NKJV)
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. 21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
It was God’s design that man as male and female image Him, be a representation of His own glory and splendor. But this design of God wasn’t something offensive, something that the man and the woman themselves recoiled against. Rather it was something that the man himself discovered in the course of creation and that the woman was divinely crafted to fulfill.
For the story tells us that God first made judgment that the creation of the solitary male was not good. Following God’s repeated pronouncement that each part of the creation was “good”, the declaration that the solitary male was “not good” should awaken us from our literary slumber. There was something in the creation that was not good – and this was a world filled with males only.
But note God’s wisdom. God wants the man to sense this, wants him to realize existentially his own lack of a helper suitable to him. And so God parades the animals before him pair by pair and Adam realizes, comes to sense himself, something is just not right here. Where is my helper? Only then, only when the man realizes that it is not good for him to be alone, does God put the man to sleep and craft for him the perfect compliment – a woman, Eve.
The creation account here in Genesis reminds us that God created men and women to live together in harmony. Men are not supposed to be women nor are women supposed to be men. Men and women are not interchangeable – no matter how hard our culture may try to make them so. God has created us different – and this difference both in marriage and in broader society is a gift from Him, a gift to teach us more about himself.
And so, women, have you given thanks that God created the men in this world to be men; have you given thanks that God created your fathers to be men, your husbands to be men, your brothers to be men, your sons to be men. Have you not simply taken mental note of the fact but actually thanked God for it; thanked God that He had the wisdom to put male and female into the world that we might learn to love and respect and honor Him more fully?
Men, have you given thanks that God created the women in this world to be women; have you given thanks that God created your mothers to be women, your wives to be women, your sisters to be women, your daughters to be women. Have you not simply taken mental notes of the fact but actually thanked God for it; thanked God that He had the wisdom to put male and female into the world that we might learn to love and respect and honor Him more fully?
These are the challenges that God’s creation of Adam and Eve place before us. Reminded that we often grumble about our differences as male and female rather than thanking God for them, let us confess our sins together.
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. 21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
It was God’s design that man as male and female image Him, be a representation of His own glory and splendor. But this design of God wasn’t something offensive, something that the man and the woman themselves recoiled against. Rather it was something that the man himself discovered in the course of creation and that the woman was divinely crafted to fulfill.
For the story tells us that God first made judgment that the creation of the solitary male was not good. Following God’s repeated pronouncement that each part of the creation was “good”, the declaration that the solitary male was “not good” should awaken us from our literary slumber. There was something in the creation that was not good – and this was a world filled with males only.
But note God’s wisdom. God wants the man to sense this, wants him to realize existentially his own lack of a helper suitable to him. And so God parades the animals before him pair by pair and Adam realizes, comes to sense himself, something is just not right here. Where is my helper? Only then, only when the man realizes that it is not good for him to be alone, does God put the man to sleep and craft for him the perfect compliment – a woman, Eve.
The creation account here in Genesis reminds us that God created men and women to live together in harmony. Men are not supposed to be women nor are women supposed to be men. Men and women are not interchangeable – no matter how hard our culture may try to make them so. God has created us different – and this difference both in marriage and in broader society is a gift from Him, a gift to teach us more about himself.
And so, women, have you given thanks that God created the men in this world to be men; have you given thanks that God created your fathers to be men, your husbands to be men, your brothers to be men, your sons to be men. Have you not simply taken mental note of the fact but actually thanked God for it; thanked God that He had the wisdom to put male and female into the world that we might learn to love and respect and honor Him more fully?
Men, have you given thanks that God created the women in this world to be women; have you given thanks that God created your mothers to be women, your wives to be women, your sisters to be women, your daughters to be women. Have you not simply taken mental notes of the fact but actually thanked God for it; thanked God that He had the wisdom to put male and female into the world that we might learn to love and respect and honor Him more fully?
These are the challenges that God’s creation of Adam and Eve place before us. Reminded that we often grumble about our differences as male and female rather than thanking God for them, let us confess our sins together.
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