Transcript
Today is my first chance to speak to you in the year 1998, and it seemed like it might be a good idea for me to begin a brief series—this is not going to take us all year, much less ten years—but a brief series that would carry us back to the very beginning of things, since we’re beginning a new year.
If I were giving the series a biblical title, the series title would be, “Male and Female Created He Them.” Now the words in that order, found in the old King James Version: “male and female created He them.” But to give it a more contemporary and practical slant, my working title is the one that Joe mentioned from the pulpit this morning: “How to Be the Spouse God Wants You to Be”—how to be the spouse that God wants you to be.
There is an old saying that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And some of you, in hearing me introduce this subject, might be tempted to think of a variation on that: Bachelors rush in where married men fear to tread.
However, I don’t think the two statements are really parallel because, first of all, married men are not angels. Just ask a woman who’s married to one, and I assure you that she will tell you she’s not married to an angel. And I have the opinion that married men, deep down in their hearts, do not think bachelors are necessarily fools! So I make no apology for attempting this, as long as I can keep my focus on the Word of God.
In fact, the case can be made that God, perhaps, thinks it’s a little better for us to get our marital counsel from an unmarried person than from a married person. Did you know that there are five writers of New Testament epistles? The epistles teach us, basically, what we need to know for the Christian life. They are James, John, Jude, Peter, and Paul.
Of the five writers, James, John, and Jude say nothing about marriage, nothing. Peter, who wrote two epistles, gives six verses to marriage, and I’ve always been a little amused by the fact that he gives one verse to husbands and five verses to wives. But the Apostle Paul beats them all the way around by giving us the vast majority of the marital instruction that we have in the Bible.
In addition to the famous passage in Ephesians 5, which is so frequently read at marriages, we have a very long chapter in First Corinthians 7, which deals with various aspects of marriage, and we have other references in the Pauline Epistles to marriage.
Now, I realize that some people have thought that maybe Paul was once married and was now a widower. We know that at the time of the writing of, say, First Corinthians, he was not married, but there really is no good evidence that I know of to even suggest that he was ever married. And if he was ever married and was now a widower, he does a very good job of hiding it from us.
So as far as we know, we are getting the majority of our marital counsel out of the Bible from a man who is not, and probably was not ever married. So we’re going to look not only at Paul’s advice, but at the biblical advice as well.
Now those who know me know that I have engaged in marital counsel for many years here, and I’ve lost track of the number of husbands and wives, and husbands and wives together, that I’ve talked to. And if you’ve ever had any exposure to me as a marital counselor, you will probably be aware that I usually come down a little harder on the side of the man than the woman.
One of the reasons for that is that God makes the man the head of the home, and therefore he has the most serious responsibility. Today, however, ladies, is Ladies Day. And I will be getting around to the men eventually in this series, but I’m going to start with a talk that concentrates on the ladies. And the title of my talk today is “The Woman Who Wrecked the World.”
Now you can understand why no married man is likely to give a message like that. And as soon as I retreat from this building and make it safely home to my apartment, I’m safe, too. So that’s the title of my message this afternoon, “The Woman Who Wrecked the World.” I don’t even need to tell you what her name was, do I? You know what her name was. We’re going to read about her in Genesis.
But first I want you to turn to a passage in First Timothy, chapter 2—First Timothy, chapter 2. And we’re going to read starting in First Timothy, chapter 2, at verse 11. First Timothy, chapter 2 and verse 11, the Apostle Paul writing:
“Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.”
Now a lot of people, both men and women, have had trouble with some of the statements that Paul has made about women. And I know that some people have even suggested he wrote these things because he didn’t like women, he hated women, and he wanted to put them in their place.
We obviously know that that was not true of the Apostle Paul, who wrote not only as a servant of God, but under the inspiration of scripture. Other people take another and more indirect approach to it, and they say, “Well, Paul was influenced by the culture of his time, and in the Jewish culture, as well as in the Gentile culture of his day, the woman had a very secondary position, and he simply reflects the opinions and attitudes of his culture, and we need to update his opinions and to bring them into the Twentieth Century.”
Now I think you can see, if you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is the product, ultimately, of the Holy Spirit, that that doesn’t wash as an explanation for Paul’s statements.
As a matter of fact, if you look at the passage we just read here, he says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence, because that’s what our culture teaches us.” Did you notice that? Of course, it’s not here!
Notice that he appeals first of all to the priority of man in creation:
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve.”
Secondly, he appeals to the woman’s role in the fall of man, and he says,
“Adam was not deceived.”
That’s not a good note for Adam, I might add, because Adam sinned with his eyes wide open.
“Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.”
So what is Paul saying here? He’s saying, “Because of the priority of man in creation and because of the role that the woman played in the fall, I do not allow a woman to teach. I do not allow her to usurp authority over the man”—in the church, we’re talking about, and of course this is the church meeting as far as the biblical pattern is concerned.
If you women have ever wondered why you don’t talk here, this verse is one of the reasons why you don’t. I think the folks are coming in; we’ll pause...
Now obviously this passage directs us back to the central passage I want to talk to you about, which is found in the book of Genesis, chapters 2 and 3. So let’s turn back, if you will, to Genesis, chapters 2 and 3. We’ll begin in Genesis 2—Genesis, chapter 2. Let’s read at verse 7:
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Now notice here, there are some very basic and simple facts. God creates the man, and He plants a garden for the man to live in, and He fills this garden with every kind of tree that was good for food, that was beautiful, and notice that it says here, the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there as well.
Now, skip down to verse 15:
“Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend”—the word here means something like “to cultivate”—“and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’ ”
Now this is a very important set-up passage for what we’re talking about today. All right, the man has been created. He’s been placed in this garden with all of these lovely trees as well as all of these excellent fruits, but he is not placed there just to live out his years.
He is given a job, and his job is expressed in verse 15—that he is to tend the garden and keep it. He’s to cultivate the garden and keep it. Now he has a positive responsibility and a negative responsibility. The positive responsibility is, “Keep the garden tended.” The negative responsibility is, “Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
This is a very simple program, don’t you admit? But that was what his job was: to take care of the garden and to avoid eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now this brings us to the creation of the woman, and I’m going to read the rest of our passage for today, starting in verse 18:
“And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.’ 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 name them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 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.
“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. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
“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.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree of the garden”?’ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.” ’
“And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.”
All right, you’ve got the scene: Man has been created and placed in this lovely garden, and his responsibility is to take care of the garden and to avoid eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God surveys the scene and He says, “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make someone who will love him.”
Were you all awake? It doesn’t say that, does it? “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make somebody for him to talk to.” No. “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make somebody who will comfort him and keep him company.” No. What God says: “It is not good for a man to be alone. I will make a helper for him. I will make a helper for him.”
Now, please do not think—and, ladies, not for a minute what I suggested—but please do not think that the word “helper” implies that the woman has some kind of inferior status. It may interest you to know that the word “helper” that is used here is also used in a number of the Psalms to refer to the help of God, or to God as a Helper.
One of the Psalms says, Psalm 33, I believe verse 20, “Our souls wait for the Lord. He is our help.” Or, “He is our Helper and shield.” And it seems to me that even though we are going to say, and must say on the basis of the Bible, that God created the woman to be man’s helper, that this is a very high and noble role that He has given to the woman because He is a helper.
Which of us does not want the help of God? If we... if we’re crazy we don’t want it. But all of us want God to help us when we need help. That’s one of the roles that God has in each and every life, male and female. If you’re a man, God’s your Helper. If you’re a woman, God is your Helper. That’s a high model. But listen to me: that’s what the woman was created to do for the man—to be his helper.
Now we’re not talking here about somebody to fix the meals. There were no meals to fix in the garden of Eden, did you notice? They just ate the fruit. And we’re not talking here about somebody to take the dirty clothes to the laundromat. There were no dirty clothes in the garden of Eden—in fact originally, no clothes at all—so that was not the role she has.
We’re not talking here about somebody to clean up the house or sweep out all the dirt; no house in the garden of Eden. Then what are we talking about?
Well, God has just said to the man, “Take care of the garden, cultivate the garden.” And then He says, “It is not good for man to be alone in the tasks that I have given him. I’ll make somebody to help him with his tasks.”
May I suggest to all of the ladies here that your highest goal as a wife is to help your husband be the man God wants him to be and to do the things that God wants your husband to do. And if that is not the role that you are fulfilling in the life of your husband, you have yet to learn what it means to be a wife.
You know, it would be interesting if we could ask every person who is married at this table—I wouldn’t dare do it—but if we could ask every lady who is at this table and married why you married the man you married, I suspect we would get a variety of answers.
One answer might be, “I married this guy because I was really in love with him and wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.” You may have second thoughts since then, but that may have been the reason that you married him originally. Or you might have said, “The reason I am marrying this man is that I would like to establish a home, have children, and raise a family.”
But I wonder how many of you ladies at the time that you would marry, that you got married, would have said, “The reason I’m marrying this man is so that I can help him to be the man that God wants him to be.” Do you know what I bet? There may not be a single wife here who thought of it like that when they were married.
Well, if you’ve never thought of it like that, start thinking of it like that. “It is not good for a man to be alone. I will make him a helper. I have given him a job to do, and I want somebody to help him to do it.”
But that brings us to the temptation, doesn’t it? That brings us to the story of the fall. You’ll notice that in chapter three, we are told that the serpent through whom, obviously, the devil was working, was more cunning than any beast of the field, which the Lord had made. The serpent was very clever, says this text, very clever.
So did you get this, are you all awake? “The serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field that the Lord had made, and the serpent said to the man...” Unh, unh. The serpent was smart, and he talked to the woman.
You know, when you hear some people discuss marriage, you can get the impression very easily that the vast majority of problems in marriages come from husbands. You know, “If my husband were only this or that or the other thing, our marriage would really be great. The devil works in our marriage through my husband, and he fouls things up by working through my husband.”
Well, hello! I’ve got a news flash for you. The devil is capable of working in marriages through the woman, and when the woman forgets her role for which God made her, believe me, the devil will take advantage of that in a big way.
So he approaches the woman, and he says to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” Notice how the Satan phrases that for the woman. He says, “Has God really said that you can’t eat of every single tree in this garden?”
Let’s translate that into modern language: “Has God really said you can’t have it all? You can’t have it all. Is that what God has said to you?”
How many women are susceptible to that? You know, it’s really surprising how often a woman will get to the state where she’s surrounded by all sorts of privileges that some women would kill to get, and she says, “We don’t have this,” or, “My husband doesn’t do that,” or, “My life is missing that particular thing.”
And one of the things that the devil can do with considerable success with women is to focus them on what they do not have.
Notice what the woman’s answer here is: And the woman said, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it nor shall you touch it lest you die.’ ”
Wait a minute. I thought the earlier verse said that the tree of life was in the midst of the garden. What happened to the tree of life here? She ignores it. What’s in the middle of the garden for the woman at this moment? You know what’s in the middle of her garden? It’s what she can’t have. That’s what’s in the middle of her garden.
“We can eat of the trees,” she said, “but that tree that’s right in the heart of the garden that we pass all the time, you know, and I’ve looked at it...” —I’m elaborating here— “That thing that’s in the midst of the garden—I can’t have it. I can’t have it.”
I’m sure you women can relate to that. And she says, “The reason I can’t have it is because God says that when I eat it I’ll die.”
And the devil says, “Oh no, you won’t. Yeah, don’t be silly. You’re not going to die if you eat of that tree. Because God knows that in the day that you eat, your eyes will be opened, you’ll be like God knowing good and evil. Oh, you’re missing something,” says the devil. “You are really, really, really missing something. The tree that God has forbidden you to have is one that that, first of all, it will open your eyes and it will make you like God, knowing good and evil.”
Notice the woman, first of all, is focused on what she doesn’t have, and secondly on how good it would be to have what she doesn’t have. You know? She’s focused on what she doesn’t have, and then she’s focused on how good it would be to have what she doesn’t have.
But if God didn’t give it to her, it wasn’t good for her, right? And the devil can persuade a wife, first of all, that she doesn’t have one thing that would be very nice, and then that she is missing so much by not having that.
And when a woman is persuaded of that by the devil, she no longer thinks in terms of her role in the marriage as a helper.
Notice what happens next? The woman looks at the tree. You know what she sees? Not a tree that will kill her, not a tree that will break her relationship with God, not even a tree that could possibly break her relationship with her husband. Suppose he doesn’t eat of it and she does? She doesn’t see the tree that way anymore.
You know what she sees in that tree? Delicious fruit. Beautiful fruit. And a tree that is desired to make one wise. “Oh, I just have got to have that.” And she took of it and ate.
What was she doing? Was she helping her husband? Was she helping her husband? She was acting selfishly. She wasn’t thinking of anything at that moment except what she wanted.
Now as I’ve said to you, I have counseled husbands and wives together and separately more times than I can enumerate. And after you hear both sides, after you hear both sides—and here I’m—husbands you can tune in, if you’re tuned out at the moment, you can tune in again—after I hear both sides, you know what I usually say to myself? “This problem could be easily solved if both of them would be less selfish. This problem could be easily solved if both of them would be less selfish.”
And almost always, especially in Christian marriages, when something goes wrong, at least one person is selfish.
And here is the avenue through which the devil entered the first marriage in human history. He got the woman focused on what she didn’t have, and she began to think about it selfishly... selfishly.
And then the next phrase is short, but devastating. Did you notice it in verse six? It says, “She took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
This is the helper, folks. This is the being that God created to help the man, to help him meet his responsibilities, to help him be in the garden what God wanted him to be. And what does she do? She helps him to break his relationship with God.
And they lose their home in the garden, as you well know, because they are driven out of the garden. And both of them are made subject to death.
Ladies—still awake, ladies?—when you forget your role as the helper of your husband, when you begin to act selfishly, do you know what you’re doing? You are threatening your home, your marriage, your children, and your happiness.
Is there anybody here who thinks that they can be happy without fulfilling God’s purpose for them? Is there anybody here who would say, “Well Zane, maybe God did make us ladies to be helpers, but I don’t really like that role, and my husband doesn’t really deserve it from me, you know. If you knew what kind of husband I was married to and how much help he needed, you wouldn’t be sitting there so complacent. So I’m not gonna do it God’s way. I’m not gonna be the kind of wife that God designed me to be.” Do you think you’re going to be happy? Think again. That’s a fantasy. That’s a fantasy.
Neither the man nor the woman can be truly happy or fulfilled unless they are happy in accordance with the way God has created them to be. If we all understood that, if all of the married couples in Victor Street Chapel understood that, we’d have a lot less marital difficulties than we have.
So test yourself. All professors and ex-professors give tests. Which of the three statements that I am going to make most characterizes your role as a helper of your husband? This is for ladies.
And the men can rate their wives, but don’t you dare tell them how you rated them, okay? Because I don’t want you to get in trouble, and I don’t want to get in trouble either by you telling them.
So, the ladies, rate yourself. Which of the three statements fits you?
A: My husband would be a better Christian man if he were married to somebody besides me. My husband would probably be a better Christian man if he were married to somebody besides me. That’s A.
Here’s B: My husband’s Christian life and service is his own business. That’s his thing. I’m doing my thing.
C: I am fully committed, by the grace of God, to helping my husband be the best man he can possibly be for God.
Which of those three most nearly describes your role in relationship to your husband?
A: My husband would be a better Christian man if he were married to somebody else. If you chose that, give yourself a flunking grade, and a minus 100, because you are also telling me, “Not only do I not help my husband, I’m a positive hindrance to him, a positive hindrance.”
B: My husband’s Christian life and ministry is his own business, and I let him do his thing, and I do mine. Give yourself another flunking grade. But this time you can take a zero, because you’re saying, “I neither help nor hinder him.”
I hope you chose—or if you couldn’t honestly choose it right now that you have already chosen—then this should be true of you: that you are deeply committed to helping your husband become the man that God wants him to become and to do the things that God wants your husband to do.
Don’t ever come to me about marriage any more unless you, as a wife, have that as your objective.
Now when I go into homes—I guess I better admit this—when I go into homes, I’m always watching to see what the dynamics are between a husband and a wife. You may not know that, but I’m always doing that.
Of course, I’m not expecting to see a big old fight with screaming, you know, because when the pastor comes calling, that’s not what happens. Everybody’s on their good behavior. So I’m not looking for something so obvious as that. I’m looking for little subtle things. I can’t give you all my trade secrets, but let me tell you a few things:
I’m looking to see if, during the course of my visit, the husband and wife talked to each other a little bit as well as to me. And I’m interested in the tone of the exchange between them. You know, if husband and wife are not speaking at home, they may get past that by speaking only to me, or mainly to me, except as to say, “Pass the meat,” or, you know, “Cut the bread,” or something like that.
Another thing I’m looking for is whether, in the conversation, either of the spouses has a tendency to put the other one down, even with little gentle put-downs. You know: “Well, my husband, you know, he couldn’t cut his way through a steak if his life depended on it.”
I remember years ago one of my heroes in baseball, Johnny Bench, married a very attractive airline stewardess, and I read about this in the Cincinnati papers. They had them both on television and interviewed them. And then some of the people who wrote in to the newspaper said it was horrible because, all the way through the television program, the wife was putting Johnny Bench down. Here is Cincinnati’s hero, and she’s up there saying all sorts of negative things about him. And the people who wrote to the newspaper said, “We don’t expect this marriage to last very long.”
Sure enough, it didn’t. They divorced.
And I’m looking for little indications of whether the husband and wife respect each other. And here’s one thing I’m looking for: I am looking to see if the wife is truly, truly interested in what her husband is doing for God.
The writer of Proverbs, and with this I close, said,
“Who can find a virtuous wife? Her value is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts in her... She does him good and not evil all the days of his life.”
Man, what a description for a wife! How fortunate a man is to find a virtuous wife. How fortunate a man is to find a woman that he can trust from day one to the end of life. How fortunate a man is to find a woman who will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
That’s a high standard, ladies—a high standard—where, with the help of God, you can reach it.