Let’s begin with a little review: We said in week one that Marriage exists to bring glory to God by displaying the covenant love between Jesus Christ and His bride, the church (Ephesians 5:31-32). It is a covenant horizontally between a husband and wife and vertically between a couple and God and that covenant love is ultimately about my faithfulness to my spouse and to God. Then last week we looked at the first marriage in Genesis 2:18-25, and said that God’s pattern for marriage in every age and every culture is a monogamous, heterosexual covenant union entered into before God and consummated by sexual intercourse, in which the covenant partners experience intimate companionship as a new union set apart from their parental bonds. These are some of the big ideas that I am wanting you to leave with every week and I am going to continue repeating them to you every week because I want them to become ideas that you are able to verbalize on your own to others.
So far we have seen the last marriage in Revelation 21:1-4 and the first marriage in Genesis 2:18-25, and they give us the Bible’s picture of the ideal marriage. Today, we are going to see why no marriage will ever fully live up to this ideal. Today we are going to see the ideal dismantled by Satan and sin.
Now before we get started, let me give you a disclaimer: Genesis 3:1-24 is not ultimately about how sin and Satan destroy marriage. It is not ultimately about how marriage falls apart; it’s about how everything falls apart. We are simply going to look at the events of Genesis 3:1-24 through the lens of marriage.
1) Satan is Seen to be the Great Destroyer of Marriage (3:1-6)
Satan is the first enemy we see in God’s good creation and the way he attacks it is by attacking this first married couple that are made in the image of God. Understand this: the reason that Satan wants to destroy marriage and everything else is because he ultimately desires to mar the glory of God. It is true that he does desire to hurt you too, but ultimately, his desire is to rob God of His glory. That’s what he is after. Knowing this should deepen our perspective of marriage. When our marriage falls under fire, we are to ultimately contend for the glory of God, which again is contended for by displaying the covenant love between Christ and His church. This is the picture that Satan wants to warp in the following two ways:
i) By Overturning God’s Good Design (1-6)
The first way that Satan seeks to destroy the first marriage is by overturning God’s good design. What we see in Genesis 3:1-6 is a complete role reversal in which the creation order is turned on its head. In God’s good creative order, this couple was to live under the rule of God as His representative rulers and stewards of the earth. The husband was to be the head of this partnership, loving leading, protecting, cherishing, nurturing, and providing for his wife as they exercised dominion over God’s creation. Here in Genesis 3:1-6, we have a creature seducing the woman to lead her husband to rebel against the rule of God.
It is very significant that the serpent approaches the woman and not the man in this temptation. Who did God originally give the prohibition to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to? He gave it to Adam, before the woman was created, because Adam was created first as part of God establishing male headship in the first marriage. So this is a direct attack on the husband’s headship here. Ladies, please don’t miss this. This is one of the ways that Satan will seek to disrupt and destroy your marriage: by attacking the headship of your husband through you. He will seek to overturn God’s good design.
ii) By Questioning the Truthfulness and Authority of God’s Word and the Goodness of God’s Character (1b-5)
The second way that we see Satan destroying marriage and everything else is by questioning the truthfulness and authority of God’s Word and the goodness of God’s character. Did you see this? First, He tries to get her shook up on God’s instruction to them and then to view God’s instruction as non-authoritative. These are two obstacles that must be overcome to move in God’s direction for marriage. I would say the way that the first obstacle works itself out today is ignorance. Satan’s effort to shake us up on what God says is very easy because we are not familiar with what God says. We have a whole repertoire of “preacher sayings,” but nothing that we could take anyone to a chapter and verse on about marriage or anything else. The way that the second obstacle works itself out is simply rebellion. We think that God’s Word should be authoritative for everyone except us. It’s like how many of us approach the speed limit: we think what the sign says is the speed limit; we just don’t think that it applies to us. We think we can go faster.
Secondly, Satan questions the goodness of God’s character. He emphasizes the one prohibition that God has given them in the face of unimaginable provision. He then implies that God’s motives for them are not good. In essence He is saying, “What kind of God is this that He would keep this from you? What you don’t know is that He is really trying to keep you from something good. He just wants to keep you under His thumb. This garden is really a prison and this tree is the way out.” He succeeds in getting Eve to think that God is being shady with them. And suddenly she is thinking that this good prohibition is evil and is calling this evil tree “good for food.” Please don’t miss the application of this point. First of all, do you know what God says about your marriage? Secondly, do you view that as truthful and authoritative? Finally and foundationally, do you view what God’s says as good instruction flowing from the goodness of His character?
2) Sin is Seen to be the Great Disease of Marriage (3:6-19)
i) The Essence of Sin: PRIDE (5-6)
Now before we talk about how sin affects every marriage, we need to see sin for what it is. This is one of the most profound things that Genesis 3 does; it reveals sin for what it is. We see plainly the essence of all sin is PRIDE. Did you see the bait? “You will be like God…” (5). This is the great wickedness represented by this tree. To eat of it would be to act in the place of God, pronouncing what was good and evil for themselves in rebellion to what God has pronounced good and evil. Pride always results in idolatry and rebellion. It makes an idol out of our self and leads to rebellion because in seeking to be our own god, we are forced to view anyone else who calls themselves God as rivals. So let me be clear here: pride is when we choose to act in the place of God and pronounce what is good and evil for our self in rebellion to what God has pronounced to be good an evil.
Pride is a cancer to any marriage and any relationship and it has many faces. I want you to see that Eve’s pride is expressed in her asserting herself and pronouncing the tree good and that Adam’s pride is expressed as passiveness. Raymond Ortlund, Jr., commenting on this passage says, “Eve usurped Adam’s headship and lead the way into sin. And Adam who had stood by passively, allowing the deception to progress without decisive intervention…abandoned his post as head. Eve was deceived; Adam forsook his responsibility. Both were wrong and together they pulled the human race down into sin and death.”[1] In what ways does pride express it self in your marriage? I would say looking back over seven years of marriage that pride has been at the heart of every conflict we have had. It is normally the reason the conflict begins and is always the reason the conflict continues.
ii) The Effects of Sin (7-19)
(1) Initial Effects (7-8)
There are two initial effects that we see in Genesis 3:7-8. This couple experiences alienation from God. They experience shame and they are not comfortable being naked before God or each other. When God seeks them, they hide from Him. When God questions the man, He blames His wife.
John Piper has a very insightful take on why this couple experiences shame initially after the fall. He says the presence of covenant love between them collapsed, and that it did so in two ways. First, the person viewing my nakedness is now no longer trustworthy, so I am afraid I will be ashamed. Eve is no longer trustworthy because she has chosen to act in the place of God, independently of him. She has chosen to be selfish to the core. If she will rebel against God, why wouldn’t she rebel against me. What is to keep her from seeking her own interests at the expense of mine? Adam has chosen to not protect wife. What if he won’t do so in the future? So suddenly their nakedness isn’t comfortable because they don’t fully trust each other anymore.
The second say they feel shame is in the fact that they themselves are no longer at peace with God, and they feel guilty and defiled and unworthy,” and therefore ashamed in the presence of someone else. In other words, there is this huge gap between what they are and what they should be and they don’t want the other one to see it. So to cover up this gap, they cover up what is there.[2]
I want you to see here again why I call pride a cancer to any marriage. Pride seeks to cover shame. It says, “I want it to look like I’m OK and I want you to think that I am OK.” This is one of the dangers of preaching this series: for you to see what marriage is supposed to be and try to put that on as a front for the rest of us. Humility is the opposite of pride and whereas pride seeks to cover shame, humility seeks to confess it. This is another insight from Piper here. He points out that God does clothe them, but that clothing is meant to be a confession, not a cover up.[3]
Here’s where I’m going with all of this: We all experience these different faces of pride and shame over our sin because we are all sinners. We all live after and outside of the garden. This is our reality. If you are married, you are married to a fallen sinner and your spouse is married one too. You are going to sin against one another. My point is simply that when it dawns on you that you have been sinned against that you would express covenant love in return and when it dawns on you that you have sinned against your spouse (been selfish, for example) that you would express humility in confessing sin and shame to them in repentance.
(2) Effects entailed in the Curse (14-19)
I am not going to go through every detail of God’s curse upon the serpent, the woman, and the man. I simply want to point out how these curses will affect marriage in history. In the first curse upon the serpent (14-15), God declares to the serpent that there will be “enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.” This means that in the course of history there will be a people who belong to Satan and a people who belong to God. There will be two kingdoms, and “enmity,” or strife and contention, will exist between them. One clear implication of that is that the world will not view things like marriage the way that God does.
In God’s curse upon the woman, we see that her natural relationships in the home will be frustrated. She will experience pain in childbearing and childrearing. Marital harmony with her husband will be disrupted and will become a power struggle resulting in a pendulum swing of female leadership and male domination. It will tend to gravitate between these two extremes. A wife will be tempted to try and rule her husband. That is the meaning of her “desire” being “for” her husband (16). A husband will be prone to dominate his wife through by either passively forcing her into action or actively dominating her.
In the curse upon Adam, we see two things. One is that his responsibility to provide for himself and his family will be frustrated (17-18). Now we basically see that everything under man’s headship will resist Him in some way. I think this is to teach man what it will be like to patiently bear with us throughout history. We also see the one enemy that will destroy every earthly marriage: death (19). God pronounces a death sentence upon the human race. Every marriage that stays together will eventually experience the pain of one spouse having to bury the other one.
3) God is Seen to be the Great Redeemer of Marriage (3:8-24)
i) God’s Questions (9-13)
Here is hope. Immediately after this heinous rebellion, we see a God of mercy and grace seeking out this couple in the garden. And notice who calls out for: “the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (9). Don’t miss this: God holds Adam ultimately responsible. Romans 5:12-21 clearly states that sin enter the world through Adam, not Eve. They both sin here, but God tells the man in Genesis 3:17 that He is issuing this curse because Adam listened to the voice of his wife rather than God and because Adam disobeyed God. Men, this means that God holds you ultimately responsible for everything that is taking place in your home. If God were to knock on your door, He is going to ask for you first, regardless of whom else in your home is in sin.
God proceeds to ask a series of questions to this couple to lead them to introspection, confession, and repentance. Consider these questions with me for a minute. The first one is this: “Where are you” (9)? Where are you with the Lord today, in your marriage? Some of you are hiding. Look as the next one (11): “Who told you that…?” We need to be careful who we listen to in our lives, especially in our marriages. This is because of what we said earlier, that this world does not view marriage in the way that God does. One of your coworkers may make you feel real good about a change you need to make in your marriage, but is what they are telling you squaring with what the Bible says about marriage? “Well, if he did that to me, I would leave him on the curb!” That may make you feel real good and justified in leaving, but that is not the type of covenant love we see commanded of a spouse in the Bible. Who are you listening to for marital advice? The last question was essentially, “Have you done what I told you not to do?” He asks this to both of them.
Again, God is seeking to lead them to introspection, confession, and repentance. These are not questions that God asks for His own curiosity. He knows where Adam is (9). He wants Adam to consider where he is. He knows who they have been listening to. He wants them to consider who they have been listening to: not Him! He knows that they have done what He commanded them not to do. He wants them to own and admit that. That’s confession and repentance. I would suggest that this is a very healthy practice for you marriage, for you to practice regular confession and repentance of your sins against God and one another. What are your failures in marriage? Your two options are to pridefully cover them up or to humbly confess them and repent of them.
ii) God’s Promise (15)
In the blackness of history’s darkest day, God makes a promise that is a blinding ray of hope across the pages of the Bible and of history. He promises a Deliverer, a better Adam. He will be the offspring of a woman and will crush the head of the serpent and destroy what Satan has accomplished on this day. This means that there is no way back to the garden of Eden; there is only a way forward: through the work of this Redeemer. According to 1 John 3:8, this Remeemer’s name is Jesus Christ. Through His finished work on the cross and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, He and He alone will make possible the restoration of the ideal marriage. I want to be clear here: Jesus Christ is the only hope for any marriage. God does not promise to fix this through Adam or Eve, but through this offspring.
iii) God’s Clothing (20-24)
God paints an incredible picture of what this Redeemer will do with what He does next. He clothes this couple with animal skins. Now before I get to the picture, let me first state what is plain about God clothing them: God does intend for our nakedness to be covered. Piper brilliantly expresses that, “public nudity today is not a return to innocence but rebellion against moral reality. God ordains clothes to witness the glory we have lost, and it is added rebellion to throw them off. And for those who rebel in the other direction and make clothes a means of power and prestige and attention getting, God’s answer is not a return to nudity but a return to simplicity (1 Tim. 2:9-10, 1 Peter 3:4-5). Clothes are not meant to make people think about what is under the clothes. Clothes are meant to direct attention to what is not under them: merciful hands that serve others in the name of Christ, beautiful feet that carry the gospel where it is needed, and the brightness of a face that has beheld the glory of Jesus.”[4] I am not a legalist, but I do believe the church today needs a healthy dose of what Piper is talking about.
Now let’s talk about the picture that his paints. God had declared that they would “surely die” on the day that they ate from this tree (2:16-17). But God shows mercy and grace rather than justice and wrath by shedding the blood of a substitute and clothing them with its skins. This looks forward to the day when God would require the death of His Son Jesus Christ (the Lamb of God) in order to clothe us with the righteousness of God. As we said, there is no way back to the garden of Eden, but this is the way forward: the cross. God will go on to kick them out of the Garden of Eden here to make room for this redemption, placing the cherubim and a flaming sword in the garden to guard the tree of life. What is amazing is that the Bible ends with a wedding between God and His people in a city that has a garden with the tree of life in it (Revelation 22:2). What removed the cherubim? In the Old Testament, we not only see them guarding the way of the tree of life in the garden of Eden, but we also see them on the curtains entering the most holy place of the tabernacle (Ex. 26:1) and the holy of holies in the temple (2 Chron. 3:14). The day the Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world, that veil tore apart from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51). What’s the point? The death of Christ removed the cherubim. He made the way forward back to the ideal life of the garden. He can make a way forward back the ideal for your marriage as well.
[1] Ortlund, Jr., Raymond, “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism”, pg. 107
[2] These two paragraphs are simply an abbreviation from John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”, pg. 34-38
[3] Piper, John, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”, pg. 37
[4] Piper, John, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”, pg. 37
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