Marriage and the Fall: Genesis 3:1-24

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.

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[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

The First Marriage: Genesis 2:18-25

Let's begin by briefly reviewing a few key statements from last week's blog. We said 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). That is it’s meaning and purpose. We also said that marriage 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. We looked at what I called “the last marriage” in Revelation 21:1-4 and learned from it that marriage should be a place where we display covenant love, pursue one another’s holiness, treasure God, and depend upon Christ for grace to accomplish all of this.

The Backdrop of the First Marriage (Genesis 1:26-28): Here is where we’re going: we are going to combine the first marriage with last marriage to arrive at the ideal marriage with the understanding that the first marriage points to the last; it being ultimate. The first marriage in the Bible takes place in Genesis 2:18-25, which is an expansion of Genesis 1:26-31. What this means is that the first marriage takes place in the context of God creating man and woman in His image to be His representative rulers and stewards of creation. They are to represent God to all of creation, to rule the earth on God’s behalf (as stewards), and are to reproduce image bearers of God to fill up the earth (procreation) with the glory of God. We are going to learn four things from this first marriage:

1) The First Marriage is Meant to be a Pattern for All Earthly Marriages

Genesis 2:24 is a PATTERN STATEMENT for all marriages. It is God’s commentary on what has just taken place. That is the significance of the word, “Therefore.” God is saying that since He established the first marriage in this way, this is way all marriages should be. Both Jesus and the apostle Paul, when they teach about marriage, interpret Genesis 2:24 in this way (Mark 10:2-9, Ephesians 5:22-33). It is the Bible’s pattern for marriage: a man leaving his father and mother and holding fast to his wife in a new “one flesh” union where they can be “naked and…not ashamed.” From what we read in Genesis 2:18-25, we can at a minimum say the following about God’s pattern for all marriage:

i) Monogamy

When God creates marriage, He creates it to be a monogamous relationship. This is the pattern. To meet Adam’s need for a companion, God created a woman to be his wife (22), not ten women to be his wives. He could have and this would have certainly filled up the earth faster, but He didn’t. This simply means that God’s design for marriage is one man and one woman for one lifetime.

ii) Heterosexuality

God also creates this marriage to be a heterosexual relationship. He doesn’t create another man to be Adam’s wife and companion. He creates a woman. I’m sure you’ve heard the joke: “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”

Homosexuality simply flies in the face of God’s good created order. One of the functions of marriage is procreation (having children) according to Genesis 1:28, and that is an impossibility in a homosexual relationship. Neither two males, nor two females can reproduce on their own. It is not God’s design. God’s good design for marriage is a monogamous, heterosexual relationship.

iii) Sexual Intimacy

Here we see that in God’s design, marriage is to be consummated by sexual intercourse and that sex is to be enjoyed in the context of a husband and wife relationship. This is one thing that is meant by their becoming “one flesh” and their being “naked and…not ashamed.” This is how Paul interprets this phrase in 1 Corinthians 6:15-16, where he is warning against sex outside of marriage, whether it is with a prostitute or anyone else. He says that when we commit sexual immorality with someone else, we are becoming “one flesh” with him or her. He doesn’t mean that if we sleep with someone, that we are automatically married in God’s eyes. He means that we are forming a bond that is deeply physical, emotional, and spiritual, that is to be formed between only a husband and a wife.

John Piper calls sexual immorality “an exploitation of marriage prerogatives.” He says, “The shell of oneness is there, but not the covenant meaning.”[1] Mark Driscoll often comments that our culture tries to separate three things that the Bible makes inseparable: marriage, sex, and children. What both of these guys are saying is simply that many people want the pleasures of marriage without the covenant commitment of marriage. The pattern established by God at the first marriage is that when someone gives himself or herself away physically, there are supposed to be covenant strings attached. See is this example makes sense: my son loves icing, but not cake. So every time he eats a piece of cake, he ruins it by licking the icing off and leaving the cake. This is analogous to what happens when sexual activity takes place before or outside the context of marriage: it licks the icing off the cake, ruining it.

We’ll talk more about this subject in a later sermon, but for now we just need to see that God’s pattern, negatively, is that sex is not to be practiced outside of the marriage union and that, positively, it is to be enjoyed inside the marriage union. It is a good and beautiful thing that is not to be neglected (1 Corinthians 7:3-5). That is God’s design.

iv) Covenant Love

The other thing that is meant by their becoming “one flesh” and their being “naked and…not ashamed” is the reality of covenant love. “One flesh” is covenant language. This is to be a union that is inseparable; a union that is permanent. That is how Jesus interprets this phrase in Matthew 19:3-6. He says that God created us male and female to become “one flesh” in marriage. Since two people who are married are “no longer two but one flesh,” no man should separate what God has joined together. The implication is that “one flesh” implies permanence of the marriage union. They are becoming something that should not be separated again. That’s covenant.

Covenant love is also seen in their being “naked and…not ashamed.” This does mean sex, but it also means so much more. Their nakedness is a symbol for the absence of shame. There is complete transparency between them. There is no guilt. There is no pride to move them to hide anything. There is nothing to hide. There is no mistrust. It says, “I am completely comfortable being vulnerable before you.” That is what happens when someone is committed to loving you in covenant. Piper is so helpful here. He says the reason there is no shame is not because they had perfect bodies, but because of the presence of covenant love. “The first way to be shame-free is to be perfect; the second way to be shame free is based on the gracious nature of covenant love. In the first case, there is no shame because we’re flawless. In the second case, there is no shame because covenant love covers a multitude of flaws (1 Peter 4:8, 1 Corinthians 13:6).” He goes on to say, “Marriage was designed from the beginning to display the new covenant between Christ and the church.” “The very essence of this covenant is that Christ passes over the sins of His bride. His bride is free from shame not because she is perfect, but because she has no fear that her lover will condemn her or shame her because of her sin.”[2] True, there are no flaws or sins to look past or worry about here in Genesis 2:18-24, but “the eventual exercise of that covenant love was God’s design.” So the pattern again is covenant love, for one spouse to say to the other, “You can be completely transparent before me physically, spiritually, and emotionally. You don’t have to hide anything or be ashamed of anything, no matter how ugly, or silly, or sinful. You can trust me to love you in and through all of it.”

v) Companionship

Have you ever noticed in reading Genesis 1-2 that there is only one thing that God says is “not good” in paradise? He says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (18). God then creates the woman to remedy this one deficiency in paradise. Now God’s saying this does not mean that it is not good for anyone to be single. That would contradict the teaching and the ministry of both Jesus and Paul. But this does mean that it is not good for anyone of us to go at life alone. We need God, who is a friend that sticks closer than a brother and we need the companionship of others, whether that be in marriage or in the friendships and relationships that we cultivate in the body of Christ.

When it comes to marriage, God’s design is for it to be a most intimate and romantic companionship. We see several things that companionship in marriage is in this passage. First, it is fulfilling. I think one of the reasons that God parades these animals before Adam after telling Him that He would make a “helper fit for him” was to show Adam that there was not a helper fit for him in all creation. He was alone. In one sense, God wanted Adam to feel lonely so He could fill that loneliness up with a wife that he would now appreciate more than he would have had he not been lonely. It is tragic when someone who is married feels lonely after many years. We are not meant to feel lonely in marriage. Secondly, it is transparent. Again, this is part of what is symbolized in being “naked and…not ashamed.” Thirdly, it is compassionate and caring. She will be “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (23). When she hurts, he will hurt because to hurt her is to hurt him. Her pain is his pain and her joy is his joy.

Finally, it is romantic. To use a word from Bambi, Adam is “twitterpated.” Remember, God has paraded all these animals before Adam to show him that he is alone. Then God puts Adam to sleep, performs a surgical operation on him, takes out one his ribs, from which he will make Adam’s bride. When Adam wakes up, God brings this beautiful, naked woman to him. Adam says, “Whoa…Man!” and that is how woman gets her name! Just kidding, but he does sing her a poem on the spot. Husbands, when was the last time you wrote your wife a letter or a poem or a song? We think that is just silly stuff we do when we are dating, but here we see it being an essential part of God’s design. What I mean is that we are to cultivate romance.

vi) Priority of the Marriage Union over the Parent/Child Union

We see also here that God’s pattern for marriage is for a man to “leave his father and mother” and to “hold fast to his wife” (24). This means that the marriage union of a husband and wife is to take priority over any parent/child union. There are two places this is to be applied. The first one is between a couple and their parents. Their relationship with one another takes priority now over their relationship with their parents. The second place this is to be applied is between a couple and their children. Their relationship is also to take priority over their relationship with their children. This is important to remember in a normal family and especially in a mixed family.

So at a bare minimum, we have the pattern established that marriage 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. Again, this all fits into the backdrop of man and woman’s creation in God’s image to steward and fill the earth by procreation.

2) The Pattern of the First Marriage Establishes a Complementary View of Manhood and Womanhood

Complementarianism means that men and women both bear the image of God and are therefore equal in their personhood and worth, but differ in their distinct roles, which complement each other. It celebrates both equality between men and women and the beneficial differences between men and women. I want to be clear here: regardless of what our culture says, the Bible does not teach unqualified equality between men and women. We are equal in some ways, but we are not in other ways. Anatomy would be an obvious example, but it runs deeper than that.

If we were to sum up these differences between men and women established here at creation, the word that would sum up men and husbands would be headship and the phrase that would sum up women and wives would be the helpful submission. Genesis 1-2 clearly establish male headship. The man is created first, not the woman (18). The woman came from the man (22). The man names the woman (23). Part of the woman’s purpose in being created was to meet a need for the man (18). She is his equal, but she is also his helper. This is the way that Paul interprets these events in 1 Corinthians 11:3,8-12 and 1 Timothy 2:13 (see Eph. 5:22-33 also). So male headship is at the heart of Biblical manhood and the essence of Biblical womanhood is helpful submission. Let me give you some definitions: “Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.” Helpful submission is“the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.”[3]

This complementary view of men and women does not demean women in any way. She equally bears the image of God (1:27). The stewardship man and woman have over the earth is a joint stewardship (1:28). The point of this animal parade was to show Adam that he had no equal in creation! When God creates woman, we are to learn from this that she is his equal in a way that nothing else in creation is (23). She is NOT seen here as a lowly, degraded, slave-like creature meant to be a man’s property. On the contrary, God is seen here as a loving Father walking this beautiful bride “down the aisle” to her husband (22). Adam is smitten with her (23). She is taken from his side, a place close to his heart to walk beside him and rule the earth along side him as his helper (21-22). If you were to study this Hebrew word for “helper” here, you make a very moving observation: it is used for God sixteen of the nineteen times that it appears in the Old Testament[4] (Ex. 18:4, Ps. 20:2, 33:20, 70:5, 115:9-11, 121:1-2, 146:5). God is called the “helper” of His people. This means that a woman’s role is anything but demeaning; it is glorious.

3) The Pattern of the First Marriage is Rooted in Creation, not in the Curse or in a Culture

This is a very simple, yet very important point. God’s design for marriage is rooted in God’s creative order, before the fall. This first means simply that marriage is God’s idea (and as God’s idea a good idea) and secondly means that this design for marriage is God’s design for marriage in every age. It is to be followed in every culture and at every point in history.

I’ll give one example. If someone flew past me on a highway in Germany and I angrily caught up with them, forced them to pull over, and proceeded to tell them that they were breaking the speed limit because they were driving faster than 55 miles per hour, what would be the problem with that? The problem is that the speed limit is different in Germany. As a matter of fact, the speed limit varies from state to state and from town to town. For many people, that is their understanding of marriage. They dismiss the Biblical design because they think it is the product of ancient culture and since we live in a different one today, we can redefine marriage. Even among Christians, some aspects of manhood and womanhood are thought to be the product of God’s curse in Genesis 3 that need to be redeemed. They think things like headship and submission are products of the fall and that we need to get back to the unqualified equality of the original creation. But what we have seen is that unqualified equality was not part of God’s original creation. These things are rooted in God’s good creative design. And marriage doesn’t find its definition in a given culture. It’s not like the speed limit. Marriage finds its definition in God’s creation order seen here in Genesis 1-2, and that means that it is to be followed in every culture in every age.

4) The First Marriage is Meant to be a Picture of the Last Marriage Between Jesus Christ and His Bride, the church

Remember that we said that when God created the first marriage, He had the last one in mind. That is the point of Ephesians 5:32. We see this in two powerful ways in Genesis 2:18-25. In the husband, we see the first Adam put to sleep and his side opened up and from what comes from his side, God fashions a bride for him. Jesus Christ is called the Last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45. This Last Adam would leave His Father and be put to sleep in death on the cross. A Roman soldier would open up His side and God would take what flowed from His side and with it purchase a bride for Him. But unlike the first Adam, the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, has never and will never fail His bride. He is the Last Adam and He is the greater Adam.

With the woman, remember that I told you that this word “helper” is used mostly for God in the Old Testament. Just as her subordination to her husband didn’t affect her equality with him, we see God, our “helper,” in the New Testament subordinate Himself to human flesh without sacrificing any of His deity to supremely “help” His people on the cross by dying in their place and for their sins. So we have two analogies that teach us the gospel in this first marriage, because that is what the gospel will accomplish: the securing of a bride for God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

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[1] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 31

[2] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 33-34

[3] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 80

[4] Waltke, Bruce K., “Genesis,” pg. 88

The Last Marriage: Revelation 21:1-4

Yesterday, we began a series entitled, “The Glory of God in the Homes of His People.” This is a series that has been on my heart for several months and for several reasons. There is great need in our world today for basic, biblical instruction on the subject of marriage and family because it seems that in our culture and our community, many people have lost their way when it comes to this glorious institution. Andreas Kostenberger makes the following comments on our current cultural crisis:

“For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is confronted with the need to define the meaning of the terms “marriage” and “family.” What until now has been considered a “normal” family, made up of a father, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a significant extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and societal level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are institutions under siege in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.”[1] He goes on to list several negative consequences of the erosion of a biblical view of marriage: sky-rocketing divorce rates (which many statistics say are as high or higher among professing Christians as they are among the rest of secular society), sex outside of marriage, adultery, teen pregnancy, homosexuality, and gender role confusion. Satan seems to be successfully ravaging the homes, not only of our society in general, but also of God’s people.

My basic presupposition for this series is this: Marriage and family, like everything else in this universe, exist for the glory of God. This means that there is more at stake when marriages fall apart than just our own pain or the emotional damage to our children. The glory of God is at stake when our homes are in trouble. Our homes are to be beacons that display the light of the glory of God to the world. In John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” he opens the first chapter with this statement: “There never has been a generation whose general view of marriage is high enough.”[2] My prayer is that God would use this sermon series to do a work in our hearts that will lift our view of marriage and family as high as possible so that it would redound to the glory of His name for all eternity.

I. The Meaning and Purpose of All Marriage (Ephesians 5:31-32)

I’m kind of going out on a limb this morning because no book that I have read on marriage so far explores the last marriage in the bible, which is called “the marriage of the Lamb” in Revelation 19:7. The reason I want to start there today is because according to Paul, when God created the first marriage, He had the last one in mind. He says the following in Ephesians 5:31-32: “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” The meaning and the purpose of marriage is to put on display the covenant love between Christ and His bride, the church. It was created by God to be a lived out parable of God’s covenant love for His people. This means is that we can tie a string from the first marriage and every other subsequent marriage to this last one between Christ and His bride. If you are married, that is the ultimate meaning and purpose of your marriage. That is why you are married. If you hope to be married someday, that is what you should look forward to most.

This again means that marriage ultimately exists for the glory of God. Through it, He wants to fill the earth with a demonstration of who He is. Gary Ricucci articulated what this means: “When we speak of bringing glory to God, we mean doing that which, to some degree, accurately reveals and represents Him and appropriately honors and responds to Him for who He is in His perfection and power. Thus, marriage brings glory to God by displaying as fully as possible how He relates to His people through Christ.”[3]

Marriage is a metaphor used to describe the relationship between God and His people throughout the Bible (Is. 25:6-9, 49:18, 54:5-10, 61:10, Ezek. 16, John 3:29, 2 Cor. 11:2, Eph. 5:32, Rev. 19:6-9, 21:1-4, 9-14, 22:17). One beautiful example of this metaphor is found in Isaiah 54:5-10, where declares His steadfast, covenant love for His people in spite of their rebellion. So now that we understand meaning and the metaphor of marriage, let’s how they are ultimately fulfilled in the last marriage.

II. The Last Marriage (Revelation 21:1-4)

It is no accident that we see this metaphor of marriage appears again on the day that the whole Bible has been looking forward to. Please don’t miss this. It is monumentally profound that when God wants to describe the consummation of His kingdom, He uses the metaphor of a wedding. He uses the metaphor of a marriage. The new creation begins (21:2) with the holy city of God’s people, New Jerusalem, “coming down…as a bride adorned for her husband.” Now, what was the first institution that God established in the old creation? It was marriage. So catch this: God’s new creation and new covenant is consummated by the oldest custom in creation. He does so because this is the wedding that every wedding has pointed to in some way. There are at least four things that we see in this marriage that speak to ours today.

1) The Nature of Covenant Love

The first thing we observe about this last marriage is the nature of covenant love. I called this the day that the whole Bible has been looking forward to and the reason that the whole Bible has been looking forward to this day is because God said it was going to come. This is the day that God Himself committed to bring about. That’s the significance of the curse being lifted (21:4): it is what God has been working towards since He declared the curse in Genesis 3. In Genesis 3:15, God promised that He would send someone to undo everything that was done that day. He made a vow to redeem His people. This wedding of God and His people is the end of that promise. This wedding is the end of every one of God’s covenants with His people throughout the Bible. He has ultimately blessed the nations through Christ by calling out from among them a people to be His bride. This wedding between God and His people is the end of the new covenant (Jer. 33:31-33, Ezek. 36:25-28).

Now here is why I say that this last marriage teaches us about the nature of covenant love: because it speaks back to all of history and to all of the new creation that God is a God who keeps His covenants. He is a God who keeps His vows. He has never wavered in His commitment to His bride. He has never ceased to be committed to her. He has never broken covenant with her no matter how she may have rebelled against Him. He has even died to secure the reality of what He has promised to her. That’s the nature of covenant love. It keeps its vows. It never gives up. Have you ever considered that Jesus Christ has been the most loving husband to the most unloving bride in all of history? He has never and will never leave His wife.

This unwavering and unceasing commitment to keep covenant is the idea behind many covenant symbols that are part of weddings and covenants we see in scripture. The wedding ring seeks to communicate that just as a circle is unending, so will a couple’s commitment to keeping the covenant of marriage be. The salt ceremony seeks to communicate that it would be easier to separate every individual grain of salt and put them back in their original containers than it would be to end this covenant. Genesis 15 is one of by favorite examples of a covenant symbol, where various animals are sacrificed in half and the parties of the covenant walk between the halves of the animals, signifying that they will die like these animals before they will break the covenant that is being entered into. That is the nature of covenant love. It is unwavering. It is unceasing. It is committed. It is permanent.

Marriage is a covenant (Ezek. 16:18, Mal. 2:14), not a contract. Contracts are conditional and can easily be broken. The marriage covenant is a sacred bond horizontally between husband and wife and vertically between the couple and God. And covenant love is not about my spouse’s faithfulness to me; it is about my faithfulness to her and to God. As Piper says again, marriage is not mainly about staying in love, but about keeping covenant.

This also has profound implications for single people who want to get married one day. You need to be resolved to love like this if you want to marry someone and you need to only marry someone that you can love like this. In marriage, people change in both good ways and bad ways. You need to resolve in your heart that you can love and be committed to this person regardless of what changes you both may go through. That’s the nature of covenant love. It’s in for better or for worse.

2) The Beauty of the Bride (2, 9-14)

The beauty of Christ’s bride is highlighted here Revelation 21:9-11 and in Revelation 19:6-9. She is said to be a radiant bride that is adorned with “the glory of God.” In Revelation 19:8, her clothing is “fine linen, bright and pure,” which is defined as “the righteous deeds of the saints.” According to Revelation 7:14, her clothing, her righteous deeds, are white because they have been washed in the blood of her Husband, the Lamb. I think this means that the beauty of the Lamb’s wife will be her holiness that was brought about by the saving and sanctifying work of her Husband, Jesus Christ. This beauty will be a testimony to His grace towards her and of her love for Him. That is why her beauty is said to be the “glory of God.”

Here’s what I think this says to our marriages today: that if what is beautiful about Christ’s bride is her holiness, then our marriages should be working towards one another’s holiness. I should be an agent of grace that encourages, pursues, and fights for the holiness of my wife. Jesus doesn’t stop at the justification of His bride; He also pursues her sanctification and her glorification. He relentlessly pursues her holiness. He has committed Himself to seeing her conformed into His image. What I’m saying is that we should commit ourselves to seeing our spouse conformed to His image as well. This brings up some convicting questions. Am I fighting for the holiness of my spouse? Am I warring in prayer for my wife’s growth in the Lord? For my children’s? For anyone’s other than my own?

3) The Intimacy of the Union (3-4)

The reason marriage is such a rich metaphor for the relationship between God and His people is because it helps us understand one of the mega-themes of the bible: GOD’S DESIRE TO DWELL WITH HIS PEOPLE. This desire is seen in several places, like in the Garden of Eden, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, ultimately in the coming of Jesus, and is also seen in the Church. And here (21:3-4) we have sin removed and the heart of God becoming the only reality. We could say that heaven is the honeymoon of God and His people. God wants this metaphor to communicate the intimacy of this eternal union. Heaven is the perfect home where the Lamb will forever live with and enjoy His bride. This is the happiest of all happily ever-afters.

Now here is the part I really don’t want to mess up! The reality that we witness about the last marriage also speaks to the treasure that God is. God is a treasure that is infinitely more valuable than anything we can or will ever experience. He is better than a spouse. He is better than a boyfriend or a girlfriend. He is more satisfying than sex. He is better than children. Is this not Paul’s point in saying that being with Christ is “far better” than anything we could experience in this life (Philippians 1:23)? He is the highest and deepest joy that anyone can experience on either side of eternity. At the last marriage we will experience that reality in its fullness.

I guess at one level an application of this point would be that you should make “dwelling with” (spending quality time with) your spouse a priority. That is a good idea. Do that. But I would like to push you a little farther and a little deeper than that. If God really is the treasure that scriptures declare Him to be (and I believe He is), then I want to challenge you to treasure God. Spend quality time with your spouse, but most importantly, spend quality time with the Lord in prayer and in His Word in anticipation of this day that we read about in Revelation 21:1-4. Let Psalm 16:11 become the anthem of your heart before God, that “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at you right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Any marriage that fails to treasure God will ultimately never make it. I don’t mean they will certainly divorce, but I do mean that they will never know what it is like to display the covenant love of Jesus for His bride if they do not treasure Him. This is one of the most important things that any married person can know: the key to treasuring marriage properly is treasuring God. As Piper often says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”

4) The Glory of the Bridegroom (4)

I simply want you to see here in verse 4 Who it is that is dwelling with, comforting, and healing His bride: Jesus. The Lamb is the hero of this greatest love story. His covenant love that reached its climax in the cross is forever enjoyed and celebrated in this new creation. He has rescued His bride. She will never want again. She will never cry again. She will never face pain or death again. If you were to take all of history’s greatest love stories and happy endings and put them together, it would only be a cheap cartoon compared to this scene. No hero has ever more gloriously rescued His love than Jesus has.

Let me encourage you that Jesus needs to be the hero of your love story (of your marriage) as well. He can heal the hurts that you have experienced in marital failure. He can wipe away the tears. He can restore your marriage and your fellowship with Him. Please here this today: because God is unwaveringly committed to the beauty of His bride’s holiness, that means He is with you, fighting for your marriage to be this picture of covenant love. But you cannot display the glory of God properly in your marriage if you do not treasure Him and live utterly dependent upon Him to display that glory.

In closing, I would to just make note of a few implications of this passage. One is that no earthly marriage is ultimate & that all earthly marriages are temporary. This is implied here in Revelation 21:1-4 (it is the only marriage that we read about) and it is explicitly stated in Mark 12:25, which says, “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” There will be no human marriage after death. I don’t say this to burst anyone’s bubble, but to both encourage single people and to safeguard us from making marriage and family an idol.

Secondly, though no earthly marriage is ultimate, all earthly marriages are sacred. They are designed to display the covenant love between Christ and His church. We should make our highest priority in our homes to not warp this picture by the grace of God.

Finally, because no earthly marriage is ultimate, all earthly marriages are dependent upon the grace of God. This first means that if you are not a Christian, it is impossible for you to display the glory of God in your marriage properly. Your heart is dead and cannot treasure God. You need to experience this covenant love of Christ for the first time today so that you can express it in your home. This secondly means that if you are a Christian, that you are still utterly dependent upon the empowering of the Holy Spirit of God that lives within you to accomplish this lofty task of displaying the glory of God’s covenant keeping grace. And let us all rejoice in this reality that in our dependence upon Him, He is also unwaveringly committed to our displaying His glory.

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[1] Kostenberger, Andreas; God, Marriage, & Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation, pg. 25-27

[2] Piper, John; This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence, pg. 19

[3] Ricucci, Gary & Betsy; Love That Lasts: When Marriage Meets Grace, pg. 20