I Do Not Allow A Woman To Teach

I read to you this text, and if I were to ask a 7-year-old, what's it mean? Do you think they could tell me what it means? If I was to ask a 35-year-old, do you think they could tell me what it means? Who do you think would be more nervous about giving or have more trouble giving an answer? Probably the older one, I would think. Because they're aware of the tension and the conflict surrounding this passage of Scripture, these words from God. The reason a child would be able to tell us what it means is because the meaning of the text is not hard to discern. In our passage, women are given a clear command, positive command, that they're to quietly receive instruction with entire submissive and also a clear prohibition that they may not exercise authority over men. Now, we might be wondering if we're tracking with this, go, why? Why is it that way? Why is that said? And we're going to come to that answer in more detail, but for now...

The simple answer or the general answer is because they're women. And it's not God's will that women should teach or exercise authority over men. It's contrary to nature and to the God who created nature. And I realize that whenever I say these things, we're always right at the edge of, what do you mean? And my hope is that by the end of it, you'll understand what, not so much what I mean, but what the scripture text means. When we come to a passage of scripture, what we don't want to do is spend all of our time saying what it doesn't mean. What we want to learn is proactively what does it actually teach us? Not just ruling out what it doesn't mean. Can't mean that, doesn't mean that. Not in any way, shape, or form. And so our goal this morning is going to be to figure out what does it mean and why? So that we're better equipped as Christians in our day to be able to stand on the word of God and to not flinch or to not be afraid or ashamed of what God has said. And so that's why I said at the beginning of the sermon,

Today we're going to face a question of where our affections lay. Because this passage and what it requires of us to believe puts pressure on us and our society. And I don't want, at the end of it, for us to go, yes, that's the truth I believe, and I'm going to hide it quietly away, never speaking, even to other Christians, of what I believe the scripture teaches. What I want is for us to understand and to not be ashamed, but to be delighted by God's good and gracious plan. and his revealed will for us. Now the reason I've said there's so much tension is because there are many today who would resist the clear meaning of our text. That women ought to do this, ought not to do that. There are plenty of arguments about historical context, or societal norms at the time, or even how these commands militate against the equal rights of women. And if all we had were the plain commands, women do this, men do, you know, women don't do this, period, full stop, the end.

I might be persuaded to give those assertions a fairer consideration, as I'd want to know why. Well, why are we told to do these things or not? But our text isn't limited to simple commands. In our text, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives two reasons for these commands. He doesn't just simply say, do this and don't do that. He says, do this and don't do that. Now here's why. And so what our goal this morning is going to be is not to simply go through all of the arguments surrounding this text and the role of women in the home or in the church or in society. Those are all questions. But if we're going to answer those questions as Christians, we have to start with what God's word says. And what we have in our text is not simply a command, but also the reasons or the foundation or the underpinning of those commands. And so we're going to spend most of our time trying to discern what those reasons are.

because then the commands will have a context in which for us to process them. One of the things I will tell you is that in understanding what God has said in terms of why he does something, I don't want you to think that that's going to remove the tension with the world. You can say, well, women ought not to do this because of this reason, and the world's not going to go, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know there was a reason. Now everything's all settled. And so what I want you to see from the very beginning is it's not simply the command that's under attack. It is the reasons. If you want to know what's going to raise people's hackles, it has much more to do with the reasons than it does with the commands. And that's what I want us to understand and to not be ashamed of as we work through our text this morning. So we'll start with a word about the teaching, the prohibition, teaching and exercising authority over man, that women are prohibited from doing that. What is it to teach somebody? What is it that a woman is being...

forbidden from doing. What does it mean to teach somebody? Well, it means to take on responsibility for them. It means to instruct them. It means to exercise authority over them, right? And we would understand this if you were in college, if you were in primary school. You would understand this if you were in your workplace and you were in an apprenticeship program. You would understand that the one who's teaching you, whatever it is they're teaching you, that a couple of things are true. One, They know more about the topic than you do. That's why they're teaching you. And that their goal is not simply to provide you with information for you to figure out on your own, to accept and to reject and to do whatever you want with. It's actually to give you, to make a case for why you ought to believe what they're telling you. Why it's true.

They don't simply just make assertions and say, well, it's just the way it is. If you've ever had a teacher or someone who's showing you how to do something and they don't ever tell you why, it's much harder to learn, isn't it? What you want, actually, in a teacher is you want them to exercise authority. You want them to tell you why, and you want them to be as forceful as they need to be and as persuasive as they need to be. Another way of saying it would be, you want them to exercise as much authority in the area as they're able to. To teach you something. When you're sitting as a student or a disciple or you're an apprentice or what have you, one of the things teachers will often say is, you understand, right? Do you understand? This happens even in just normal conversations. You understand. You with me? Now, who here says no when they don't understand? I do. I realized this about myself years ago. Abram does.

And you know how awkward it is to say no? Do you know what the person who's talking to you does when you say no, I don't understand? It's like the record skipped. They were just going on and they were talking and it was just some thing they were saying. You understand, right? And then you go, no, I don't. And they're like, uh, they don't know what to do. I bring that up to say, it's very common for those who learn to not acknowledge when they're not learning or when they're not understanding. And it shows up on the test. Those of you who are teachers, if you were to give a test, and the majority of the class bombed the test, not just the normal kids who struggle or don't work hard, but the majority of the kids failed, what's that mean? It means you didn't do a good job teaching. They didn't understand what was going on. They didn't come to the conclusions that they should have. And you are responsible for that as a teacher because you were tasked with teaching them this thing.

Now teaching, I'm making a case for what teaching is that I realize is not unanimously agreed upon, but I'm telling you what teaching actually really is, not what we're trying to make it. Teaching is not simply the presentation of information. That is not teaching. And if you're like me, you are surprised at the conclusions you draw when you're just given information and left to figure it out yourself. The conclusions we come to are... Quite foolish. More often than we'd like to admit. And so what we need are teachers. And we need those teachers to exercise authority. We need them to tell us what something means. And we need to tell them, we need to hear them make a case. This is why it means this. This is what the teacher says. This is what history teaches us. This is what God's word says. We need them to exercise authority. You can't teach without exercising authority.

Women, in this passage, are prohibited from teaching or exercising authority. Now, what kind of teaching is there? Are there different types of teaching? Yeah. There's public teaching and there's private teaching. We have in Scripture, Apollos being taken aside and being taught by Priscilla and Aquila. I always get their names all mixed up. I'm pretty sure it's Prisca. The husband and wife. Apollos is preaching and he's teaching and he's got some things all messed up. And he gets taken aside into the privacy of their home, comes back for lunch, and they say, that's not right what you said. And she's telling him, that's not right what you said. And they showed him a better understanding, a better way. And so is this prohibition that women can never say to a man, in any circumstance, I think you got that one wrong. No, that's not what's being prohibited. One of the primary ways that a wife, for instance, helps a husband is by going to him and saying, you swung and you missed.

I can see what you were trying to do, or I have no idea what you were trying to do, but this is the result, and it wasn't helpful, it wasn't good. Now what's she doing? Is she teaching her husband? You better believe it. We just call it helping. She's helping her husband. She's being his counselor. So what kind of teaching is prohibited here? Public teaching. Public teaching is what's being prohibited here. Most especially. Why? Because it's an exercise of authority. And it's not appropriate. for women to exercise authority over men. Now that's really the nub of the issue, isn't it? It's not becoming of a woman to exercise authority over man in a formal setting. It's against nature. Now, I want to explain that to you. Paul goes on and he explains it. But before I do, I want to raise one other example that will be talked about. If I was saying women aren't to teach or exercise authority over men, they're not to do it in any official capacity, what's the scriptural example?

That's contrary to that. Deborah. Deborah is the example. She's raised up by God to lead, to teach the whole nation. And what we'll do is we'll say, if I was arguing against the clear meaning of this passage, what I would say is, look at Deborah. Deborah did it. We have this example of a woman leading and a woman teaching and a woman exercising authority. So clearly this passage can't mean what it seems to mean. And I say, but you've missed something. Who raised up Deborah? You say, God raised up Deborah directly. And we as Christians can't live in such a way as to put scripture at odds with scripture constantly. Saying, well, if Deborah was raised up miraculously against God's revealed will by himself, we can't take that to discredit the plain old teaching of the rest of scripture and nature concerning this issue. If you think about it in scripture, there are a number of times where God works against physics, against nature, against anything that we could do, and oftentimes against things that we should do, right? The Red Sea is a good example. Water doesn't do that. You and I can't make water do that. And other than that example, and when they crossed the Jordan and he did the same thing again, we are incapable of doing what God is capable of doing. He is able to deviate.

from the laws of nature and the laws of physics and the laws of whatever, he's created because he's the creator. But because he's done it doesn't mean that we now have the right to be able to do it. And I use the Red Sea as an example because none of us could actually do that. It was a miracle. You remember when the Israelites were fighting and the sun was going down? What was the prayer? That the sun wouldn't go down. And what happened? The sun didn't go down. That's a miracle. That's God working against his revealed will in nature. Keep the sun in the sky for days and then to set it back on its rhythm again. This is the power of God as we see it in the created world. And none of those things that he does that are miraculous or extraordinary, extraordinary, out of the ordinary, none of those things make space for us to then do things that are against what he's told us.

To do. Another example of this might be, well, someone says, the Lord told me to do something. I prayed about it and the Lord told me to do it. And it's a really hard thing to argue with, isn't it? But I tell you, it's not a hard thing to argue with. It may be a hard thing to convince someone of, but it's not a hard thing to argue with. The first thing you have to do is say, well, what did he tell you to do? And they tell you, oh, he told me to marry an unbeliever. And you can just look at them right straight away. And you can say, no, he didn't.

And you can say it with full confidence. No, he didn't. Now, how can you say it with full confidence? Well, because in Scripture it's very clear what's going on with the thing. Paul tells us that believers ought not to be yoked with unbelievers. And you can trust that God's not going to lead someone to do something contrary to his word because they say he told them to. They're deceived. They've believed a lie. God has not told them to sin. Now, are there times that people do it anyway? Yep. Sure are. We live in a fallen, broken, sinful world where people often, even us, are regularly doing things we ought not to do. But it doesn't change the standard of what God has said. So why ought a woman not teach or exercise authority over a man? Well, I said earlier, because she's a woman. And that's true, but that's not the whole answer. Paul gives us two reasons. The first is, for it was Adam who was created first and then Eve.

The man came first. And so what this section of scripture teaches us is that the order of creation before the fall is a support or a reason or an explanation for why women ought not to teach men, ought not to exercise authority over them. Because Adam was created first. Now, if you were to ask anyone alive today, what's that mean? They wouldn't know what to say. They'd say, I don't know. I agree Adam was created first, but I don't know what that means. And it's not that they don't know what it means. It's that we're all afraid to say what it means, which is that man was given preeminence over woman. That's what it means. The man came first. Why was the man created first? Because that was God's will. Is it because the man's better than the woman, more valuable than the woman? No, none of that. But it's God's will that is revealed to us through creation.

That the man, that men are given preeminence over women. Not meaning that they're better or more valuable, but that they are given responsibilities that women are not given. And the reason they bear those responsibilities is because they were created first. If we were to take this command, I don't allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. If you were to flip it on its head and make it a positive command for men, what would it be? I require that men teach. and exercise authority over other men and women. Now, is that true for all men? Well, not in every context. Is it true of every husband? Yes. Is it true that every man should be a pastor in preaching and teaching? No. So why is it that the man is the one who's tasked with the responsibility of teaching and exercising authority? Well, it's the same reason. He was created first. It's his job. It was God's will that the man

Adam and all who would follow after him would bear the responsibility that Adam bore. The responsibility of those who come after them. Now, is it a bad thing? Or do you assume that it's a bad thing that men have preeminence over women? Are you sure it's a bad thing? I think our flesh, there's a unified course that it's bad. This is not a good thing. And yet, the first reason Paul gives us is a reason grounded in creation. before the fall. And so if we were to say that men having preeminence over women was a bad thing, we would also have to maintain that there was something bad in creation before sin. That something that God made wasn't good and as it should be. Another way of asking the question is, do you think that Eve, before the fall, disliked her role and her position and her place in the world? Nope. Now what was her role and her place in the world? It was to help Adam.

It was to follow him. It was to submit to him. And she loved it. Because there was nothing bad or wrong or corrupted or tainted in the garden prior to the fall. Eve couldn't have been happier with this arrangement. That Adam would lead and that he would be the one to exercise authority. That he was the head and that she would follow and be his subordinate. There was nothing that could have been better to her. And she would have told you that herself. And so we have to be careful not to read our... and our concerns and our oppositions back into Scripture. Okay? I'll bring it back if I need it, but it's in my way. There are two words that get at this, exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis is taking out of the text, drawing out of the text what it means. Eisegesis is putting something into the text. Okay? So to exegete the text is to say, would Eve have had a problem with Adam being her head?

And we say there was no sin, no corruption, no trouble. We have nothing but God's pure, untainted creation. Was there anything wrong or bad in that environment? And the answer is no. And that includes her subordination to him. Eisegesis says it's all messed up now. And that means it's always, always and forever been messed up. Must have been messed up all the way back to the beginning. And we say, no, that's not actually what the scripture teaches us. It was good that Adam was the head. He was happy. She was happy. So that's the first reason. Adam was created first. He's the man. She's the woman. And as the man, it's his job to teach and exercise authority. Now, the second reason is more gnarly. Paul says this. He says, it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. And this is given as a second reason why women cannot exercise authority over man. So what is the reason? Well, it's because she sinned. Do you follow?

She sinned, and it further removed her ability to do anything like this from her. You've been unfaithful with a little thing, if I could say it that way. Now, anything else, any greater thing would have been taken away from you. Which is not to say that she would have been able to teach if she hadn't sinned, because the first reason keeps us from that. But her sin actually is a secondary reason why she's not able to teach over man. Why woman is not. It was through Eve's deception that Satan gained access to Adam. Now there's a lot of talk. We could talk a lot about creation, about the fall, about how things happened, about male headship or federal headship. And I don't want you to understand anything I'm saying is being opposed to Adam being the one who brought sin into the world. Absolutely believe it. If Eve had done what she did and Adam hadn't done what he did, sin would not have entered the world.

Absolutely 100% believe it. But Eve sinned. She did wrong. And there are consequences for her wrongdoing. And they're not directly the result of Adam's wrongdoing. Another way of asking it is, was Eve culpable for being deceived? I think often when we think of deception, we think she was just naive and she didn't understand what was happening, the interaction between her and Satan. But that's not biblical. That's not what the scripture teaches us. She had a conversation with the serpent. The serpent said, did God really say? And she says, oh yeah, he really said. And Satan said, well, he said that because he doesn't want you to be like him. And we can presume that the serpent also said, look at how beautiful this fruit is. It's delicious. And it serves not only the purpose of being appetizing, but also it will make you like God.

And with all of that knowledge and after that interaction, then she decided to eat, which means that she decided to believe a lie. She didn't go in a whirlwind and go, oh, I don't know what happened. She knows exactly what happened. She had what God said on one hand, and she had what Satan was saying to her on the other hand, and she chose a lie. She believed it. And not only did she believe it, She took that lie to her husband. I want to ask you a couple of questions that I hope will draw out some unspoken assumptions that I think are true regarding Eve's sin. The first one is, do you think that sin would have entered the world without Eve's sin? Do you think that sin would have entered the world if Eve hadn't eaten the fruit? You say yes. You say no. I didn't ask that. I just said, if Eve hadn't eaten the fruit, would sin have entered the world? Did she contribute in any way?

to sin entering the world? You have to say yes. She ate the fruit. She brought it to her husband. She persuaded him to eat it. Satan is wily and he's gnarly and he's deceptive. And he knew that he had to get to Adam. And he knew that he couldn't get to Adam directly because Adam wasn't going to buy it. So he went to him through his wife. And if she hadn't listened, Adam wouldn't have eaten it. And you might say, well, sin would have entered the world some other way because God had this plan from before the foundation of the world. And I agree. I'm not arguing with that. What I'm saying is, do you think Eve did anything wrong? Or is she a victim in all of this? That's the question. And what I'm arguing is that Eve is not a victim. Eve chose to sin. And the results of her choice are devastating. Her sin is not less significant than Adam's sin.

Her sin is just as heinous as Adam's sin. The difference is that Adam was created first and he was the one who was tasked with obeying God and doing what he said. And he was supposed to protect his wife and he failed. But that doesn't make her sin and her responsibility for her sin any less. She did what she did knowing what she was doing. I'll ask you another question. Do you ever wish that Adam hadn't eaten the fruit? And we should all say, yes. We all wish that Adam hadn't eaten the fruit. We live in all of the pain, every stitch of the pain and the agony and the misery that you endure is downstream of Adam eating the fruit. Every bit of it. And it only makes sense that a Christian would say, I wish that man had not sinned. Even though I know God's plan for redemption necessitated this happening. I wish he hadn't eaten the fruit.

I wish I wasn't corrupted by his sins. I think we all feel this, but men especially feel it. You understand his failure. There's a difference between men and women, and men tend to understand the responsibility that they have for other people in their bones, in the way that women understand it about their children. But men feel it about their wife, and they feel it about their children, and they feel it about their co-workers and their neighbors and the people that they love. They just feel this responsibility for other people. And I think in a greater degree than women do. And the reason I think they feel it in a greater degree than women do is because they know somewhere inside of them, it's written into their hearts that they're responsible for other people. And so we understand Adam's failure. And we understand the consequences of it. Because when we look in the mirror and we see our own lives, we see Adam. And we see the people who are dependent on us, suffering and struggling because of our actions. So all of us wish that Adam hadn't eaten the fruit.

We don't just wish he hadn't eaten the fruit. We wish that we didn't still eat the fruit every single day of our lives. And so I want to ask the women, do you wish that Eve didn't eat the fruit? Does it grieve you that Eve ate the fruit? Is it a mournful, sad thing to you that she disbelieved God and decided she knew a better way? And I think you should say the same thing the men do, which is, yes, I do. I see my propensity and me giving myself daily to believing the sorts of lies that she did. Not ignorant ones, not, oh, I didn't know. Willful choosing to do things you know better than to do. And you do it because your mother, Eve, did it first. Do you grieve that she gave the fruit to her husband? It would have been one thing for her to eat the fruit herself, but why did she have to give it to her husband? Do we grieve that? Does that frustrate you?

That she would be so foolish, that she had such influence in this world and that she squandered it and ruined it. That she became the source of her husband's temptation and through his sin, the corruption of the whole world. Do you grieve what she did? She ate. She went to her husband. She persuaded him to eat. He listened. Do you see in the mirror when you look at yourselves, women, do you see that you do these things that Eve does? That she did. Do you think Adam ate the fruit ignorantly? Do you think he didn't know what it was? He knew what it was. He was there when God said, don't eat of it. Let me ask you this. Do you grieve what Eve did when you have babies? You ought to. The curse that was given to Eve was twofold. I'll greatly increase your pain in childbirth. We'll talk more about that next week. Do you grieve what Eve did when you're having to go through the pain of bearing children? Do you see what Eve did and that you're just her daughter, tempted and falling in the same ways that she did, just like the men are with Adam?

Does it grieve you? Does it humble you? Do you go, I wish she hadn't done it because I wish that I wouldn't do it. The reason I'm confident that Adam knew what he was doing and the reason I'm confident that Eve knew what she was doing is because of the curses that are given to them. Adam is cursed. The ground is cursed. Adam's told the ground is going to grow thorns and thistles for you and you're going to labor by the sweat of your brow to make bread all the days of your life. That's the substance of the curse. But what is the reason that the curse was given? This is the part that doesn't get spoken of as much. Why was Adam cursed in that way? What was his failure? Other than to eat the fruit, what was his failure? That's right. Say it again, Jeff. That's right. It says, you shall be cursed because you listened to the voice of your wife. You ought not to have listened to her.

Satan gained access to you through your wife, and you should have known better than to listen to her. And because you listened to her, everything is ruined, and you can't stay here anymore. That's the curse to Adam, all flowing out of the fact that he listened to her. Now, what's that mean about her? Well, it means she said something, right? You listen to the voice of your wife. Well, is it fair to presume that she made some case about eating the fruit? I talked to a serpent, and you know what he told me? We can be like God. Who is he to tell us that we can't have and be everything that he is? Let's eat it. This is the great tension that men face, that husbands face. And I tell them, every time they go through premarital counseling, I said, the tension you will live in the rest of your life is that your wife was given to you by God to be your helper and that Adam was cursed because he listened to his wife. And there's no way around it. That's the tension that husbands live in. And if you just decide, my wife's no help to me, then you're a fool. And if you decide...

My wife should be the one who leads the house because she's smarter than me, then you're an even bigger fool. This is the tension of the relationship between men and women in marriage. So Eve has pain in childbirth, but what is the rest of her curse? Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you. Now some would say that that's the beginning of this male headship nasty thing that is the basis for women not being able to teach. And I say, no, it was the corruption of a good thing. Not the institution of a bad thing. Adam was already the head. Eve was already the subordinate. Because Adam was created first. But her sin, the curse that comes to her and to you by extension, is that her desire will now be to rule over her husband. She will no longer be satisfied with her husband's leadership and being led by him. But he will still rule over her. And so the consequence of her sin...

was that she went from having a righteous man without sin, perfect, leading her. Now she has a sinner to lead her, and she still has to follow him. And now it's going to be fraught with all kinds of difficulty. And yet this is how God has chosen to discipline her. Now are you with me? Eve is being disciplined. And you, all of the women here, are being disciplined for Eve's sin. And every time that... that you feel welling up inside of you, the desire to tell your husband that he's a fool and you could do it better, you're to remember that you don't have authority over him. It's not your place because it's part of the curse. You're going to have now a desire in you to usurp your husband's authority, but God has disallowed it. You may not teach or exercise authority over a man. And you women, it's miserable, isn't it?

If we're just honest, it's hard. Do you have any idea how hard it is for my wife? She would never tell you unless she was really upset at me. But I know because she tells me. And any wife here could tell you, my husband's a sinner. And he's a fool. And I could list for you the things that he's done wrong. And an older, godlier woman will say, yep, but it's what you deserve. Is that what an older, godlier woman would say? It's what she should say. We're Eve's daughters. And when Eve had her way with her husband and she started talking to him and telling him all of what she thought, and he listened to her, the whole world fell apart. And that's what you're on the brink of. You're on the brink of ruining your whole world. Don't do it. You're not to teach or exercise authority over a man. Why? Because he was made first. Why else? Because the first time that it ever happened, the whole world died.

The whole world died when Eve listened, when Adam listens to Eve. So is Eve a sinner? Oh, you better believe it. Was her sin really bad? Oh, you better believe it. Do each of the women in this room face the same temptations that Eve faces? Face. Oh, you better believe it. And one of the disciplines that God's put into your life is that you would still, even though your husband's a sinner, even though your pastors are a sinner, even though men are sinners, He hasn't removed their headship. And he hasn't removed their headship as a discipline to you. Now, is that gnarly? That's tough, isn't it? You know, next week, I'm not going to preach next week's sermon now. But I'm going to tell you what it's about. The next week's sermon is verse 15. It says, but women will be saved through the bearing of children if they persevere in faith and love and sanctity with self-control. Now, you have to ask, why in the world would Paul say that?

And I'll tell you as an appetizer for next week, if you will. He says that because after having said what he's just said about women, women ought to be saying, what must we do to be saved? Is there any hope for me? Look at what Eve did and look at what I do. What hope can I have of ever being freed from the body of this death that it is to be a woman? We can speak this way about men. Full of sin, messing things up, doing it all wrong, ruining other people's lives. Because scripture speaks that way about it. But let's be fair. Women are no less sinful. And they need the blood of Jesus Christ just as much as men do because they do just as much stuff wrong. Eve wasn't any less of a sinner. She had such an integral role in the corruption of this world that you should never forget it. Yes, Adam listened.

Yes, if he hadn't done what he did, things would be entirely different. But he was put in that position by his wife. And she did it knowingly. And I don't say that to condemn women and think they're terrible and raise up men and say they're better. None of that. Only to say, she sinned terribly. And it's one of the reasons that women aren't allowed to exercise authority over men. Because she was deceived and she fell into transgression. So as you go out of here and as you think about this and as you wonder about it and as you ask your husband, is everything he said about me true? And your husband's like, I don't know if I can say yes. A good husband will tell you yes. He'll give you a hug and he'll look you in your eyes and he'll say yes. And I could tell you more of the details just like you could about me. Would you like to hear them? Honestly, what you just did is right. Because in that laughter between sinners looking at each other and saying, you are a terrible person.

You have done so many things that are so corrupt and I've suffered because of what you've done. And if they can look at each other and both say that, then you can have two Christians married. Two Christians getting along because they don't have to lie. And they don't have to believe the lie that the man's really the one who's ruined everything and the woman's just this poor woman along for the ride who's never done anything to deserve what she has to put up with. Not true. There is this thing about men and women that I find to be true. It tends to be that... Women like to tell men their failures. And when women get mouthy, men tend to be quiet. This is generally true. Would you agree? Is it because the man is unaware of the woman's failures? Or is it because she doesn't have failures? It's not. It's just because there's something in a man that understands, I'm not supposed to say nasty, mean things to my wife. And our culture says, you better never say nasty, mean things about your wife because none of them are true.

And so the man lives in this tension going, my wife's a sinner. How in the world am I ever supposed to tell her she's a sinner? I love her, but she's sinning. And everything in our society militates against a woman ever being told she did something wrong and she chose to do it and she's going to bear the consequence of it. But that's what Eve faced. God spoke to her directly. And he spoke to Adam directly. And he spoke to the serpent directly. And cursed them all. And promised redemption. There's such a corollary between our text, this passage, and what happens during the curse. I want you to consider for this week going forward, when Adam and Eve met with God and he cursed them and he kicked them out of the garden, but promised that their seed would raise up and would crush Satan's head, what did they do? What is the next thing they did? They had a baby. And you know what comes right after Eve's sin here in our passage? We're going to talk about it next week.

women having babies. And so we're going to draw out next week the connection between the fall, the curse, the promise of redemption, and children. But none of that will make sense if you don't first understand the corruption that was in Eve. Because the remedy doesn't make any sense to us if we don't understand the disease. Let's pray.