Genesis chapter 3, and it's the battle of the sexes, the war of the sexes. Genesis chapter 3. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing, the pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. Proud of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothe them. And the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Lord, just thank you for your word. Help us to understand and get riches out of this understanding of the fallen world that we live in. Help us to be about the business of redemption that you've given us. Just thank you that we are to go about advancing your son's kingdom and his breaking of the back of Satan. his crushing of his head and his defeat of all of our enemies. Just praise you and give you glory. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen. So, today I wanted to do something kind of in line with Mother's Day, but I was going through the topics and I preached on a lot of them before with the deal with mothers and I preached on Mary's song and Hannah's song and different topics like that before. And I just wasn't feeling like going that direction. So I decided to go something kind of touching on the topic of Mother's Day, but not specifically with mothers, more with the role of women and the relationship of men and women to each other. So we're going back to Genesis three, specifically verse 16, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And I'm going to break this passage down, but today we come with, and throughout history we're going to see this is not anything new, but there is a strong manifestation, specific cultural manifestation of the war, the battle of the sexes today, an antagonism between men and women, and an antagonistic view of women. And I'm gonna kind of give you my simple version, we're gonna build up to this, but when it comes to the relationship of men and women, God created it good, The fall distorted that and we are called to redeem that relationship and to look to the way that that relationship was created. What we're not supposed to do is to press into the struggle, the issues, the problems of the fall. So we're to look to see what does God's word both in creating men and women and the relationship to be a good thing. And what does he lift up further on in scripture as well as what that relationship should look like? Obviously you have the feminist movement which has tended to, in its strongest manifestations, in some ways there was some correction that was needed, but also in its strongest manifestations, the feminist movement has set women against men, and then now you have, you're seeing a masculinist movement which is pushing back And all this tends to lead towards a, and I hear this, and part of why I'm preaching on this is because having run in circles with Christian men for years, thankfully a lot of the guys I'm around now have just really good relationships with their wife. But I've definitely, over the years, seen this great antagonistic view on the part of men towards women, and obviously vice versa as well. And it caused a lot of damage, so I wanna talk about that today. So going to the text if you guys can open to Genesis 3 16 So when God created Adam and Eve in the garden They had no sin nature. He said everything was good. So he There was no sin. There was no problem. There was no fall. There was no fall in nature one of the crazy things where With Adam is we suffer temptation and we fall, so the sinner that stands before God is going to account for his own sins. And we're going to rightfully account for our own sins. We do have a will, we do have decisions to make, and we sin, and regardless of that sin nature, we will be held accountable for our sin. But when you go back to the garden, Adam and Eve did not have a sin or fallen nature at that point. And so God had created them in a way that Law-keeping for them was natural. Law-keeping for them, obeying Him, glorifying Him, worshiping Him, all the things that we fall short in was easy for them. There was no inner struggle or turmoil as they fought to do those things. Every day we fight against our sinful flesh to lift God up above everything else, to worship Him, to do things out of the right motives, and to fight against sin. Adam and Eve didn't have that struggle. And so God did give them, if there's, you can qualify free will all kinds of different ways, we understand God's sovereignty and predestination, but they did have a freedom that we do not enjoy, and yet they chose and entered into sin, and rightfully, they received condemnation and the curse, and so they're offspring. Of course, here, backing up a couple verses earlier, there's a promised Messiah. And so God didn't waste any time in giving hope and giving a promise and giving a plan of salvation. And all since Adam and Eve forward were saved, looking forward to Christ, and then now looking back to Christ. So God brought about his plan of redemption. So the story that we need to drill in our heads about the Bible is creation. Creation was good. Fall, the fall brought distortion. Everything's messed up because of the fall. And redemption. God through Christ has redeemed all things, is redeeming all things, and will, at the end, redeem all things in a perfect way. So that's the plan, that's the whole scheme of, as you're reading through, I know one of my boys is reading through the Bible from cover to cover. As you're reading through the Bible, make sure that you're fitting everything that you're reading in your mind into creation, fall, redemption. So God created, and prior to this, and we're gonna go back to that in a minute, God created marriage good. and he created the husband-wife relationship to be a blessing. It was not good that man was alone. Adam was given this dominion task, a stewarding task. It was a good task. Work is not bad. Adam had work in the garden. Now, it was without the sweat and the tears and the thorns and thistles that we have to go through for our work, but work was created to be good, and But God saw that it was not good that man was alone, so he created woman to be his helpmeet. And so that relationship with Adam naturally is the head of the wife, but in a way that, had there been no fall, there would have been no tension, conflict. I almost thought about asking the kids, but I'm not going to. Like, because I like to ask the kids questions and I almost stumbled in my thoughts of preparation of like, oh, I could ask the kids, oh, have you ever seen your parents fight? But then I'd be like, that's not a good question to ask, but. I don't know if my kids have ever seen that, but. The reality though, realize that that's not unique and obviously it needs to stay within, you know, parents need to work through it. well and I'm not going to sidetrack into like obviously if there's physical abuse or you know a husband is or wife is physically abusive beating all those type of things a wife or vice versa that needs to be dealt with that's not an that's not even that's an acceptable working through of this post-fall condition but had there been no fall there would be no squabbles about stupid stuff, there would be no frustrations with each other, it would work. And it did work, shortly, in perfect harmony. So the headship of Adam didn't chafe or conflict with or step on the toes of Eve, and her helping him, her role, her companionship didn't cause issues for Adam. Now we know that since the fall, obviously, if I was to ask that question, every child would probably say, yeah, there's been something. I've heard, there are couples that claim they've never had a fight. And I never know how much to believe that. If that's true, great for you, but I think you're a liar, but maybe you're not. Maybe you define a fight differently. An argument. But, That's the reality we deal with. And so really what I'm gonna be emphasizing with this is that we're to press into what God has called marriage to be rather than press into what the fall has made marriage. And that's what you see in culture and that's what you see people naturally doing throughout history. So going to this specific section, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. Now this is a tough passage and I'm glad that I preached on this one before and kind of stumbled through it before, however far back that was when I preached on this before going through Genesis. Because it actually, one of the things I've heard with going through a book of the Bible like this is by the time you're done with a book of the Bible, it should be like an old friend to the pastor and to the congregation. Like it should be like, you know this book of the Bible. And as I prepared the sermon, I was remembering a lot of the textual issues involved, some of the questions involved. And I'm gonna present, I don't have 100% the answer on how to interpret this specific passage. The Hebrew sections of the Bible are a little bit more difficult than the Greek. Greek is a very precise, specific language. And when you're dealing with the Hebrew sections, especially in Genesis, sometimes you're dealing with words, like the word here, where there's not a lot of instances of it, and it's an archaic, old word. So, the word here that trips people up is, your desire shall be contrary, or, the word desire is the word that becomes an issue. How do you interpret this word desire? Because one interpretation, if you have an ESV Bible, says your desire should be contrary to your husband. If you have a King James Version, it says, and thy desire shall be to thy husband. And there's various interpretations of that word. The word is used three times in scripture. It's used here. It's used in Genesis 4, 7, which we're gonna turn to in a second. And it's used in the Song of Solomon. And we're trying to figure out what it means in this Genesis 3 context. When we go to Genesis 4-7, let's actually just turn there. Genesis 4-7. The Lord said, verse six, the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. So based off of this use of this word that we don't really see often in scripture, that's where like ESV translates it contrary, because here clearly the desire of this sin that's crouching at the door, pictured as crouching at the door, its desire is contrary to trip him up to go contrary to him, and it says, but you must rule over it. So that's one example, and the last one is Song of Solomon, where it's more of a romantic desire. So, The I'll give you the different options that as I understand them, your desire should be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. So one interpretation is that your desire shall be for your husband in that you. will want him, you will desire his companionship and relationship, but he will now rule over you and have to, or more, not oppressively, but more, he's gonna, his leadership is gonna chafe over you and even be oppressive, but you're gonna still want him in this relationship, so you're gonna be stuck in this catch-22 of a husband who now, the leadership is not, tender and caring, it doesn't have that unity that it used to, but you still want him and desire him, whether relationship or physically or whatever the case. I don't lean in that direction, even though I think that one, it preaches, and it also speaks to some of the reality, which we're trying to understand, of a post-fall world. Because having been in marriage counseling for quite a few years now, and been involved in messy marriages and seen other situations unfold and partially been involved in other situations where marriages hit the rocks. A common theme is that I don't know how to say it and this is not a rant on Men's Session because we have our strengths and really I've been accused of taking the woman's side and I've been accused of taking the man's side. So there is somebody out there saying that Tate takes the man's side. and then there's somebody out there that says, Tate always takes the woman's side. So if you were to talk to the right person, and run into them, and talk about Valley Report Fellowship, there would be one person who says, Tate always takes the man's side, and then there'd be somebody else who would say, Tate always takes the woman's side. I don't know what that says, other than, hopefully it says, I've tried to be neutral in the sense of objective and fair in trying to assess the situation, because really, In most cases that I've seen, if not all cases, while you can point specific blame in one direction, and sometimes it's more clear-cut than other situations. Sin doesn't respect gender boundaries, and there's sin oftentimes on both sides. I would say there's always sin on both sides. It doesn't mean that this sin justifies whatever the other person's actions are, but a lot of times it's a real mess of two people that are sinners sinning against each other, oftentimes for decades. And so you run into situations where there's just built up problems really on both sides for decades, and then it comes to a head. One of the distinctive things that I think is a challenge, and I don't think I do really well at this, a lot of us guys really stink at being friends. Like, we really stink at friendships and relationships. We're a little bit less relationship-oriented, and, you know, we're a little bit more like the cowboys who, go through the shootout together and then just write off and don't even say goodbye, a lot of us guys really struggle with embracing any type of relationship. And we struggle with that with our wives, with our children, with our sons, with our, with friendships. And I think we've all struggled. Like a lot of us guys want friendships, but we, we struggle with like sometimes you know there will be the opportunity to to have a friendship with another guy and we won't take like we want friendships and we complain maybe that we don't even have them but then we don't take action and embrace that so what a common thing that I've seen with guys is that guys oftentimes just really don't the sad thing for me and I don't this is the part that I don't understand but it's common is a lot of guys just really don't care about the friendship with their wife like a lot there are situations where guys just really want they want sex they want physical intimacy, they want things to be okay, but when you talk to them, sometimes the highest thing that you can get out of them as far as an objective for their marriage is, I just want peace. And I've told people, guys in that situation, you cannot just shoot for peace. That's not a high enough objective. You actually have to press into a marriage and want a friendship with your wife, and more than a friendship, but an intimate relationship that involves being each other's best friends. And you deal with guys who just don't really care about that, don't really want that, have no desire for that. you know, that's just all a bunch of extra effort they really don't want to go through. They don't want to be told that they should press into any of those type of things, or taking effort to show love, or spend time, or find common interests, or maybe even adjust their interests. Like, that's a mutual thing, but adjust your interests a little bit to have, find areas where you show interest in her interests, and hope, you know, that should happen the other way too. But a lot of guys just really struggled so you have these marriages where guys go through and they just want things to kind of be peaceful, but they don't really invest have the the desire for that intimacy relationship and the conversation and and they just like in the hard thing is sometimes in specific cases they've been they've been trained by their father to have a very low view of women and to think that you really can't trust women and women aren't, so I've seen that affect things. Anyways, that's not good. And us guys need to press into relationship and actually desiring to be more than friends, obviously lovers too, but have this closeness and this, to really involve, because a lot of times you find situations where these guys just don't want to involve the wife, really don't. It's just a hassle, they don't really want that relationship. So I think there's an aspect of that that kind of preaches, in a sense, that interpretation where the wife, what you find in those situations is the wife, despite her faults, oftentimes sincerely does want a relationship with the man. She sincerely has wanted to be close to him, has wanted to spend time with him, has wanted to communicate with him. And you can see all kinds of issues and all kinds of sin on the wife's side, but you see that where sometimes that's lacking on the guy's side. And that could be reflected, if you held this view of Genesis 3.16, that would be reflective of that, where you're going to be tied to him, you're going to want him, but there's going to be a little bit more of that harshness or coldness or ruling over by the husband without that same desire in the other direction. Another interpretation of the word desire is this, the interpretation that his desires her desires will be submitted so she was given too much leeway with the fall and with eating the fruit and obviously that led to the fall and so now she's going to be reined in and her desires are going to be submitted to the husband and she's going to be held in check by the husband which there's an aspect of that with the preaches as well as far as Paul's instruction that it was not the man who was deceived, but the woman, and his application of that, that men do need to take care over their wife, that the wife doesn't just get run, led astray by her desires, and particularly by harmful spiritual influences, because sometimes the woman gravitates towards those quote-unquote spiritual teachers that are heretics, false teachers, whatever the case is, We do need to watch out that our wives are not led astray by false teaching, those type of things. So there's an aspect of that that preaches. The last one I want to mention, though, is the one that kind of almost takes you in the opposite direction, and this is the one I lean towards, is that her, going back to Genesis 4-7, that Her desire, his desire is going to be able to, in an excessive, in a, in moderate, in a, what you see with Christ speaking against the pagan lordship, he's gonna rule over in a way that was, is more harsh. than before, but she on the flip side is going to try to usurp and try to rule over him, and there's going to be this back and forth where the guy is trying to push her down and she's trying to push the guy down, and you have this battle within marriage that is a product of the fall. I lean towards that one, but obviously we need to flesh that out a little bit. So, What I would reject when it comes to Genesis 3.16 is the idea that in the middle of a list of areas that God has created good that are now cursed, and God's setting forward the curse the way things are due to the fall, that somehow all he's doing is stating the way things should be as far as headship in the family. I do think that this is more that it's talking about a chafing leadership and a desire to rule over rather than just setting forward biblical headship. Because keep in mind, headship was there before the fall. Headship was there and worked well Paul teaches that Adam was created first, then Eve. And so there was, there is a natural duty of the wife to owe godly submission to the husband. So it's not just jumping off into some teaching lesson about headship. It's actually talking about a distortion, a warping, a messing up of that relationship by the fall. And you can see that in the context, if I go to Genesis 3.16, Actually, 14. Well, actually, let's see. Yeah, we'll start at 14. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you've done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field. On your belly you should go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So this is speaking, not even just, this isn't a serpent waging war against people throughout history. This is talking about the offspring of Satan. Christ says that the Jews who followed were sons and daughters of Satan because of their works. And so those who follow Satan, those who are at his beck and call, those who he lords over, are going to, in history, battle back and forth and have conflict with the offspring of the seed of the woman, which of course points to Christ. And so those that are of that faith, that are saved through the faith of Christ, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So there's this conflict in history that's introduced post-fall. So it's talking about something that was created good, mankind was created good, now there's conflict. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, in pain you shall bring forth children. Now, be fruitful and multiply, the command to be fruitful and multiply was given pre-fall. So he's not just jumping off into something new, he's talking about a distortion of what God had created good, which was childbearing. Childbearing was, initially, would have been a very sweet thing without the pain and the suffering and the problems that childbearing post-fall sees. Your desire should be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. So, I don't believe this is just painting this in a good light, but that this is a problem. There's marital conflict now. There's tension on both sides in the marriage due to the fall. And then he goes on, and Adam, he said, because you've listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you in pain. You shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. So prior to the fall, Adam was called, given the dominion mandate to work, to tend the garden, and to then go into the whole world and to take dominion of the whole earth, he and his descendants. Work is not a bad thing. Toiling is not a bad thing. But what happened post-fall is it got messed up. It wasn't what it should have been, and so now there's thorns, now it's gonna take sweat and blood, and it's going to feel futile at many points. Some people would take Genesis 3.16, where it says, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. and kind of normalize this tension as if now the way things should be is this, the husband just ruling over and the wife wanting to rule over her husband, but not being able to, that kind of warfare and battle within the marriage union. But like every other aspect of this, When it comes to childbearing, modern medicine, we've done things that have greatly helped so that we're able to alleviate some of the effects of the curse. We know, we've studied, we learned, we tried to make childbearing as easy and as safe as possible. The same thing goes for the cultivation of the ground. We don't just accept the fact that, oh, well, the ground is cursed, so it's just going to be hard work. So instead of using a tractor, I'm going to just sickle and hoe my fields. No, we actually embrace technology. We embrace tools and productivity that allows, to the point that today, We have it pretty easy. Even the person working with their hands in a trade is in a much better place than somebody who worked hundreds of years ago and thousands of years ago. So we seek to alleviate these post-fall situations. We seek to redeem them. And so really where our eyes need to focus when we come to Genesis 3.16 is to understand that this is normal post-fall, but we don't press into it, we don't embrace it, and we actually embrace what God has called marriage to be, which is what he created it to be, something good. The same thing goes with sexuality. We realize that all kinds of perversion happens post-fall, but we don't accept that. We seek to redeem what has been tainted by sin in this fallen world. So with the fall, conflict has entered the marriage scene, disharmony in place of harmony, chafing leadership and chafing under leadership. So now we have leadership that is chafing and chafing under leadership. And apart from the influence of Christianity, I'm sorry, but the lot of a woman was not a good thing throughout history because the type of pagan lordship that Christ says that we're not to follow in has been the norm for human history. Outside of the influence of biblical religion, women have not had a really good position to be in because men have been physically stronger. and bigger and able to get their way. The lot of women has been a pretty miserable one outside of Christianity. But Christianity has brought blessing to marriage and has brought blessing to women and their situation. So today we have the same thing going on that has happened for centuries and that is the war of the sexes. And there's this mindset that of feminism where it's women against men and masculinism which you're seeing a lot now as a pushback of men against women. You see a lot of heartache and bitterness on the part of men towards women with the incel, you know, is it a community? Do you call it a community? I don't know. Where you have a whole group of guys who have basically just become disenfranchised with women, they're a women haters club. And they're bitter, they think women are wrong, you have Individuals like Andrew Tate, who basically want to use and abuse women, but they see nothing good in women. They think women are inherently only good for using and abusing, and anything beyond that, there's no real value to women. You have women, of course, with the feminist movement, pressing into women over men, and women you know, being better than men, and then on the flip side now you have the pushback of men advocating that men are better than women. And common to all of this thinking is this idea that life is, like, it's almost like it's a war. Somebody's gotta win, somebody's gotta lose in this struggle between the sexes. But the way God created things was that the relationship was compatible, complementary, that it was designed to function as a team to take dominion. And that's what we need to now, in a fallen world that's being redeemed, in order to advance Christ's kingdom, we need to embrace that vision of marriage as husband and wife, moving together, working together to serve Christ and his kingdom. A lot of this ungodly back and forth in warfare mindset comes from cultural Marxism. So cultural Marxism basically is an application of Marxism, and cultural Marxism says that history is the struggle between different groups of people. And like Marx had the workers and the bourgeoisie, the rich and the poor, and the workers versus the capitalist class. And history is defined by one group who has the power, another group seeking to get the power over them, another group seeking the power over them, power, power, power, power, power. And Marx saw that Ultimately, it's a good thing, because he didn't believe in God, he rejected the biblical worldview, he said that the way culture and society evolves is by one group getting their foot over and grinding their heel into the other group's nose. The only way that you can get ahead is if your ethnic group or your sex stomps on the other one and grinds it into the ground, and that's what history, and out of that comes this beautiful progress, and how progress comes out of that conflict. And really, it's just Darwinism. Really all Marxism is, and cultural Marxism is, is Darwinism. It's a rejection of the biblical worldview. It's this realization that, oh, Millions of years, organisms have fought and had to get, nobody can win, you have to beat the other person, it's dog-eat-dog world, that's how species evolve and succeed is one presses the other down, one grinds the other down, and the survival of the fittest is Darwinism. That influenced Marx, and now we have that in our culture. And so when men and women adopt this mindset of me versus us versus them type mindset, it's Darwinism, it's cultural Marxism, and we should reject it as Christians. Our baseline must be the pre-fall condition. Turn to Genesis 2.18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. Now to the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast in the field and every bird in the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. So God says, it's not good for man to be alone. And then he brings him all the animals and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. It's such a crazy, here God shows him all these animals and Adam realizes that there's no help meat here. The animals aren't going to do it. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. Obviously, if you prayed all the animals in front of Adam, there's not going to be a helper fit for him. But it's an object lesson. Here's the options. Which one's going to work? None of them worked. Giraffes wouldn't make a good helpmeet. whatever the animal. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man. He made it to a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. He shall be called woman because, or she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. The biblical worldview. presents the highest view of women. Women aren't simply sex objects. Women aren't just to be at war with man perpetually, but God actually created woman out of man to be one flesh together and to work in this dominion task that the wife would be a helper for the man, together that they would work and take dominion. And one of the weird things in some of the hyperpatriarchy circles that I'm exposed to and that I've seen over the years and I've been around them for a long time is really a rejection. You would think hyperpatriarchy they would accept. the woman's role is a help meet, but really they undermine and downplay almost every chance they get. And you have these guys basically saying that they keep everything completely separate, she has like, the woman is basically too inferior to be part of everyday conversations about his life and business and the things he's up to, and really she just needs to stay in the home and bake, this is not downplaying staying in the home, baking bread or raising children, but they really deprive, there's a tendency to deprive the wife of her helper, help-meet role, which even precedes having children, which is to be a complement to the husband in working and helping a sounding board, all those type of things, in his dominion task, in their dominion task together. And so you'll see men basically shutting the woman out of the dominion task in that sense, creating weird divisions rather than actually realizing that part of why God created Eve was for companionship. God created us to have wives for companionship, for friendship, because it was not good that he was alone. And because we need a task, a helper in our task of dominion, of stewarding the world. And yes, that includes bearing children, and it should. But it's more than that as well. So that's the baseline when we encounter this Andrew Tate on one side, the feminist on the other side. When you look at the new Christian right and the things that they're saying about, it becomes basically, we need to win out over the other sex. we need to understand that God sets forward a complementary relationship. There's headship involved, there is submission, but there's also a functional working beside and service together. And it's really important that the wife and the husband work together, have that relationship, have those conversations. And do, they parent together and they take dominion together. One of the fundamental things too that happens in these circles, and I've seen it happen in absurd ways, is there's a tendency to want to really downplay the image of God in women. And what you'll see is they want to come up with a neat and tidy list of attributes of men and women. And some of them kind of sort of fit. Like I can understand There is an aspect to which women are soft, where they shouldn't go into battle, where physically they're typically going to be softer than men, and men are generally stronger in that sense, and more fit for battle. So those types of things, there are some generalizations you can make. But when you start doing what one Christian leader did a while back, where he came up with this list of characteristics, and character attributes, and one of them was submission. He said things like patience and submission are female characteristics. And then to explain how men have to submit to other men, he's like, well, we do that, God has set that up so that that demonstrates to women how they should submit to men. It's an example to women how they can submit to men. It's like, no, Submission, you can't pin submission as just a female characteristic. You can't come up with this nice, neat list of attributes that, oh, patience is for women, and men are this, and women are that. Men are courageous, and women are, well, it's like, no, that doesn't quite fit. You gotta be careful with that. Came across this quote from Nancy Piercy in her Toxic War on Masculinity book, which is a very good book. She said that today the secular stereotype for masculinity has grown so narrow that when a man is sensitive or compassionate, people will often say he's tapping into his feminine side. And sadly you see this coming out with the rise of homosexuality, where a guy who has is a little bit more romantic or a little bit more sentimental. Sadly, in our culture, that guy is getting pegged as if, oh, well, you're probably homosexual. They get funneled into their dispositions a little bit more gentle, and they get funneled into, oh, well, that's more homosexual, and it becomes cool to identify as homosexual. But that, she says, but that language reinforces the stereotype that men are not naturally kind or caring, which is insulting to them. It is also harmful to men who do fall on the gentle, empathetic side of the personality spectrum. And I've encountered men who press into this stuff, and when you try to confront them on their sin, will say, well that's, you know, I'm a man, I can't be, I'm not going to be caring and tender to my partner. I just can't be like, that's a female characteristic, that's a female attribute. And they'll resist biblical exhortation on the grounds of these silly, arbitrary stereotypes. It is also harmful to men who do fall on the gentle, empathetic side of the personality spectrum. C.S. Lewis even denounced sex stereotypes as a form of arrogance. C.S. Lewis said, it is arrogance in us, men, to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry masculine. So they were doing this back in C.S. Lewis's day too. When we see them in a woman, it is arrogance in them, women, to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as feminine. Nancy Pearce, he says, no sex has a monopoly on any particular virtue. The problem with stereotypes is that they cut us in half. Men get one half of the human character traits and women get the other half. But in redemption, God calls us to be a full persons, recovering the full image of God in both sexes. So that's one of the things we have to emphasize is we need to understand that there are sexual differences between men and women. There's different hardware. And that's something that somehow our culture has become insane in trying to overcome and ignore. There are hard physical differences between men and women. But, and there's a difference of roles. I'm called to be the head of the household. I'm called to be responsible for ultimate decision-making and the consequences for those decisions. As a man, like any other leader, I'm responsible in a kind of a scary way for what goes down in my family. And that's the part that a lot of times this hyper-patriarchy crowd, hyper-masculinist crowd doesn't want to embrace is also the responsibility side of things. In fact, simply blaming the wife for their own decisions. But I have a role as the head of the household. I take the brunt of the storm. If something goes south, I'm going to be the one who takes ownership of the situation and gets in there and figures it out. Now that's with my wife a lot of times, but sometimes there's times where if something's nasty enough, I'm going to do, she knows I'm dealing with it, but I'm going to deal with it. take the arrows on behalf of the family, and we're called to do that as men, and that's part of our role. Men have been given the role of leadership in the family, in the church, and that's a blessing, but it also has its downsides, too, and should be taken very, very seriously. Women have their role of submission to the husband, of largely at least when it comes to taking care of the bases, being keepers at homes. But at the end of the day, what we also have to emphasize and what doesn't get emphasized in this discussion too often is the humanity of both the man and the woman. So there is When you look at scripture from cover to cover, there's a lot of instruction here. And we have specific instruction that is to men, specific instruction that is to women. But the bulk of this applies to men and to women. We're both to know it. We're both to apply it. We're both called to worship God. We're both human beings made in the image of God. And so, Sometimes with these movements, you get this idea that they look at, these guys are looking at women as almost a different species, and the women are almost looking at the men as a different species, and I don't think that's helpful. And sure, we tease about different things, and we joke about different things, and that's fine, but at the end of the day, we're made in the image of God, and we have that in common, and we're both being redeemed in that image. which is why we emphasize marriage before the fall, because that's what we're being redeemed to. We're being redeemed to embrace the goodness of how God created things and is redeeming things versus our fallen state. So Romans 8, 29, for those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers. That image of God in man and woman was marred, was warped, was obscured, was damaged, really beyond repair through the fall. We understand that human beings are so made in the image of God, but we were created to holiness and righteousness and knowledge, and all of that has been lost, despite what Satan Tempter offered in the fall, he offered all this hidden knowledge and this depth of wisdom. We've become dumb, brutish, foolish as a result of the fall. We've lost our holiness, our purity, and our integrity. We tend towards every sin. And so, being redeemed in Christ, for those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, we are now being remade in the image of the second Adam. We're being renewed in that image to righteousness, to holiness, to knowledge, to a restoration of what was lost with the fall. So we need to embrace this beautiful picture that the Bible presents in the early pages of Genesis of husband and wife, husband needing the wife for companionship, for friendship, for communication, for camaraderie, working together in the dominion task, bearing children together, raising those children together to the glory of God, and reject on the right, on the left, whatever the case is, Any idea that pits men, and some of these, I've been involved, and I've been told I'm not one of them. I've been involved in some hyper-patriarchy circles. I've been in different ones over different decades. I grew up in one, and then later I've been exposed to multiple, and so the levels of bitterness, the levels of frustration with women, and these guys, When they talk, they think that their wife is their only problem. Like as if the wife would just submit and shut up and get out of their business and let them do whatever they wanted to do with their decision making, everything would be good. And I've looked at these same guys and the decisions they're making that are train wreck decisions, in many cases the wife actually was functionally Sometimes submitting in a sense that they shouldn't have but going along with train wreck decisions and yet you get in these groups of guys where they're having their their man talk and you would think that if the wife would just sit down, shut up, and let them drive the car over the cliff, everything would be good. And that's simply not the case. God has given us wives, our wives, to be a blessing to us, us to be a blessing to them. And oftentimes, like, Lauren has let me drive over multiple cliffs. And I like to think of them as, non-accredited, expensive college experiences, educational experiences, but that's probably too generous. I've made a $30,000 blunder, I've made an $8,000 blunder, I've made a $40,000 blunder because of her, or not because of her. Because I didn't listen to her is what I meant to say. She did a good job, and I do appreciate that. She'll voice her opinion. If I'm not seeming to be receptive, she might come back a couple times and throw that out. Present some facts. But at a certain point, she has let me go over. I have a very submissive wife. And I remember after losing, it went up and then lost. I only lost 9,000, I guess, but we could have gained 40,000 if I had sold stupid cryptocurrency when she told me to. So I don't know how you calculate that loss. But I remember sitting there in my underwear, like in tears. 2 o'clock in the morning, trying to figure out, do I buy, do I sell? Losing more, losing more. Trying to listen to live stream of YouTube videos of other people that were perplexed about what to do as the market was crashing. And just thinking, oh man, if I had just listened to her. Because I bought her champagne. to celebrate that we made $40,000. And she's like, but we didn't sell it. Like, how do you make $40,000 if you haven't sold it? No, no, no, we can sell it. We can sell it any time, but it's just gonna go from here. I can be very stupid at times. Anyways, there's a reason that we work together with our wives, that we do fill them in on some of what's happening in our lives. There's points where I'm just casually talking about my day and things that happen in real estate, and Lauren sees a pitfall that I didn't Think of it. Two are definitely better than one. That's why God has created. God didn't make a mistake when it came to the marriage union. It's a beautiful thing. It's what we need as men, as women. Together we can be much more effective, and we really round each other out, and we need that. It's beautiful to be so close to another human being, but also to have the counterweight of somebody who is one with us, but also can see us in a way that we can't see ourselves, to help us. So, we're being renewed, conformed to the image of his son. I am being conformed to the image of the Son, Lauren is being conformed to the image of the Son, we're growing together, and embracing the vision of marriage as God has set it forward in the first couple chapters of Genesis. Rather than what I'm seeing some people when they come to Genesis 3.16 will do, is they'll actually use it as an apologetic for, well this is the way things are in the fallen world, it's broken so it's unfixable, therefore the man just needs to basically lord over the woman, the woman just needs to shut up and uh, shut up and listen. And I've even seen where people have taken the idea that, well, she's the conduit of temptation and into the, um, household. So if I can just keep her from temptation, everything's going to be good. It's like, no, I'm sorry to break the news to you, but you've got all kinds of temptation and you're, you're, you're, you're liable to sin yourself and be careful with that mindset. Um, Colossians three, nine. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices. So that old fallen man, that old man that was, the image of God was marred in us. Male and female created the image of God. marred in us, now we're to put it off with its practices. And to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. So we're being renewed in knowledge. We're created in the image of God, we've fallen, and now we're being renewed and recreated in the image of God through Christ. And that's the beautiful good news of the gospel of Craig. Lord, I just thank you for the way you've created marriage as a harmonious unit. We know that it won't be perfect. We accept that we live in a fallen world and that there will be, we will have to get very good at working through conflicts. Guide us in that. Help us to see conflicts coming up. Help us to see pitfalls before they grab us. Help us to make sure that we're learning how to deal with the inevitable conflict, guide us by your spirit in those situations, but also help us to seek to embrace the purpose, the function, the creation norm of marriage that you've created. It's beautiful, it's wonderful, we love it. I pray for kindling and rekindling and closeness in the marriages here of the marriage relationship. I pray that there be more and more trust built between husband and wife and wife and husband. I pray that some issues would be corrected and dealt with. And I pray that the marriage can be a blessing to us as hardworking fathers who are really pouring out our lives in the altar of providing for our families and our wife. trying to serve you, but working every day throughout the week to do that. I pray that our marriages would be a blessing to us. I pray that they'd be a blessing to our wives who work and labor diligently in the family and do the hard work of being mothers and the kind of constant never-ending work that that is. I pray that our marriages would be an oasis, a place of Paradise in a fallen world, a place of worship for you, and I pray that they be fruitful for your kingdom. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.