Well, it's a privilege to be with you again this morning as we open up God's Word together. We have some visitors with us. We are now about seven weeks into a series on marriage out of Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3. And while the focus of the series has been on marriage, hopefully as we go through the content this morning, you'll realize It's really more about our understanding of the context in which we were created, in which we currently exist, and how we, trusting the Lord, live with one another well. Our text for this morning comes from Genesis 3, chapter 14 through 19. I'm going to read starting in verse 14, Genesis chapter 3. 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. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and 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 you shall bring forth. 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, for out of it you are taken. For you were dust, and to dust you shall return. This is the word of the Lord. May God be pleased to add his blessing to it. Well, so far in our series, we have talked about what it meant to be an image bearer, and I spent way too much time doing that because I do think it's important. We fundamentally as humans, our fundamental identity is that of being an image bearer. We talked about being handcrafted or uniquely created as embodied souls with gender and purpose. We talked about being placed in the garden, this temple dwelling where we are created to abide with God in this garden. We talked about the honor of being these image bearers, these vice regents that had been placed there, crowned with glory and honor to steward creation as representatives of God. We talked about the capacities given to us, this rational mind and all that comes out of that. We talked about the labor of our hands, that we were given the dominion mandate, that we were given purpose. We were talking about holiness and abiding with God in holiness. We had this moral imprint of God on us. We live perfectly according to that moral imprint. Abiding with God in holiness. We talked about a heart. A heart that was given over to loving God and desiring to worship Him and abiding with Him well. And we talked about our happiness. That God had created us to experience pleasure, to know pleasure. And He delights in us experiencing that pleasure. That concluded our time talking about image bearing. We went through the end of chapter two and talked about what it meant to be companions. These uniquely created companions oriented fully, freely, purely towards each other, filled with a full understanding of what love was, able to extend love without any inhibition, and able to care for one another perfectly. That would be described as a one flesh relationship and that we were naked and without a shame. Without shame. And we talked a little bit about that. Last week we talked about the context in which we find ourselves. In a sin, curse, broken world. And we went through sin entering into the picture. We talked about The impact that is to us, that we are by nature and by choice sinners. Rebels of God, enemies of God, born in separation of God. We haven't got in Genesis yet to this idea of being cast out of his presence, out of the garden, but indeed that's our context. We talked about shame. And while we struggle to understand shame, it is the very human component That's one of the clearest identifiers of who we are. We are filled with shame, trying to cover ourselves because we know we're unrighteous and we fear how we're going to be received or rejected because of that. And we talked about guilt. Well, that then is the context for the lives in which we now live. We are sinners, born opposed to God. We're thankful, though, for this work of Jesus in light of that, that God would send Jesus into this sin-cursed, broken world to take upon Himself our sin, to receive the punishment. As we just sang these glorious songs about the wrath that was poured on Christ on our behalf so that we could be forgiven, so that the power of sin was broken, and the presence of sin, while it still remains, diminishes, and that we have now this ability to, because we have been forgiven and because we've been cleansed, to be reconciled to God, although we still linger in this place at this time in the context in which we live. We're living in the reality of the already Already we have been cleansed, already we've been united to God, already we've been reconciled to Him, but then not yet, because it's not fully consummated, it's not fully brought about. We're living in this overlap age. Well, Genesis explains to us with tremendous clarity more about this overlap age in which we live. Today's message is really entitled, Cursed Companions. I think it's important as we think about relationships in the context of the relationships that we have one to another in our neighborhoods and our families, but particularly in our marriages, that we recognize that we are cursed companions. The outline for today is four ways the curse impacts our companionship. A note just right up front, that we are really, when we think about our human condition, there's really two components of us. One, I emphasized last week, that we are sinners. We are born sinners, and even after we've been reconciled to God and redeemed by the blood of Christ, we still struggle with this indwelling sin. We all have this sin within us that we're wrestling with, and by God's grace and His Spirit, He's transforming us and kneading that sin out of us. But we are sinners, and that impacts our relationships, surely, in our marriages. But there's another Very important component of our human existence that impacts our marriages surely, but all of us fully, and that's we are sufferers. We talked about, we sang about suffering this morning. I'm thankful that we don't just sing about our suffering, but we sing about the suffering of Christ on our behalf. But we are sufferers, sinners and sufferers. Now, our sin surely impacts one another and creates suffering. Suffering in our relationships, suffering in my own life, the consequences of my sin as I live in the reality of those things. Surely, I'm suffering because of my sin. But we also live with sin just because of the context in which we live. And we are told in Genesis 3 that that is surely going to be the case for us. That we are going to be a suffering people because of the fall. Okay, let's begin working through Genesis 3. I'm going to begin in the first two verses, Genesis 3, 14 and 15. 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 the dust you shall eat in 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. I have no idea what verse 14 is talking about. I don't know what the curse to the serpent is other than it's still crawling around. So we're going to just go with that. We know for certain that there is still an enemy still crawling around. and still a viable enemy. What we do know in verse 15 is the reality of this cosmic conflict. That there is this cosmic conflict that extends over all of creation and all of our human experience. There is this cosmic conflict that we are born into the middle of and impacts us profoundly. I have just a couple minutes on this cosmic conflict. But if I was to write this sermon over on Thursday, I would have elaborated much more on this, because this is what we've been experiencing throughout the week, as we've grieved and seen the conflict that's arisen through the death of Charlie Kirk. It is evidence. It's what Pastor Brian prayed about this morning. This battle that we're in the middle of, where we see the seed of the woman All that is moving towards the Messiah. All that is being fulfilled in the work of Christ. All the hope that comes with that. And also, the seed of Satan. The influence of Satan. The dominion of Satan. Now we have this cosmic battle that we're in the middle of. And we can see it being worked out from the very beginning in chapter 4 of Genesis with Cain and Abel. and the death that we have seen there and we're still experiencing. We're seeing it in large-scale cosmic battle. We're seeing it individually in our own hearts, in our own families. And even in the text we read in Luke today, we see that there is going to be a division between even families. Intimate, most intimate within families, fathers and children. It's because of the influence of this cosmic battle. It's good and evil. Well, we're thankful that we know that Jesus indeed has come as the fulfillment, that He is the one that bruised the head of Satan. And even though Satan is still bruising the heel, causing affliction and trial and difficulty, the head of Satan has been crushed and there is victory in Jesus. And while we do not experience the fulfillment, the full fulfillment of that, I'm sure we live in that context now where the cosmic battle has been won, but is not fully realized. Yet we are promised that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, that this is not our home, that even though Israel and Egypt, right, the victory was there, Israel was brought out of Egypt, but they didn't enter into the promised land for 40 years. They lived in the wilderness, and we too. The victory's been won, the promised land is sure, But the context of our lives is the wilderness. And this battle wages. Do not have more time to give to that. Our second point is the curse to the woman. Curse to the woman. Beginning in verse 16. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Now this seems like something that would be just so very obvious to us. And if any of us have been alive very long, we know that there is a pain in childbearing that women experience. It's interesting that the King James Version says that unto a woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. And we begin to see that this, while we struggle with our English language to have the fullness of the concept here brought out, that the reality is is that this curse to woman has to do with the entirety of her reproductive process and her entire life. That there's a pain and sorrow in it all. Everything related to reproduction in a woman's life is impacted by the curse. In the garden it would have been beautiful. It would have been the greatest blessing. But in our context, It is filled with trial and difficulty and sorrow and suffering. We would say that it begins with a woman's menstrual cycle. The average young woman starts having a menstrual cycle when she's 12, and that ends when she's around 51-ish, so 39 years. this very complicated process the woman's body goes through every single month 468 months if the averages are correct 468 months over half of her life it's gonna be given over month by month to this thing that we joke about we make light of It's a profound change that happens every single month. Powerful hormones are needed to bring about the process of ovulation, the shedding of an unused egg, and all that goes with that, and the pain that's involved, the struggle that's involved. There's a human struggle to that process. Women are told to just deal with it. And it is part of being a woman. And so we say to them, this is your lot. But we don't even acknowledge the difficulty and the complexity of it. It is a profound and complex part of a woman's human experience, filled with pain and emotion and upheaval and difficulty every single month. Often, we recognize the difficulty in others We can see it, but I know many women struggle to see it in their own life because it's so familiar and it's just a natural thing that they go through every single month. And so they struggle to see it in themselves. But it has a tremendous impact. And I wish we could just be honest with ourselves and deal with the reality of this part of the curse. So many marriages, experience this part of the curse, month after month, in the context of their marriage, and it's just irrelevant. Yet I know it's a profoundly impactful thing. God has blessed me with a mother here, a mother-in-law, who's not here but lives with me, a wife, and six daughters. And I am so very thankful So one of the things my daughters do is they have conversations about this part of their life. And they have learned to interact with each other based on it. They've learned to relate to one another, to care for one another, to be thoughtful about each other in light of this part of their life. They have an app. Which obviously until now, men couldn't deal with this at all because there was no app. But now we have an app and we have no excuse for it. Listen, it impacts their relationship. It impacts my wife and I's relationship in profound ways. And men are ignorant. We could care less often. And we just blame the relational problems on her. And it's not caring for one another in light of the reality of the curse. Pregnancy. I'm going to move on. Pregnancy, obviously. Nine months of pregnancy. but the burden of pregnancy to a woman that if there is a Pregnancy the woman is the one that's burdened for pretty much life But also that we can talk about in the context loss of life loss of children infertility. I mean, it's it's so difficult birthing a child just the sheer pain of childbearing and But still, in our modern world, 200 mothers die. For every 100,000 births, 200 mothers die in the process of giving birth. It is part of the curse. It's broken. Caring for children. Raising children. There's something that, because of the nurturing aspect of most mothers, there's something very hard that happens in relationship to children. A proverb talks about this. A wise son makes a glad father. But a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Wayward children break mothers' hearts, struggles, fears. It's the mothers that seem to carry so much of this burden for the children. Then we can talk about menopause, all the reproductive life, I mean, losses, infertility, the death of children, experiencing abortion, and living in a culture that lies and promotes that. Oh, this part of the curse is a real part of the curse. And it's unfortunate that half the people that we know roughly are experiencing this on an ongoing basis. Another half are just oblivious to it. We cannot exist in a marriage without understanding and knowing this. Proverbs 3, 7 says to a husband, live with your wife based on knowledge, a true, full, growing, maturing knowledge. And this is part of it. It's just knowing the reality of the curse and the context with which our wives and the women we know live. Now, this is not an excuse for sin, for sure. But the reality is that women need God's grace to live in the reality of the curse in this area of their life. It takes tremendous grace. It also takes a partner that understands, a husband or a people in their lives that understand, that will understand the complexity and difficulty of this. We're so thankful that God has not abandoned us in all the loss that happens, all the burden, all the sorrow of this. God is near and He's comfortable. I mean, He comforts us and He walks with us through this. But this part of your life, women, is the curse to you. This is not the way it was intended to be. And we need to understand that. Well, men, like I said, half of the people we know are suffering from this fairly hidden curse. It is too impactful and too complicated to not be informed, not be aware, to not take it seriously, to not be involved and engaged. You cannot be a good companion if you do not understand and live in the reality of this part of the woman's life. Women have had a lot of pressure, I think, to minimize this and the complexity and the impact in their lives. Men have ridiculed and mocked and pressured women into silence and really ignorance where we can't even talk about these things. Often it is hard for a woman to understand the impact because it is so familiar to their experience. And it is hard for a man to discuss this, often with his wife, because he often uses it against her. Or he minimizes it. Or he minimizes his part of the relational problems and just transfers it over to her because she struggles emotionally and relationally at times in their marriage. Flame shifting. what we should be hearing and what we should be sensing from our wives is that I am suffering, I am struggling with difficulty, and I need you to live with me in a way of knowledge. I need you to have compassion for me and I need you to interact with me in a way that's profitable. Now, several years ago we were traveling to California and I know nothing about the beach other than there's sand there and that's way worse than you would imagine but we were living we were staying in this house by the beach and they had a kayak or I don't know what kayak I think and so we were really excited to take the kayak out on the water so we get up and off we go with our kayak out to the water we look around well there's not there are many people on the beach so we didn't think anything about it and we get in the kayak and I go out and I don't know it was kind of scary for me and came back and there's Some people that came over and they were like, oh my word, stay out of the water. It's a double red flag day, which means you're not to be in the water at all. And I wish we had flag symbols for the context of this in our wives' lives, where a yellow flag day or a green flag day was calm and safe waters. A yellow flag day, moderate hazards and caution. A red flag, high hazard. Like in a double red flag day, the beach is closed to all water activities. Now we joke about it, right? But that's really the reality. The complexity, the things that their bodies go through. We plan conversations, we plan big decisions. We deal with conflict on green and yellow days. And it's okay. And I wish the women were OK to say, today's a red flag day. Put it on the board. We'll talk about it when we get to a yellow flag day. How much conflict could we avoid if we just dealt with the reality of the complexity here and didn't say to our wives, listen, it's not a big deal. You should be able to overcome it and just buck up. Well, men don't understand this because we don't experience it. And because we don't experience it, we minimize and overlook it. and we have to stop. The curse is real and we need to become allies in care. Reproductive loss will probably impact your wife more than you realize if she's experienced it. A miscarriage, death of children, infertility. Men struggle to understand the difficulty and how impactful this is. We need to be allies of grace. We need to be caring for one another. We need to be walking with one another with gentleness and patience. We need to be caring for one another in reality of the context of this. Okay, I must move on. That's the most awkward part of this message. Let's look at the end of verse 16. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. This is fraught with all kinds of problems because of the translations and interpretation things going on here. First of all, your desire shall be for is what my ESV Bible says. But if you have one written in the last 10 years, your says your desire shall be against your husband. So even within our ESV Bibles, there's a change of words right here. The Hebrew means the same and it could mean either one. So somebody had to decide, are we going to put in there, is your desire for your husband or your desire against your husband? And believe me, it makes a big deal. Let's talk about desire first. This desire, what kind of desire is this? It really means a craving or a longing. But in the context of the curse, what is this desire? Well, again, we have two camps that kind of have been formed based on this. One camp looks at Genesis 4-7, where sin is crouching. and desires to capture Cain. So this desire is a negative sense. It's against. It's one seeking to capture you, to control you. Song of Solomon uses the same phrase, though, and it's beautiful. It's the desire of a spouse, sexually, and the passion that goes with that. And so those are the only two other places this phrase is used. And so that's what we have to go with. And so we have to decide or interpret. And this verse is often interpreted based on how we understand this phrase. So it could be a bad thing, sin is desiring you, or it could be a good thing, a spouse's passionate desire. for or against. Let's just think about what it would mean either way. If we translate this verse saying your desire, this desire to capture is against your husband, then we will understand this verse to say that your desire shall be by cursed nature against your husband. Or to capture your husband. Or to rise over your husband. and to not submit to him. And this is a very popular understanding. It's become extremely popular ever since the battle of feminism and things kind of came into the church. But it becomes a very fundamental understanding of marriage and relationship. If this is our primary understanding, that this text right here says that the curse of the woman is that she is by nature going to try to rise up over and to capture and to control her husband, then every other understanding of marriage will flow out of that. And we will then interpret all the problems and all the struggles in marriage based on this one verse. It becomes our primary hermeneutical verse to understand marriage and the complexity of marriage. Women want to rise up over their husband. And we must deal with that. The other way to think about this is for. A wife's desire will be for her husband. Well, what could that possibly mean? How could that possibly be a curse? Well, this was the majority view until a couple hundred years ago. A wife's desire will be for her husband. She will want all that she has lost in the garden from her husband. All of her joy and peace and contentment and satisfaction in the garden was being fully fulfilled because of her relationship with God, and it just flowed out of her to her husband. And once that has been severed with God, it leaves her wanting relationally, it leaves her feeling a need for joy and satisfaction and contentment, and she takes that need and she overlays it on her husband. She says, you will be the one. I'll look to you now. You can provide these things for me. All my hopes for being a woman and being satisfied in this life are going to be overlaid on you. A disproportionate priority. Wanting, needing, demanding from the husband. All these relational things to flow into her so she can feel all that she wants to feel. The joy and the peace and the satisfaction. And she's going to be devastated when he doesn't meet those expectations. and he shall rule over you. I don't know which one is the right translation, honestly. And I've met with situations where either one would have been applicable. I would say that the majority of women that I talk to resonate with the second one more than the first one. There are some that just want to rise up over their husbands, want to control and have authority. In my experience, after 10 years and almost 10,000 hours of counseling, Very few. Most of the brokenness in marriage is a wife looking to her husband and saying, I'd long for you to love me. And a husband responding poorly. Being indifferent, inconsiderate, selfish, self-focused. And a wife being somewhat devastated. Well, that has probably become an idol for her. She's probably looking to this husband in a way that she wants more than he'll ever be able to provide if he's in his most sanctified state and she's longing for it and the culture says she should have it and she deserves it and she's devastated, broken by it. But that's my experience. And he shall rule over her. And this is also part of the curse. His tendency towards himself, his selfish gain. He will use his capacities and gifting and position for selfish gain. He will not seek to know her and honor her. He will be indifferent, distracted, inconsiderate, and selfish. That's how he's going to respond. He's going to leave her very desperate. He's going to grow in his selfishness and his harshness and indifference to her. And now we have battle going on in our marriages. And I think this explains a lot of it. My experience is that most women, again, relate to the second view. And however, most men, listen to me men, most men experience and describe to me something that is easily described as a contentious, controlling woman. It's easy. Say, yeah, my wife, she pokes at me, she pesters me, and I'm never enough, and she just wants more than I can give, and I don't know what to do about it. And so it's easy to just say, oh, she must be controlling and contentious. That must be the problem. 1 Peter 3.6, though, I think is an incredibly important verse. We don't have time to go through a lot of it, but this is a verse in 1 Peter where Peter's saying, listen, you can be like Sarah and treat your husband well like Sarah did if you do not fear anything that's frightening. And that is what I usually find. Usually a wife has had to live with a husband who has disregarded her, hasn't been considerate, has made selfish decisions. And she's like, oh, my word. Why will he not think about me, consider me? Why won't he know me better? Why won't he listen to me? And she is fearful. And out of that fear, she rises up and says, hey, please listen to me. Pay attention to me. And the husband just says, ah, she's controlling and contentious. And I think husbands, we've created it. All she wants to do is be loved and cherished and considered. and lived with in a way of knowledge. We are too self-oriented to do that. And we have the tool to leverage. We can say, ah, Genesis 3.16 says your nature is going to be to control. And look at this, you want to control me. It's your fault. And I don't think the church has done a very good job of helping us understand the nuance and the complexity of this. In light of this, though, we are called to be cursed companions. Recognize marriage is going to be difficult. And it's part of the curse, the brokenness, both to marriage and to reproduction. These two things that in the garden would have been beautiful and so fulfilling and so magical for the woman outside are broken and difficult. We need to stop blaming our marriage difficulties on each other specifically and realize that we can become companions, allies, helping one another in light of the curse, allies in grace, walking with one another, bearing one another's burden. But we don't know what burdens to bear if we're not going to talk about the burden reality. Husbands, love your wives. Orient yourself to them as an ally. Give yourself to their care and good. Understand the longings of them in their creation. Don't despise their differences. Serve them in light of their differences. Men realize the profound impact to women who have been abandoned, betrayed, and abused by men who were supposed to care for them. Fathers and husbands that took advantage of the most precious relationship given to them, abused their wives, We have a room full of suffering women because they were mistreated. Even among us, we have these sisters in Christ who carry these hidden scars and wounds and pain from the impacts of the curse to them. The church has historically done a very poor job caring for our women. We have trouble understanding, seeing, empathizing, and providing care for them. There is far more pain and suffering even amongst us than we would ever anticipate. Men, be careful. Be patient. Don't assume anything. Don't overlay your experience on anyone without knowledge of their situation. Ask for help from the women to understand better. I think I'm surrounded by women that have no problem telling me when I got it wrong. Women must have a voice in the overall care of other women. Oftentimes, we're in a room filled with elders and a bunch of men trying to care for a woman, and we just blow it. Honestly, we just blow it. We just don't know what we're doing, oftentimes. We need women in those situations. They need to provide counsel and insight to us so we can care for our women. And I gotta go on. The third point is cursed creation. Again, this is a huge context. We don't have much time to talk about it. Let's read verse... I'm gonna read 17 through 19. And Adam 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. until you return to the ground, for out of it you are taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Obviously, there's a cursed creation. I don't have enough time to really talk about this, but the context that we live in, the creation is cursed. Cursed is the ground. Thorns and thistles shall bring forth. The perfect ideal context for human existence is now cursed. It's more than just the weeds and the thistles, but it really impacts every part of creation. The seasons, and the drought, and the disproportion of resources, and harmful germs, and diseases, and infestations, and the imbalance of In all of creation, the battle for survival and survival of the fittest and all of this flows out of it. The brokenness to creation creates a context where we're struggling to survive and to live. I wish I could say more, but the last point, point number four is curse to the man. Now this again is woven through that text. We obviously see it was his responsibility in verse 17, because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree, which I commanded you shall not eat. The man was responsible. He should have known, he should have been aware, he should have been on guard, he should have been caring for his wife. It's his responsibility for sin. And we can see that in our understanding of federal headship. Through Adam, all have sinned. Through Adam, all have sinned. Sin transferred to all. because he listened to the voice other than God. He trusted in the voice other than God. And he was aware that this thing that had encroached in there was not one of the animals he had named. And he should have responded differently. The curse of the man is also in pain and hardship. Verse 17, at the end, in pain you shall eat of it. There's difficult, toil, hard, broken labor. Things are not going to work out. Men are still given this responsibility to bear the burden of going out and providing for a family. There's a brokenness to it, a difficulty in that turmoil. There's just a heartache to provide what we struggle to provide and not being able to or having a lot of opposition to that. We feel the futility of the labor knowing that this is really what we're called to, a futile life, a life just giving ourselves to labor and then dying. Verse 18 at the end, you shall eat the plants of the field, They will not grow easily as in the garden. You're going to have to go out and plant. There's going to be produce there, but it's going to take everything you got, and you have to give your life to it. But the plants will produce, and you can go out and work that and care for your family, generally to provide sustenance. Verse 19, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. Obviously sweat, just the labor. But this is, there's much more involved in this. a broken man. And I think if we look at our young men, there's so much trepidation and fear saying, I am going to go out in this life that I know is hard. And I can see the brokenness and I can experience it. And I am being called to labor and through those labors to provide care for my family. And how can I possibly do that? It's too big. It's too much. And there's so much fear and insecurity built into that. There's a burden that men carry with that responsibility. If our families are hungry, nobody goes to the wife and says, listen, is your family hungry? You come to the husband and say, listen, provide for your family. There is such a burden there in the brokenness. Where to eat bread. Again, I would love to spend a whole hour just unraveling this. This is a beautiful concept. What does the bread represent? Well, it represents labor, right? I'm going to plant. I'm going to water. I'm going to harvest. I'm going to take the harvest. I'm going to grind it. I'm going to figure out how to do all this grinding, and then I'm going to turn it into a loaf, and then I'm going to heat it, and now I'm going to have bread. And why is bread important? Because I need to store food, because there's going to be seasons in the year where I can't access food like I did in the garden. But I have bread, and I can feed my family through the bread. But the whole process represents a brokenness from the garden, and pain and labor. I think it is the catalyst where human ingenuity flows out of this. better ability to plant, better ability to water, harvest, better ability to grind and to store the food and all of that that simulates and out of that flows like this human ingenuity. But it all flows out of the brokenness and the burden to care for and provide for a family needing to turn plants into food. Then, the sum of a man's life is labor and pending death. Verse 19. You're going to labor and carry this responsibility until you die. For out of it you are taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. There's a futility to it. Well, how does this help us as cursed companions? How does a wife recognize the difficulty, the fear, the burden, and the curse that her husband functions under? He was built to carry the responsibility and to care for his family, but it's broken and it's difficult. We would not have required that much in the garden, but now in a hostile environment where everything is broken and difficult, he will give his entire life to it. You live in a hostile, competitive, aggressive, survival of the fittest world. And it's hard. Everything is broken. Nothing works out as it should. Everything's filled with corruption and brokenness. And wives, you have the ability to be a companion or an ally in grace to your husband. There's no more powerful word spoken to a husband than that of his wife. And for a wife to say, I recognize the curse to you, and I recognize the burden, and although you're not doing it perfectly, and I know you're struggling, and sometimes foolishly, and with great fear and insecurity, I see you. I appreciate you. I see the battle you're involved in and I see the consequences of the curse and I'm with you. I stand with you in this. I'm proud of you. There's a reason that we have these ads in our culture right now where we have this strong man standing next to a beautiful wife and she is looking at him with eyes of just pride. This is my guy and I'm thankful for him. I am grateful, and this is the one. This is the one for me. And there's that idea that we can be companions and allies in light of the curse. If we fast forward to the end of Ephesians 5, Paul says that wives are to husbands see fit to it that you love your wife. Well, in light of the curse, that is loving you. caring for you, empathizing, being with you, knowing you, cherishing you, delighting in you, doting on you. And in light of the curse, that would be very helpful for a woman with such brokenness related to the curse. And then he goes on, he says, see to it, wives, that you respect your husbands. We have corrupted that because we say that's That is something like obeying him or submitting to him. Rather than just saying what I think we see represented in Genesis three, wives, see to it you respect your husband. Just be grateful. Recognize the battle. Stand with him, encourage him. You're my guy. You can do it. Now, I think because of the curse, we see this application. We can live out with one another being companions in light of the curse, would God be gracious as he works in us by his spirit and through the redemption that he's given us, this new life in Christ, would he be gracious to help us to learn to love one another, to care for one another in our families, in our marriages, in our church, in our neighborhood, in our labor workplaces. And may we not May we have a better perspective of the real struggles that we face as humans in light of the curse to us in Genesis 3.