Beautiful lessons from the Garden of Eden about the most important institution on earth.
When you study Genesis 3 it becomes clear that Adam and Eve’s marriage, despite all their personal contact with God, deteriorated pretty quickly. There are lessons for us here too.
First, notice how Satan bypassed the man and went directly to the woman. “And he said unto the woman …” (Genesis 3:1). As we saw in Genesis 1 and 2, God worked through Adam. In Genesis 3, Satan worked to derail God’s plan through the woman. How many biblical examples are there of Satan trying to destroy the plan of God through a woman? Abraham, Samson, David, Solomon—they all had a weakness for women!
Where was Adam when Eve was off talking to Satan, and why wasn’t he with his wife? Was there a lack of leadership here on Adam’s part? Why didn’t Adam, the moment it became possible, grab Eve’s hand and sprint toward the tree of life? It’s clear that something wasn’t quite right. They sure weren’t behaving as “one flesh.”
What was Eve thinking? When approached by a talking snake, why didn’t she run immediately to her husband? Why didn’t she tell the snake, You need to check with my husband, or, I need to discuss this with my husband?
Mr. Armstrong believed Eve was struggling with a few things. In a Bible study in August 1980, he stated: “If someone doesn’t lead, and someone else is supposed to be equal, they want to go on ahead. Well, old mother Eve decided she ought to wear the pants. So, she’s the one who contacted Satan. She’s the one who decided on the experiment. She’s the one who took of the fruit that was forbidden and gave to her husband, and meekly he gave in, in his weakness, and took of the fruit and ate also with her. And he let the woman lead him. Adam, therefore, followed his wife and rejected God and rebelled against the government of God and the rulership of God.” That is a powerful observation.
Adam and Eve were having some major marriage problems. An upside-down marriage was partly to blame for the decision to eat of the tree of death!
The marriage quickly worsened after that fateful decision. In verse 9, God communicates specifically with Adam, as He always did. “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” Verse 10 shows that shame and guilt had entered, which is what happens when we sin: “And [Adam] said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Listen to Adam—it’s I, I, I, I! It looks like Adam turned on his wife. What happened to the “we”? After all, they were supposed to be “one flesh.”
Human nature, Satan’s nature, was now running rampant, and Adam and Eve were living according to their own rules. “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (verse 12). How’s that for loving your wife, your companion created by God Himself to be your helpmeet? Adam blamed his wife even though he had consciously decided to eat the fruit (1 Timothy 2:14). Worse still, Adam blamed God, criticizing Him because He made the woman!
How easy it is for us men to think of ourselves as infallible. We’re in charge; we give orders and instructions; we have the final say. Sometimes it’s easy to think that makes us automatically right or above reproach. Isn’t it easy sometimes to put the blame for certain things on our wives, our children or even God, when the cause of the problem is our own lack of conversion or leadership?
Men: There are consequences when we don’t lead as God intended us to. God told Adam directly: “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake …” (Genesis 3:17). God corrected Adam strongly: Because you listened to your wife; because you abandoned your role; because you didn’t love her like I told you to; because you had an upside-down marriage; because you got marriage wrong, you shall be cursed!
The Bible gives us no indication that Adam and Eve’s marriage ever recovered from this trauma. Resentment and bitterness likely crept in. They probably fought and argued a lot. Adam probably told Eve, If only you had stayed with me! Eve probably responded, If only you had led me properly!Adam probably never looked at Eve quite the same way again, certainly never with the excitement, pleasure and innocence he had the moment he first laid eyes on her. Eve’s resentment toward Adam probably welled up. And it may have been like this for hundreds of years.
The relationship worsened when children came along. Unless they are resolved, conflicts and resentments will often intensify when children enter the picture. Genesis 4:1 is interesting. When Cain was born, Eve said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” In a godly marriage, the response would be, Thank you, great and loving God, for giving US a child!
If you study into this verse, it is evident Eve believed Cain was the individual God prophesied in Genesis 3:15 who would dethrone Satan the devil. Basically, Eve thought her son was the Son of God. This belief resulted in a warped mother-son relationship. Eve put Cain before everything else, including her husband. This is a dangerous mistake. Cain was raised to believe he was “the man.” He had major issues with selfishness and vanity. No wonder Cain couldn’t handle it when God preferred Abel’s offering to his! He was a juvenile delinquent who ended up committing the first murder in human history. That act was the product of a bad marriage!
The final few verses of Genesis 3 show how God, following man’s sin, cut off access to the tree of life and ejected Adam and Eve from the garden. From this moment forward, as Mr. Armstrong taught, mankind has been in bondage to Satan.
When you consider this history, you could conclude that the entire course of human civilization wasdecided by a marriage that went horribly wrong! There is an obvious lesson here for us: If we don’t get marriage right, the consequences will be disastrous.
Build A Tree Of Life Marriage
Revelation 19:7 says, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” Adam failed in his marriage. But Revelation 19:7 shows that Jesus Christ, the second Adam, is not going to fail. Christ will have a bride, and she will know how to be married God’s way. Your marriage today is helping you prepare to be born as a son of God and the Bride of Christ.
Once this marriage has occurred, Christ and His Bride will do to the universe what God intended Adam and Eve to do to the Earth. Following their wedding, Christ and His Bride are “going to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” After that, we are going to replenish the entire universe. All this work is going to be done through a marriage!
God’s Church today must realize how urgent and intense the need for godly marriages is in this world. Satan is waging a vicious and successful war on marriage and family. God’s people are all that stands to prevent Satan from wiping out marriage as God created it. What a weighty responsibility!
The world needs you to build a tree-of-life marriage!
God the Father and Jesus Christ need you to build a tree-of-life marriage!
Meditate on the beautiful lessons about marriage furnished by events in the garden of Eden. Let’s embrace the roles in marriage as God created them. Husbands, let’s lead our wives as God intended us to, and love her as if she came from our own body. Wives, embrace the role of helpmeet. Then together, using the power of God’s Holy Spirit, strive to build the “one flesh” unity God seeks in marriage—the unity that God and Jesus Christ have, and the unity that the Church will soon have with our Husband Jesus Christ.
Remember too, it all starts with the tree of life. To have the marriage God wants us to have, we must eat daily from the tree of life and obtain daily the power of God’s Holy Spirit!
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