the second phase of the fall and I want to review what we looked at last week which is the first part of the fall and the Hebrew word for serpent is Nachash and the Nachash was introduced into scripture the very first time here in the third chapter of Genesis and in Hebrew this is the one who brings temptation It's not a snake, it's a serpent. So we really don't know what that was. There's an assumption that's always made in our English Bibles that it's a snake, but it's really a serpent of some sort. And it becomes indwelt with Satan, which is the Hebrew word for adversary, and he indwells the serpent for specifically targeting the woman to communicate with her. And it's an interesting pairing of Satan and the serpent, because we see this in the New Testament in many locations, at least three. Second Corinthians 11.3, Revelation 12.9, and Revelation 22. The rabbis in their theology, the Orthodox rabbis, they affirm this pairing as well. So this is not a quaint myth that We just have a fun little story here to describe a concept that we have, but the story is not true. That's a liberal ideology that has nothing to do with fact, nothing to do with the Hebrew language, nothing to do with the way the Bible is written. The instruction here that we get is to be aware of what the Bible calls the wiles of the devil, the stratagems of the devil. And that's what we have to be aware of. As we go through this section today, the review of part one and the new information into part two, I want you to pay particular attention to what the devil does, because he's doing the same thing today. the same exact thing. It's the way he imparts doubt. Now what we saw last week that is very important to understand is that the Hebrew language, both in the verbs and the nouns, are constructed of three root letters. When you learn Hebrew, you learn these root letters. And it is really, really hard to learn these letters because they can morph into a variety of words. So you learn these letters, and then when you see the words that are morphed out of these, you can get this picture of how these different words tie together. For example, in the word king in Hebrew, it's melech. and in the word kingdom, it's malkut, and to rule is malach. But it's the same three Hebrew letters, mem, lamed, and akaf, sofit. Those letters are in each one of these words. And you can see the words are similar. It's the same thing with the word angel and a whole host of other words that are all tied to this rule, kingdom, and so on. Well, in the word for serpent is nakash, it also morphs out into bronze, nekoshet. And we remember from Numbers 21.9 that Moses made a bronze serpent to put an end to the sting of those poisonous snakes that the Lord had allowed to attack the children of Israel because they weren't following God and they were rebelling. The Hebrew word, nekoshet nakash, it means a bronze serpent. And both of those words are similar. They both have the same root. Jesus himself referred to himself as the nekoshet nakash in John 3 verses 14 to 15 when he said that he was going to be lifted up. like this bronze serpent. So you can see how these words in Hebrew have similarity and are tied together. The serpent is no different. No different than the rest of these. And in Hebrew etymology, or the study of the morphology of these words, The fact that bronze is shiny and the serpent is shiny is not an accident or a coincidence. They do this for a particular reason when this Bible was written. Matter of fact, the word even morphs out farther when it becomes the bronze serpent in 2 Kings 18 form. It becomes nekushatan. But it's the same root. So the reason they have you learn these roots in Hebrew is when you see words that have those roots you know it's somehow similar. It's somehow tied to that root and these words are all tied together. In the New Testament, the same idea carries over, where Satan is said to be, and he masquerades as an angel of light, shiny, luminous, attractive. The serpent in the garden was attractive. It wasn't an ugly snake, like we'd look at some snake and go, ah! No, the serpent was attractive. The things in the garden, the state of life in the garden was vastly different than anything we can imagine. Because it was pristine, it was perfect, and it was the way God created it. It was an ideal environment. And our forefathers lost it. They gave it up, I should say. This word also morphs out in other areas of the Old Testament to mean practice divination or observe astrological signs. So, the nature of the serpent here, introduced in the plain text, not necessarily in these morphologies, is also an ancient, pagan, Near Eastern divination term. The serpent gets used in all kinds of ways and areas, but it means basically the same thing. The adversary, something that is being done that is outside of God's will. Now the text that we looked at last week said that the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field. And the Hebrew word there is arum. And it's a word play going back to Genesis 2.25 on Arumim. Arumim and Aram have the same roots, but the two words mean entirely different things. And it's interesting to see the comparison here. Arumim means naked and unashamed. So, Adam and Eve were naked and they were unashamed. It wasn't a state of lust that they were in. There was no sin that had come into the world. They were living in a pristine environment. Now, the serpent being shrewd, crafty, cunning, and sly is referred to as Arum. Similar, but the Hebrew play on words there gives you this idea that These two are diametrically opposed, but the same root letters appear to both of them. So we see this contrast. Adam and Eve are open and they're innocent. The devil is this sly character. He wanted, through deceit, to get the authority over the earth that he lost in his fall. Satan fell from heaven He hasn't been cast down to the earth yet entirely. He has access to heaven and he has access to the earth. But Burse also said that this creature was made by God. The serpent was made by God. And again, many want to relegate this story to mythology instead of affirming the actuality of this serpent. Nobody in the New Testament took this to be myth, and that includes Jesus. These were actual events that occurred in time and space. Now the first thing that the serpent does is he challenges the woman, and he starts by just slightly misstating God's command. just enough to cause doubt. And that's what Satan does. He does a little bit of dropping of ideas into our minds to cause us to doubt God's Word. And he says, did God say that ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? And God hadn't said that. God hadn't said they couldn't eat up any tree. The command was really clear, but Satan, one of my prophets, I like to call him the first liberal, didn't want to be tied down to a specific commandment. So he starts stretching it a little bit. Well, it could mean, you know, and he starts moving away from God's word. He didn't want to be pinned down to what God had said. It's always dangerous to alter God's Word. Always. We see this in Deuteronomy 4.2, Proverbs 30, verses 5 to 6, Revelation 22, verses 18 to 19. And I made the statement in your notes there that God will always do exactly what He says He's going to do. And it's up to us to get on His program to understand what He's doing and follow Him Now, Eve knew the commandment. She knew it either through direct communication with God or she got it from Adam. She knew what the commandment was. So she restates this really clearly to the serpent. And as she adds this penalty, lest she die. She knew it was going to happen if she violated the commandment. She was going to die. The Jewish writers in one of the Midrash's like to say that that Satan tempted her to just touch it. Just touch it! And she gave in and touched the tree, and when she found that she really didn't die by touching it, then he encouraged her to go ahead and eat it. Because just as you're not going to be harmed by touching it, you're certainly not going to be harmed by eating it. That wasn't the case. That was not the case. She added to God's commandment the possible prohibition of not touching the tree. Now the second thing that Satan does, he goes from instituting this doubt to an outright attack. And you've got to see the stages that he uses. Because this is exactly how people are going to attack the Bible. they start by imparting doubt and then the second phase is they make a direct attack on the authority of the Bible by denying it's true and this is the first lie we see in scripture the Lord Jesus in John 844 called Satan the father of lies the third stage is he goes He goes into a full denial of taking away God's authority, or at least in the mind of Eve. But he says, "...for God does know that in the day to eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Now, Satan was trying to get Eve to sin, And he was trying to let her think that she could usurp God's authority just like he wanted to in Isaiah 14. Now according to Satan, because somebody has the knowledge of good and evil, he's like God. He's one with God and nothing could be furthered from the truth. And many have thought this, including the New Agers. That's the area within different religious groups that you can see this most prominently. They think they are God. And they'll clearly state that. So Satan thinks, at least he's imparting, he knows better because he's a deceiver. That one is like God because one knows good and evil. Satan essentially accuses God of being selfish, denying Eve the opportunity to experience God-likeness, and he's got this three-point strategy. One, again, he raises doubt, directly denies God's Word by contradicting it, and then he claims that disobeying God's Word is going to result in a higher good. Genesis 3.6 says, And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight in the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. It's a perfect example of the internal temptation that the Apostle James talked about. Now, he had the role of an apostle, the Lord Jesus' brother, and he wrote about this in his first chapter of his book. The woman engaged in the same sin that we see expressed in the book of 1 John 2.16. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. So as she saw the tree was good for food, she engaged the lust of the flesh. She saw the delight to the eyes, so she engaged in the lust of the eyes. Finally, she believed that the tree would enable wisdom and power that God hadn't granted her. So she was now engaging in a pridal life. The Lord Jesus faced exactly the same temptations. The devil can only do what the devil is capable of doing. He can't do something else. When he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, it was the same thing. Telling the Lord Jesus that I will give you all the kingdoms of the world. But he couldn't. He couldn't do that and as we all know that Christ withstood the temptation of the devil and overcame him. Now Eve did eat of this fruit and the first thing she did though was she took it and by taking it she didn't die but by eating it she did die. She took the fruit and broke God's commandment sin came into the world and Satan is a liar from the beginning he brought death into this world and he has this big lie that says you can sin and you can get away with it you can't you can't sin and get away with it you may think you're getting away with it You may be able to hide, like we're going to see Adam and Eve today, hiding, but they're not really hiding. They think they're hiding, but they're not hiding from God because He sees everything. So she then gives the fruit to her husband and he eats. His sin was much larger than hers. He was supposed to be the head of the family. He was supposed to be exerting headship and instructing his wife, and he didn't do it. He defied God's word and went with her into this sin. The Bible points out that there's a major distinction between Adam's sin and Eve's sin. Eve was the one deceived, but Adam knew full well what he was doing and dove in headfirst instead of controlling his wife and not letting her sin. That's his sin, and it's a far bigger sin. He was rebelling against the authority of God's Word. He said to God, essentially, I'm just not going to do this. I'm just going to leap in there with them. We're doing this. We're going for it. They knew full well what the penalty was, and they knew exactly what they were doing. He was deceived, yes, but Adam went in headstrong first, just went ahead and did it. What they had done was they broke the Edenic Covenant. We see this in Hosea 6, 7, where Hosea states, But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant. There have they dealt treacherously against me. Meaning, God speaking in the first person, that the Edenic Covenant was broken with the fall. Now for our material today, we're continuing on with the second segment of the fall, and we see in the text of Genesis 3, verses 7 to 8, It says, "...and the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed thick leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God amongst the trees of the garden." So the result of the fall is that death and corruption enters this pristine earth that we can't imagine. It's impossible for us to understand what things were like before then. The Garden of Eden became corrupted and death began to reign over the creation. Now think through that. began to reign over the creation. Paul tells us this in Romans 5 several different times. Death began to reign over the creation. The more serious result was not just the decay that came in, that we learned a number of lessons back as entropy, which is the disorder, where things go from order to disorder. Well, entropy came in at the fall, and the pristine earth began to be decayed. But the larger issue was the spiritual death that came in. Immediately after they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened. In other words, they began to realize evil. And it wasn't just they saw evil out there. Their awareness expanded, but it wasn't what the devil had led them to believe that they were going to experience. They did not get what they thought. They thought that they were going to get this divine enlightenment. They were going to be like God. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. They got a sense of shame. Realizing that they were naked at that point in time was a change of state from a natural, wholesome relationship that they had with each other to a lustful, sinful, corrupt relationship that they brought into this world. They were ashamed. Ashamed they were. The very fountain of procreation, their genitals, now became a source of self-consciousness and shame. They had to cover themselves up. Their relationship was permanently altered. We don't think about this because we live with the way things are now. We just think it's natural to wear clothes, and it is after the fall. It is. It's normal and natural that we dress and we wear clothes and we have modesty and so on. But that's not how God created Adam and Eve to be. That is not what He created. They then had mistrust and alienation from God. Satan promised this. It's interesting how he does this. He promises wisdom. something that only God can give. We see this in the first chapter of Proverbs, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Only God can do this. Satan's promises are always false. They always fail. Disobedience of God's Word will never bring any benefits. Only grief and a lack of spiritual blessing. If you decide, I'm not going to do this or that, and it clearly teaches it in the Bible, what you're basically saying is, I don't care what God says, I want to do this myself. I don't want to do what that says, for whatever reason and whatever the concept is. You are taking it upon yourself to deny the authority of God's Word and to say, But I don't want to do that. I don't like doing that. Whatever the concept is, it doesn't matter what it is. You're taking this to mean that God's Word is not important to you in some areas. And nothing could ever be further from the truth. You're going to lose spiritual blessings. You're going to not grow in Christ. And you're going to lose that growing in sanctification, or sanctification is becoming more Christ-like, you're going to stop your growth, or stunt it severely, if you don't do what the Bible tells you to do. There's two different words for nakedness, two different spellings that are used here. The one that's used before the fall is eromim, and the one that's used after the fall is arumim. It's the same basic word with the same roots, but the word morphs to mean that there's two different meanings now, two different states, if you will, of the term nakedness. One was a wholesome, natural form or state, and the second one after the fall is not. It's filled with lost in, it's lost that healthy sense of sexuality that they had before the fall. So the first thing that they do is they sew together these large fig leaves. And fig leaves, if you haven't seen a fig leaf, it's very, very large. And they made aprons out of these things. And they wanted to cover themselves because this would be the means by which The sin nature would be transmitted from generation to generation. It was through the seed of the man. That's where the sin is transmitted from one generation to the next. That is the spiritual death that came in. Procreation is now going to beget sinful creatures. And you can't stop that. We're going to see how the Savior coming in provided for this, but you can't stop. Without a Savior, sin reigns, death reigns. David writing in Psalm 51.5 says, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now, this doesn't mean that sexual intercourse is wrong or that it's sinful. What it means is, through the process of procreation, the sin nature goes from generation to generation to generation. So, Adam and his wife hid their nakedness from each other initially, but they can't hide from God, and they tried to hide from God. Nobody can. You know, it's interesting that human beings have a tendency to think Well, let's see, if I can keep things in and my neighbor can't understand what I'm thinking, then God, therefore, doesn't know what I'm thinking either. God is another person. The Bible teaches something entirely different than that. The Bible teaches God's omniscience, that He knows everything. Before we think it, He knows what we're going to think. Don't ever, ever limit yourself. to what God thinks by what you think. In other words, don't ever think that my sphere of awareness is all that God knows, so I can hide out. That's what Adam and Eve were doing. They thought they could hide from God. They thought by disobeying God, there's no penalties. And they thought, well, I mean, it's just one little sin. I mean, you know, we just ate this fruit. So what? One little sin. It's a sin. Anything that is a departure from God's Word is a sin. And it doesn't matter why you want to do it. It's a sin. And at the very least, your growth and development is going to stop. You can't hide from God. God knows what you're thinking. And those that think that God would never know that. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't write it down or anything. Have an unenlightened view of God. The omniscience of God, or meaning that he knows everything, is a theme that is pervasive in scripture. Now I've just put a few verses down, but there are at least a hundred that speak to God's omniscience, meaning that he knows everything. And you may find it prudent to look up some of these, especially the Isaiah passages in chapter 44 and chapter 46. Isaiah speaks rather eloquently to the omniscience of God, being able to see everything and know everything. So they experienced this shame, this shame came in, went from generation to generation, And that's brought out in a whole host of areas too. Exodus 9, excuse me, Genesis 9, Exodus 20, Revelation 3, and the Bible even teaches that clothes are worn in heaven. Revelation 19, 14. But the shame that they experienced gave them hope. And we see that today. People that are ashamed of what they've done in their sin have a great chance of being redeemed. Without being ashamed, there's no chance. None whatsoever. They're hopelessly lost. We see this in the book of Revelation. Look at chapter 16 of the book of Revelation and you see these people that are scorched by these plagues and they're suffering and they're under this horrible, horrible judgment of God and instead of feeling ashamed and repenting they cry out to God in hate and anger. It's like shaking their fist at Him. They know that He caused the events of the Great Tribulation, but they treat it as if God's the enemy. There's no shame there. There's a clear distinction between somebody that experiences shame and can be redeemed and somebody that does not. There's a big, big difference. The Word of God can comfort, but it can also bring conviction of sin, and we need to be aware of that. Romans 3.20 and 2 Timothy 3.16 are prime examples. Now, God was in this garden on a daily basis, a continual basis, probably as the Shekinah Glory. Probably it was a physical manifestation of God in time and space. And before the fall, he communed with them on a daily basis. Hebrew verbs have a variety of forms. And the different verbs in Hebrew have a category of meaning indicating a kind of an action. We don't have this in English. but we have it in Hebrew. For example, the word for walking is a hit pale verb form and it means, the walking it means is a continual repetitive action. It falls in this classification of something that's constantly being done. So the Hebrew text here is saying that God was always in the garden with them in whatever form it was that he had appeared to them. And he was there in the late afternoon, which is a Hebrew term for the cool of the day, or mid-eastern time, excuse me. A mid-eastern term for the cool of the day means late afternoon, when the sun is just beginning to go down. They hear his voice, they hide from him, and the fellowship that they had with him is now just impossible. They'd broken that fellowship with God, and it could not be restored right at that time. The new relationship that they had, or the old one I should say, was gone and this new one was negative and it was an adversarial type relationship and shame, guilt, fear. They were worried about punishment and as a result they're hiding from him. And again, you can't hide from God. You can't hide from God. It's impossible. The effects of sin are punishment. Death. Whereas they had life, now they only had death. They had pleasure, now they just had pain. They had abundance. Now their work was going to just give them a meager subsistence. They were going to be hard toil, meager subsistence. They had perfect fellowship with God. Perfect. Now it was just alienation and conflict. One of the Genesis commentaries that I've appreciated is by Alan P. Ross, and he writes a nice statement here that I put into your notes, that the motifs in chapter 3, death, toil, sweat, thorns, the tree, the struggle, and the seed, all were later traced to Christ. He's the other Adam who became the curse, who sweats drops of blood in bitter agony, who wore a crown of thorns, who was hanged on a tree until he was dead, and who was placed in the dust of the earth. So we see Christ taking on in the New Testament exactly the burden that the devil had brought in and the man and the woman had allowed to happen. Now let's look at the confrontation now that God has with them, because when he confronts them, he flushes out of them a response that is interesting. Genesis 3 verses 9 to 13, the text says, And Jehovah God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and was afraid, because I was naked. And I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Has thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And Jehovah God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me and I did eat. Now look at the dynamics here. God comes to the man. He doesn't go to the woman. He comes to the man who's responsible for exerting headship in his family to adhere to the word of God. And the first thing he does is point to the woman. The first thing he does, he doesn't say, yep, I'm guilty, I did this. No. He points to her. The woman, the woman. And what does she do? The serpent, the serpent. You see, your kids do this. Right? Mine did. I probably did too. That's what happens. That's what happens. God knows exactly what happened. He's asking them a question to bring out the sin and have them admit it. He knows what they've done. You can't hide anything from God. He's not asking to find out. He wants them to admit what it is that they've done. Now this situation exists throughout scripture in a lot of places that God asks a question. He's not trying to find out the answer. He wants to bring it out of an individual to raise the individual's awareness of the situation. That's what he wants. He wants us to be aware of what we've done. So we ask these questions. But again, he already knows it. But what's interesting is not only does Adam point to his wife, but he answers a different question. He evades the answer. He says, well, he heard his voice in the garden. And then he says he was afraid. So his relationship with God is now one of fear. No longer is he fellowship with God. He's afraid of Him and not in a wholesome reverence type of fear. He's afraid of Him because he knows what he's done and he knows what God can do to him. And then he says that As an individual he was naked and he hid himself. By this time he already had that apron made of these fig leaves. So he was naked and he hid himself. He's not now. But you can see how the shame came in. The guilt. God says to him, who told you you were naked? And there wasn't any answer to this question. He didn't have one. Think through that. He sins. He says, I was naked. And God says, who told you you were naked? And Adam can't answer it. He can't say why or where he knew he was naked. It's the effect of sin. And this sin comes in when we refuse to adhere to God's Word. in whatever part of it we choose to ignore or refuse to follow. So anyway, he follows this up with a third question. He says, have you eaten of the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? God's pushing for a confession. It's like a police interrogation, you know, you see on these TV police shows. He's pushing him to admit what he did. And again, all Adam does is blame the woman. And then he blames God, the one that you gave me. So he takes it from blaming her to now he's blaming God. You know, it's as if to say, if you hadn't given me this woman, everything would just be fine. No, God's pushing him for an admission because he was guilty. He's the responsible party. And that's the natural response to sin when you're confronted with this, is to blame somebody else. Even God. There used to be a comedian on the TV, I can't remember his name right now, but he was constantly saying, not my fault, the devil made me do it. I mean, you know, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. You know, this is the nature of sin. When it's first uncovered, you just want, not me, not me. You want to put the blame somewhere else. Some like to say that the evildoer becomes the victim. In other words, oh yeah, but it wasn't my fault. It happened to me. Look what happened to me. I mean, look what happened. We've got this sin now. I mean, I didn't have anything to do with it. But God, you brought her in. You brought her in. And the Lord's just sitting there. I can only imagine what God's thinking. Now he knew this was going to happen. He knew all of this was going to happen because he set up the Redeemer before time occurred, before the creation. He knew all these things were going to happen. So then God looks over at the woman. So now he starts to question her. She wants to do the same thing. She wants to transfer her guilt and responsibility to the serpent. So she says, well the serpent beguiled me. The serpent led me astray. He duped me. He snaked me, if you will. And I did eat. She admitted responsibility. She said, yeah, I did eat. I did eat. She knows she was deceived and she shouldn't have done that. We know what happened. It really happened. This is not a myth. And it continues to happen today. And it happens in our marriages. And it's important that we understand these things so that our marriages can be what God wants them to be because of the fall. You can't change the fact that this happened. But what you can do is you can, in your marriage, the man can exert the headship that he's supposed to and his wife can be his helpmate, his counterpart, and obey God's Word, the both of them. And I put a few verses down here in some discussion for specifically the husband honoring his wife that we see in the New Testament and in the Proverbs. For example, Ephesians 5.25 says, Love your wife as Christ loved the church. Christ loved the Church enough to give His life for the Bride of Christ, the Church, the Ecclesia. And we should love our wives in the same way. We should be willing to give our life for Her. Christ's love for us does not depend on our love for Him. Think about that. He died for us knowing full well that we were sinners. He died before we loved Him and we must love Him. Now we must love Him for what He's done. So you should love your wife. You must love your wife unconditionally as He does us. The Bible says in Ephesians 5, love your wife the same way you love your body and your life. We all want to take care of our own bodies. You want to feed it, you want it to be healthy. And the Bible uses terms like this to make this really personal. You know, you want to put food in, you want to take your medicine when you give it, and so on. You want to be healthy, you want to take care of yourself, dress yourself, and so on. You quickly take care of any needs that you have. Do the same thing for your wife. Take care of her needs the same way. Whether they're financial, or physical, or emotional, or spiritual, she's got to get your best effort. Otherwise, it begins to break down. And you don't want your relationship with her to break down. This is the post-fall time now. We're not in a pristine garden anymore. We're living with the fall. Even when we've been redeemed and we're on the way to heaven, for those of us that love Christ, we still have the old man living within us. And we've got to overcome that old man. Be considerate as you live with your wife with respect. That's 1 Peter 3, 7. The Bible says in this particular command that if you neglect it, your prayers are going to be hindered. In other words, if you aren't considerate and respectful of your wife, I know we all can not be at times, but this is something that says, don't be disrespectful toward your wife. Or your prayers are going to get blocked. You're not going to be able to communicate your needs to God. And he makes it really clear. If she needs some help from you, do it. Show your love to her by being considerate. And look for ways that you are inconsiderate and try and correct them. Ask her. She'll tell you. Mine does. If I ask, he'll tell me. Sometimes I don't want to ask. And don't be harsh with your wife. It's easy to do this. Colossians 3.19. If you have harsh answers, angry looks, irritated tones, an ugly voice, it's going to affect her and your relationship. Just rejoice that she's a lady and she's not like you. And I don't mean that in a negative sense. I mean she's your counterpart. She's a precious gift that God has given you and treat her that way. If you have a disagreement, don't be harsh and angry. You can have a disagreement without being angry and ugly. Because if you do get that way, it's going to cause others, and if you're talking about her outside of the family, if you're using derogatory terms or terms that aren't very complimentary, complaining about what she does, others are going to begin to look down on you and it's going to erode your relationship. If you're using terms to describe her that are not loving and complimentary, if you're talking about your disagreements with others, you shouldn't be taking your relationship with her out into the open and to talk about this with others. It's got no place out here. And really, nobody wants to hear that because all they think is, why are you telling me this? Why are you making these negative comments about your wife, regardless of what the topic is? Don't do it. If you feel that coming on, just stop. Just don't do it. Rejoice in your wife all your life. And the proverb says, let her breath satisfy you always and be captivated with her. In other words, don't stare at other women and don't lust after other women. Be satisfied with what God has given you. You've married her. Love her and be satisfied with her. It doesn't matter what age, what size, what shape. you can find her to be the most beautiful woman in the world because God doesn't make junk and he gave you this woman to be your wife and if you do that she's gonna feel really attractive and sexy and ladylike and she's gonna experience a higher level of worth the highest level of worth that you can give her Call your wife blessed and praise her from Proverbs 31. Tell her she's special. And don't just mention physical beauty, but also compliment her for the work that she does and her other attributes. She needs to be longed for and treasured. If you do these things, your relationship will be enhanced. Honor your marriage. Keep it pure. by remaining true to your wife in every way. Hebrews 13.4. And Jesus says lustful looks are equal to adultery. If you're lusting after other women, you may as well be engaging in adultery because it has the same effect on your soul and it's the same sin. Just keep your marriage pure, and when you feel that lust coming in, turn your eyes away. Get away from it. Drum it out of your mind. You can do that. You can resist the devil, and he will flee from you. If you try and fight the devil, he's going to win. You can't fight the devil. He's smarter than you are. He's craftier, slyer. You just resist him. You just say no. In other words, don't stay in the area of temptation. Your marriage is going to get a lot of benefits if you do that. Be thankful for your wife and realize the favor you have received from God. Proverbs 18.22. Just think how lonely it would be without your wife. Adam was alone and the Bible says that it wasn't good for him. It was not good. God gave him a wife. So you've got a lifelong companion to enjoy every day. Just thank God that you have this prize that God has given you. Be one flesh with your wife in every way and enjoy this life that you have with her together, inseparable. Live your life with her and learn to experience the love you have for her like you did when you were dating. when you were first married. Now I'm speaking to the men here because this is what God spoke in the garden. He didn't go to Eve first and say, what have you done? He went to Adam, who was the head of the family and responsible for setting the tone, especially the spiritual tone in the family, and adhering to God's Word. Enjoy intimacy often You should have physical intimacy as often as you can based on whichever partner has a stronger desire. Health and scheduling and so can impact that but also spend time talking and sharing about your day and what's going on in your life. Ask about what's going on in hers. She's more important than anybody in your life except for Jesus. The hierarchy of this whole concept of headship that we looked at in 1 Corinthians 11 is that Jesus submitted to the Father, the man and woman submit to Jesus, but the man being the head of the family gets submitted to by his wife and he has to manage that relationship properly. If he doesn't do it, It's going to have defects and fall apart. Your wife is more important than anybody except for the Lord Jesus. Our marriages are the primary relationship during our time on earth. So be as one, cleaving together as we've talked about in these early verses in Genesis. Cleaving together as one. That's what God intended us to be. Amen? Let's pray.