Dale Partridge - Genesis 3_17-19 - Feminism, Weak Leadership & the Curse on Work

00:00:00.000 Well, saints, we continue our journey through what I believe is a very pivotal passage of

00:00:09.320 Scripture, Genesis chapter 3. I want to remind you, just real quick, that without this chapter,

00:00:15.960 the rest of the Bible cannot be properly understood. This chapter is so incredibly

00:00:21.240 important to the rest of the Scriptures, I would say life cannot be even understood.

00:00:27.200 In this chapter, we learn who our enemy is. We learn what sin is. We learn why pain exists.

00:00:36.840 We learn why people die. I mean, these are fundamental questions, fundamental realities

00:00:43.340 that the vast majority of humanity has discussed. We also learn of God's holiness. We learn of his

00:00:50.240 love, his justice. But most importantly, we learn that there is a promised Messiah. We see the very

00:00:58.160 first messianic prophecy in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. And we know that he will come and has

00:01:05.780 come and crushed the serpent's head to restore humanity's relationship with God. Now, if you've

00:01:12.660 been with us these past several weeks, you know that we are in part three of a three-part series

00:01:17.400 on God's curse on the serpent and judgment on the sexes.

00:01:22.140 Now, the reason I say that is because God doesn't actually judge or God doesn't actually curse Adam and Eve.

00:01:27.400 We often use that language, but in the text, you only see God cursing the serpent

00:01:31.360 and you see God cursing the ground, but you do not see God cursing Adam and Eve.

00:01:37.580 Now, the first sermon two weeks ago examined God's curse on Satan.

00:01:45.820 And I titled that sermon, The Gospel Before the Gospel. 0.54

00:01:48.780 The second sermon, which was last week, was addressing the judgment upon the woman,

00:01:54.500 which I titled, The Fall, Feminism, and the Fight for Order. 0.73

00:01:58.280 Now, we saw the disorder between the sexes and how big of a deal that is 0.87

00:02:03.580 and how big of a deal it has become all throughout time, 0.62

00:02:08.000 this disorder in marital and masculine and feminine relationships.

00:02:13.580 And so we also saw how Christianity is the only hope to restore order in the world. 0.99

00:02:18.020 The atheists aren't going to do it. 1.00

00:02:19.560 The Hindus aren't going to do it. 1.00

00:02:20.940 The Muslims aren't going to do it.

00:02:22.240 The liberals aren't going to do it.

00:02:23.460 And the Republicans are not going to do it.

00:02:25.720 Christianity is the only tool that can restore order in America.

00:02:31.880 Now we finally get to turn to God's judgment on Adam. 0.80

00:02:38.900 Which, if you know anything about Hebrew poetry, we also know that there's an emphasis on the last thing.

00:02:46.180 Now, there's a lot more complexity going on, but I'm going to say that this is the most important section

00:02:51.820 that we're going to be talking about in this section around the curse on the serpent and the judgment on the sexes.

00:02:58.640 We're going to see the weight of Adam's responsibility, the severity of his punishment,

00:03:04.460 and the consequences that have extended way beyond Adam, even in to our own life.

00:03:11.160 So if you look at verse 17 with me, it says,

00:03:15.160 And Adam, he said,

00:03:18.320 Because you have listened to the voice of your wife

00:03:20.640 and have eaten of the tree of which I have commanded you not to eat. 0.77

00:03:26.540 That's a stop right there.

00:03:29.140 Now, it's important to note that when God speaks to Adam,

00:03:33.140 He's not speaking to him merely individually, but he's speaking to him also federally, federally, as a representative of humanity.

00:03:45.940 See, Adam is the head. He is the seed of the entire human race.

00:03:52.280 All people, even Eve, right, come from Adam.

00:03:56.400 In fact, if you think about it for a second, genetically, you were there when Adam sinned.

00:04:03.820 In Adam, you were there when Adam sinned.

00:04:08.540 Everybody that extends in this world comes from Adam.

00:04:13.660 We see this truth in Romans 5.12.

00:04:15.560 It says, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin.

00:04:22.560 And so death spread to all men because all had sinned.

00:04:28.320 And you could kind of imply in Adam.

00:04:31.400 All have sinned in Adam.

00:04:34.000 Again, 1 Corinthians 15.22 says,

00:04:36.660 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

00:04:45.880 This, of course, is the doctrine or the foundation for the doctrine of original sin.

00:04:50.760 The idea that we are born with the original sin of Adam, even before we have committed acts of sin, we are born in sin.

00:05:00.980 Now, this is all very important because according to Scripture, we have two federal heads.

00:05:06.100 We have two representatives before humanity.

00:05:08.900 We have Adam and the old humanity, and we have Christ, the second Adam, the new humanity.

00:05:17.580 And this is very important.

00:05:19.180 First Corinthians 1545, it says the first man, Adam, became a living being and the last Adam became a life giving spirit.

00:05:30.240 It goes on to say the first man was from the earth, a man of dust.

00:05:34.660 The second man is from heaven. 0.82

00:05:38.200 So if you're born of Adam, you will die and return to the dust forever.

00:05:45.200 If you're born of Christ, you will never die and go to heaven.

00:05:49.180 I know there's complexities there with where our bodies go, et cetera, et cetera.

00:05:53.400 But you get what I'm saying is that this gives context to why Jesus spoke the way he did during his earthly ministry.

00:06:02.200 I'm going to give you a few verses.

00:06:03.980 He says, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

00:06:10.480 Again, it's this death and life motif that we see constantly.

00:06:14.040 You're dead in Adam.

00:06:15.100 You're alive in Christ. 0.57

00:06:16.760 You're born in Adam.

00:06:17.860 you must be born again in Christ.

00:06:20.280 He goes on to say,

00:06:21.300 he does not,

00:06:22.120 this person who hears my word

00:06:23.460 and believes in me

00:06:24.120 has eternal life.

00:06:25.140 It says,

00:06:25.620 he does not come into judgment

00:06:27.140 for his sin,

00:06:29.440 but has passed from death to life.

00:06:33.200 That's John 5, 24.

00:06:34.720 1 John 5, 11 through 12,

00:06:36.200 it says,

00:06:36.920 and this is the testimony

00:06:38.440 that God gave us eternal life

00:06:41.020 and this life is in his son.

00:06:44.940 Whoever has the son has life.

00:06:47.700 Whoever does not have the Son does not have life.

00:06:52.300 Everybody's born in Adam.

00:06:54.440 If you're not reborn in Christ, you do not have life.

00:06:59.440 Adam was given life, and he's a man from the ground.

00:07:03.540 Christ, born of a virgin of the Holy Spirit, is a man from heaven.

00:07:08.040 Being in Christ makes you heavenly.

00:07:10.420 Being of Adam makes you earthly. 0.52

00:07:11.840 There's this constant motif and theme throughout Scripture that we must see here. 0.93

00:07:17.960 Now, I want you to notice that God begins verse 17 by stating the grounds, the cause.

00:07:25.460 It's called a causal clause.

00:07:27.580 The word because is a causal clause.

00:07:31.060 And he starts this out with a causal clause in verse 17.

00:07:35.580 because you have listened to the voice of your wife and so that is a coordinating conjunction

00:07:45.100 and uh you did not obey the commandment of god so he gives these two reasons these two causes

00:07:52.640 and a coordinating conjunction means that there's their equal weight and value and you put the and

00:07:57.520 between them it's not showing superiority it's actually just showing both of them and so for

00:08:02.820 two reasons, two reasons we have here. One

00:08:06.880 is because Adam obeyed or listened to the voice of his wife

00:08:10.580 and two, because he did not follow the commandment of God.

00:08:16.160 This is very fascinating.

00:08:18.640 Very fascinating. The judgment on Adam is not only because Adam ate from the tree, but

00:08:22.740 because he also listened to his wife.

00:08:27.780 Now this sin of

00:08:30.300 listening to your wife has certainly been a masculine sin 0.97

00:08:34.020 present in every generation, but it happens to become

00:08:37.680 very prevalent in recent generations.

00:08:44.000 When it comes to obeying God 0.97

00:08:46.180 or pleasing your wife, men must learn to obey 0.86

00:08:49.980 God. Every man

00:08:53.480 wants to go, oh yeah, certainly. The reality

00:08:58.140 is that has not been true for about the last century.

00:09:05.500 Now, as I mentioned in my last sermon, feminism 1.00

00:09:07.580 is really the enculturation of the fall for women. 1.00

00:09:13.340 That your desire will be contrary to your husband, yet he will rule over you. 0.93

00:09:17.760 This disorder of the sexes has come in through first wave, second wave, 1.00

00:09:21.800 and third wave feminism over the last hundred years. 1.00

00:09:25.280 It has become essentially the institutionalization of the reversal of God's order we have seen on display, especially here in America.

00:09:37.260 As a result, we birthed a series of what I would call effeminate phrases. 0.58

00:09:43.900 Now, remember, you can be feminine, and that is a good thing if you're a woman. 0.90

00:09:48.500 Now, if you're a man acting like a woman, that is called effeminate. 0.89

00:09:55.280 And that is not good. It is a perversion of your masculinity. 1.00

00:09:58.820 And we have birthed out of this culture a handful of effeminate phrases.

00:10:05.060 And I'm going to share them because many of you have heard them already.

00:10:09.480 Happy wife, happy life. An effeminate phrase.

00:10:14.160 It's saying, oh, you know what? The priority of my wife is the king and the ruler of how I ought to rule this household.

00:10:23.100 She is ultimately in control. 0.98

00:10:25.720 Men say jokingly, I have to check in with the boss.

00:10:30.480 Again, a very effeminate phrase. 0.99

00:10:33.920 Or, quote, she wears the pants in the family. 0.92

00:10:37.340 We've all heard this phrase.

00:10:38.660 Or, you know what, my wife said no.

00:10:41.480 Right?

00:10:42.040 Or, I just do what she tells me to do.

00:10:45.320 Or, the recent one, he's the head, but I'm the neck.

00:10:50.500 Okay?

00:10:50.800 Not only are these what I would call emasculating phrases, but they are sinful statements of disorder and chaos.

00:11:02.220 They are expressions of marital disorder.

00:11:06.600 Now, how do we move from what I think, if you look back throughout history, I think there really was a genuinely heavy-handed misogyny in the 1800s and early 1900s.

00:11:17.260 That was real.

00:11:18.200 There was a lot of actual intense men that were not tempered by the Holy Spirit, right?

00:11:25.380 So you've got to understand that patriarchy can be good, it can also be bad.

00:11:32.240 But matriarchy is always bad, according to the Bible, okay?

00:11:35.900 So patriarchy can be good, and it can be bad.

00:11:39.660 If you're not following the ultimate patriarch, Jesus Christ, then your patriarchy will be bad.

00:11:44.540 But if you're following Christ, your patriarchy will be good. 1.00

00:11:48.200 But the thing that's not good is matriarchy, where mom is essentially ruling the household over the men. 1.00

00:11:56.660 So how do we go from the heavy handedness of the early 1900s to the kind of limp wristedness of, say, the 1980s? 1.00

00:12:06.460 What happened there? What happened over that like 80 year period?

00:12:11.060 It's very fascinating to understand our own history, our parents, our grandparents and what went on there.

00:12:16.800 I believe as women rose in social power, men grew afraid of them.

00:12:27.200 And I don't know if you understand this, but pastors grew afraid of women.

00:12:34.440 In fact, I believe women were basically the unshepherded community of the church for about 75 years.

00:12:41.340 Because men were afraid to speak to them, because they might be mansplaining. 0.98

00:12:44.740 and so it was one of these things that women essentially were never corrected in the vast

00:12:51.380 majority of churches so they rose into social power women became influential men grew afraid

00:12:58.700 of them and instead of holding their ground they they chased the the feminine approval now why did 0.99

00:13:05.960 they do this well typically for sex typically because they they didn't want their wives to 0.99

00:13:10.540 withhold sex from their husbands. That's a real thing. And so it was a form of manipulation. So 0.72

00:13:16.540 they parroted these extremely stupid slogans as social signals to show how they accepted the 1.00

00:13:23.080 matriarchy. That's what happened. That's what happened. They started parroting these phrases 1.00

00:13:29.320 to show kind of social signals as, hey, you know what? I'm kind of, I'm kind of with this whole

00:13:34.940 feminism thing. I'm with that. The truth is, these men were cowards. It became so 1.00

00:13:41.860 enculturated, these phrases, that I heard them all the time as a kid. All the time. Like

00:13:47.020 Adam, they were unwilling to tell their wives no. Think about how much different it would

00:13:51.780 be if Adam says, no, sorry, not going to eat that, not going to do that. On the other hand,

00:14:02.600 feminism has become the perfect excuse for men to baptize their laziness so we got the other side

00:14:09.380 of the coin men the the the default sin of men is passivity and laziness and when men don't lead 0.96

00:14:18.040 you know what happens women step up it's a curse upon a man to be such an effeminate and emasculated 0.75

00:14:26.520 leader that you don't take your family to church you don't shepherd your family and your wife does

00:14:32.080 it for you. Do you remember the Norman Rockwell painting that I talked about a few weeks ago?

00:14:35.960 It shows the man hiding in the chair and his wife

00:14:40.040 caravanning the kids to church. And he's there with the

00:14:43.980 newspaper. Classic 1960s,

00:14:47.920 1970s men.

00:14:53.060 And so they avoided leadership.

00:14:57.120 And they pretended to be virtuous while doing it. 1.00

00:14:59.840 now ultimately feminism is men's fault yes i do believe that women have fault they have sin 1.00

00:15:07.520 they need to repent there's lots of issues going on with the women and they need to deal with that

00:15:12.320 but the reality is just structurally if you just look at the scriptures and god puts the 0.98

00:15:16.620 responsibility on the weight of the men that essentially feminism is the men's fault and

00:15:23.620 what i mean by that is this weak men abandon their god-given roles as heads of household 0.93

00:15:28.800 and they didn't do a great job.

00:15:31.740 They didn't correct and lead their wives

00:15:33.740 and they produced wives and daughters 0.95

00:15:36.160 who had no biblical framework

00:15:38.460 for marital and family order. 1.00

00:15:42.000 So you want to know why we had the feminist movement 1.00

00:15:44.460 in the 1960s? 0.68

00:15:45.760 It's because the fathers of the 1950s

00:15:48.280 were terrible fathers.

00:15:51.540 That's what happened.

00:15:52.940 If the 1960s had one word to describe it,

00:15:56.260 it is rebellion. 0.86

00:15:58.800 And the fruit of that rebellion goes back to the responsibility of the men of those children, those boomers. 0.83

00:16:06.980 And they were not great. 0.79

00:16:09.660 Now you go, yeah, well, there's a variety of reasons.

00:16:12.300 They were war-torn from 1938 to 1945, traumatized from World War II.

00:16:18.860 They had the issues going on with the post-Depression era.

00:16:22.320 Yeah, there was a lot of things going on.

00:16:24.760 But the reality is this.

00:16:26.440 men are ultimately responsible in the same way that christ took responsibility for his bride

00:16:35.040 the church men ought to take responsibility for their wives and children

00:16:39.660 now by god's grace i really do believe this is beginning to turn i think we've had so much chaos

00:16:47.220 between the sexes the disorder is disorienting it's frustrating young men can't find wives

00:16:54.880 Young wives can't find husbands. 0.95

00:16:59.580 People are frustrated with the chaos. 1.00

00:17:03.080 The gender pronoun garbage is annoying and frustrating. 1.00

00:17:07.160 The rainbow Ramadan stuff that happens in June. 1.00

00:17:09.680 It's all very frustrating. 1.00

00:17:12.060 And we're getting mad, angry.

00:17:14.200 And the next generation is rising up and is preaching the truth and is going to church and is looking for traditionalism and biblical orthodoxy.

00:17:23.280 It's a great and godly thing.

00:17:24.880 now i want to get back to our text but we come to this physical judgments we've shifted from this

00:17:32.440 like sin that is marked so many men you've listened to the voice of your wife and you've

00:17:41.200 disobeyed me uh this is so you you can look at that one sin and it's just a trail of destruction

00:17:50.500 throughout history whenever it occurs.

00:17:53.280 But then God shifts back into this discussion

00:17:57.120 around the actual curse on the ground

00:17:59.920 and how it affects Adam.

00:18:05.020 These are the tangible effects or consequences

00:18:08.560 from Adam's sin.

00:18:10.000 In these three verses right here,

00:18:12.560 half of 17, 18, and 19,

00:18:16.360 there are arguably seven dimensions

00:18:17.920 of the effects of Adam's fall.

00:18:20.500 Now, I'm not going to walk through each one of them, but I want you to just know that they're there.

00:18:25.180 And I want you to see a reoccurring theme.

00:18:28.480 I've been pointing out this idea of poetic justice for about three weeks now.

00:18:32.560 Hopefully you're starting to see it.

00:18:33.940 God is a God of poetic justice.

00:18:37.900 To the serpent, we saw God essentially said,

00:18:43.420 You use the woman to bring about death?

00:18:46.380 Great. I'll use the woman to bring about your death. 1.00

00:18:50.500 OK, we know that we saw to Eve, God said, oh, since you reached for rule and you wanted your husband to follow you. 1.00

00:19:03.760 Now I will give you a desire to rule your husband, but he will rule over you again.

00:19:07.920 It's poetic justice. OK, now in the next few verses, God does it again.

00:19:17.100 And he does it again here with Adam.

00:19:21.420 In effect, he says this,

00:19:26.120 Because you would not obey me regarding what you may or may not eat,

00:19:32.000 eating itself will now become painful and difficult for you.

00:19:38.480 God is a God of poetic justice.

00:19:41.380 You want to disobey around eating?

00:19:44.400 Great.

00:19:45.500 Eating will become painful now.

00:19:47.280 in fact the word eat as we're going to see appears three times in the next few verses

00:19:54.280 showing that the very area where adam rebelled will now be the very area where adam suffers

00:20:01.580 god is a god of poetic justice i remember when i was a kid my friend and i got caught smoking

00:20:10.900 cigarettes. And his dad

00:20:14.340 made him smoke five cigarettes back to back.

00:20:20.080 And I was there. He was cautious

00:20:22.980 to not make me do that because he didn't know what my dad would say. But I watched my friends smoke these

00:20:26.860 five cigarettes and get very sick. And it was poetic

00:20:30.980 justice. Oh, you like cigarettes, do you? Here, here's

00:20:35.000 five of them. Now, I'm not saying

00:20:38.980 that we always apply discipline that way,

00:20:40.740 but I am saying that when we can do poetic justice

00:20:45.200 with integrity, we should.

00:20:47.580 We should follow God's design for poetic justice,

00:20:51.880 especially as parents, especially as a state.

00:20:55.780 We should do that too, but why?

00:21:00.680 Why should we learn something here

00:21:03.620 from the way that God disciplines the serpent, Eve, and Adam?

00:21:10.320 Well, let me tell you.

00:21:11.820 Because poetic justice returns to the sinner a reflection of his own sin.

00:21:17.760 It returns to the sinner a reflection of his own sin.

00:21:21.740 It makes the sinner taste the bitter fruit of what they have done.

00:21:26.540 God does that all throughout Scripture. 1.00

00:21:29.200 You're going to start noticing that.

00:21:30.920 I'm going to give you a couple examples.

00:21:32.840 You know, if your child steals a toy, now what should you do?

00:21:36.740 Well, I think you should say, well, you stole the toy.

00:21:39.580 Now you have to work to buy toys for children who have no toys.

00:21:43.900 That's poetic justice.

00:21:45.240 That's a great way to implement this idea.

00:21:48.320 If your child refuses to clean the room, okay, now you get to clean the room of not only your room, but also your siblings' rooms.

00:21:55.900 It's reflecting that upon itself.

00:21:59.560 It's giving consequences that directly touch the area of disobedience.

00:22:07.440 Now, ultimately, we don't want to allow our punishments to be completely disconnected from the sin.

00:22:12.460 That's what the state does.

00:22:14.080 The state does that.

00:22:15.780 They completely disconnect the punishment from the sin.

00:22:20.800 Murder, you go to jail.

00:22:23.880 Theft, you go to jail.

00:22:26.300 Fraud, you go to jail.

00:22:28.960 That's the answer, right?

00:22:30.380 You go to jail.

00:22:31.440 Well, that's not anything.

00:22:32.840 One, the Bible doesn't even speak of prisons or jail.

00:22:36.080 It's a completely unbiblical system.

00:22:38.980 What does the Bible say?

00:22:40.000 God says, murder, an eye for an eye.

00:22:44.480 Theft, restitution with interest.

00:22:48.940 Fraud, oh.

00:22:51.180 You get to receive the penalty that you tried to inflict on someone else. 0.95

00:22:55.660 I remember watching a case, a court case, of a young woman who said that a young man had raped her.

00:23:10.760 Now, this young man was a D1 sports athlete in football.

00:23:16.560 And he had a full opportunity to go play professional football and lost that contract.

00:23:22.040 And this woman eventually came out and said, I lied about the whole thing.

00:23:29.960 Well, what should happen to her, according to biblical justice, is that she should get the full consequence of what it would be had he actually raped her.

00:23:41.460 Okay, is the prison sentence 30 years? 0.83

00:23:44.520 Okay, now you get 30 years for your fraud.

00:23:48.960 That's poetic justice.

00:23:50.940 It's a good and godly thing.

00:23:53.020 And we should learn how to implement it into our discipline.

00:24:00.760 And we're going to see this actually how God does this.

00:24:03.080 He says, cursed is the ground because of you.

00:24:06.760 In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. 0.93

00:24:11.140 So as I mentioned last week, you cannot separate Adam from the Adama.

00:24:14.320 The Adama is the dust. 0.94

00:24:15.940 Adam is made of dust. 0.69

00:24:17.480 We are made of dust.

00:24:18.760 They are the same material.

00:24:19.760 Man will return back to dust, which is the same material.

00:24:22.780 So in a sense, Adam's fall or in Adam's fall is Eve's fall.

00:24:27.160 In Adam's fall is creation's fall.

00:24:31.220 Romans 8, 20 through 22 says,

00:24:33.720 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.

00:24:41.120 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together until now.

00:24:46.240 It's waiting.

00:24:47.860 Waiting to be released from the curse that was brought upon it via Adam.

00:24:53.400 Now again, I want you to notice how the text references pain.

00:24:56.800 Pain.

00:24:58.980 It says in the garden.

00:25:01.120 Well, I'll say this.

00:25:02.320 In the garden, fruit and food was easy.

00:25:09.560 It was all there.

00:25:10.780 It was all cultivated.

00:25:11.660 Just grab and eat.

00:25:16.340 But now God says that gathering food to eat will be painful.

00:25:23.640 It'll be painful.

00:25:24.640 And honestly, this generation is like totally disconnected from the pain of food.

00:25:30.500 But if you just went back like 150 years, you start to really see, you know,

00:25:37.620 you get an image of a man literally crying in the field with dirt in his hands because it hasn't rained.

00:25:44.180 because he knows his family might die.

00:25:50.960 Gathering food will be painful.

00:25:56.360 We know that pain is a reminder of sin, right?

00:25:58.440 Every time we have pain, it's like, ugh, sin.

00:26:02.440 If you hate pain, hate sin.

00:26:04.460 If you hate death, hate sin.

00:26:06.140 It is the cause of those two things.

00:26:09.040 The text continues to speak of the land saying,

00:26:11.240 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you

00:26:15.040 and you shall eat the plants of the field.

00:26:18.800 Now if you've ever had a thorn on your foot, you can thank Adam for that.

00:26:22.380 I've had a thorn on my foot many times, or my hand.

00:26:25.660 You know, the poison that comes from it stings for an hour after that.

00:26:30.660 I think it was Charles Spurgeon who says,

00:26:32.100 you can thank God for the rose, but you can thank Adam for its thorns.

00:26:37.260 In Oregon, I used to meticulously care for our grass.

00:26:40.500 I loved caring for the grass.

00:26:42.180 I would aerate it, and I would dethatch it, and I would fertilize it.

00:26:47.280 I would even put sand so we wouldn't have any certain weird depressions in the grass.

00:26:52.040 And every year, my enemy was weeds.

00:26:55.660 I would go after the crabgrass and the clover,

00:26:59.160 and it was extremely frustrating at a very small level,

00:27:03.260 but I cared about that grass.

00:27:04.820 Now, every gardener and landscaper and farmer knows the frustrating reality of weeds.

00:27:14.640 My kids know the frustrating reality of weeds because we pull them all the time at our house.

00:27:20.760 Every gardener understands this.

00:27:23.640 In fact, we have now polluted the earth with immeasurable toxins trying to kill these weeds and to avoid this curse.

00:27:32.360 there's a lot of people sick today

00:27:36.080 because of the desire to kill weeds

00:27:40.080 has now given us cancer

00:27:42.400 has now given us diseases

00:27:44.840 the text continues saying in verse 19

00:27:49.460 by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread

00:27:52.160 till you return to the ground

00:27:55.340 for out of it you were taken

00:27:58.640 For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

00:28:04.600 I think of the famous interview with R.C. Sproul.

00:28:11.520 And someone asks him a question and kind of elevates man.

00:28:17.200 And he responds and he says, we are dirt that disobeys. 0.99

00:28:22.180 And I think it's true.

00:28:23.460 We have such a high view of each other, right?

00:28:26.440 A high view of ourselves.

00:28:27.560 We are dust that disobeys.

00:28:31.800 Now, to be clear, work itself is not a result of the fall.

00:28:36.120 Work is good.

00:28:37.640 We were called to cultivate the garden before the fall.

00:28:40.400 But work that was once joyful is now burdened with stress and difficulty.

00:28:48.700 That's just the reality of it.

00:28:50.100 And as we remember, God struck the woman in the area her identity was tied to. 0.89

00:28:57.400 Childbearing, poetic justice, right?

00:29:00.520 And he now strikes the man in the area where his identity is tied to, physical labor. 0.98

00:29:08.720 Oh, ladies, you're going to be caring for babies your whole life?

00:29:11.280 It's going to be hard. 1.00

00:29:12.860 Oh, men, you're going to be providing food for your family?

00:29:16.200 It's going to be hard.

00:29:17.200 Again, right here we see just the fundamentals of what it means to be a man and a woman right there. 0.68

00:29:24.040 in our very weird world where women are in trying to be providers and men are trying to be stay-at-home

00:29:31.000 dads it's super weird doesn't have to be it's been normal it's explained right here in genesis

00:29:36.800 chapter 3 so essentially what god is saying is this eating will now be exhausting eating will

00:29:49.920 now be exhausting. Before the fall, we lived to eat. Think about this. Before the fall, we lived

00:29:57.880 to enjoy the garden and eat. After the fall, we now eat to live. It's a total shift around food.

00:30:08.860 Spiritually, essentially, after the fall, we're dead. And physically, God sustains us through

00:30:16.800 the very first time this word is mentioned in scripture is here in Genesis 3

00:30:21.360 bread, bread, physically

00:30:25.080 we are sustained by bread and you need to

00:30:29.400 catch that word because it's a very important word throughout the Bible

00:30:33.440 bread, we talk about bread more than we talk about

00:30:37.600 almost some of the most crazy topics you would think about

00:30:41.400 there's more instances talking about bread than that thing

00:30:44.780 we know now why jesus essentially jesus is the manna he talks about bread but jesus talks about

00:30:56.440 it he says man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of god

00:31:03.220 it's also why jesus says i am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger

00:31:09.480 Well, again, you've got to see that Jesus is thinking about Genesis 3.

00:31:14.040 He's going, oh, you're under the curse.

00:31:17.140 It's exhausting for you to eat, isn't it?

00:31:20.300 I know you are hungry all the time.

00:31:24.900 I am the bread of life.

00:31:26.180 Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.

00:31:28.180 That's a very appealing statement to a society that grows their own food.

00:31:34.160 Again, we're in a society where we're like, you've never missed a meal. 0.99

00:31:37.720 Homeless people don't miss meals. 1.00

00:31:39.700 Okay?

00:31:40.060 It's just, we have no framework to understand the absolute difficulty it is to grow your own food and sustain a family of eight on it.

00:31:53.820 And it's why later he adds in John 6,

00:31:56.700 I am the living bread that comes down from heaven.

00:31:59.040 If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

00:32:01.880 And the bread that I will give you for the life of the world is my flesh.

00:32:10.420 So this very first instance of Genesis 3 mentioning bread,

00:32:15.160 it's a callback throughout the Old Testament and through Jesus' ministry over and over again.

00:32:23.620 It points us from the curse in Eden and the need, the now need for bread,

00:32:28.740 to the redemption of Christ, who is the true and living bread.

00:32:35.620 And then God gives Adam a timeline.

00:32:40.760 A timeline.

00:32:42.060 Now it's a friendly way to say it.

00:32:44.060 The reality is, is he gives him a death sentence.

00:32:49.000 So he starts off with, hey, work's going to be hard. 0.99

00:32:52.080 By the way, you're going to die.

00:32:55.640 Before the fall, Adam would have lived forever,

00:32:57.860 But now God declares that this painful struggle to eat will continue until he returns to the ground.

00:33:09.940 Now, the thing is, don't disconnect this from you.

00:33:14.420 This is to you as well.

00:33:16.500 You are going to toil in survival to eat until you return to the ground.

00:33:24.760 You. That's what you do.

00:33:27.860 All of life is trying to earn enough money to get bread and survive until you return to the ground.

00:33:40.940 Now, we cover it up with a life of denial and, you know, make life about all these other things.

00:33:47.180 And that's good because God wants us to live godly lives for him.

00:33:50.620 But that's really at a crass level.

00:33:56.500 what life is. Ecclesiastes

00:33:59.440 12.7 says of those who die

00:34:01.260 it says, and the dust returns to the earth

00:34:03.200 as it was, and the spirit returns to God

00:34:05.200 who gave it.

00:34:10.260 But there's a

00:34:11.180 real magnificence

00:34:13.020 of this text that I did

00:34:15.120 not catch until I studied it.

00:34:19.120 God takes

00:34:20.200 the very curse

00:34:22.280 pronounced upon Adam

00:34:24.500 This whole situation that we're reading here in 17 through 19, and he lays it upon Christ.

00:34:34.200 Adam's suffering becomes the suffering of the suffering servant.

00:34:41.060 The sweat that marked Adam's agony becomes sweat of drops of blood on Jesus' face.

00:34:54.500 As he is in Gethsemane.

00:34:56.960 The thorns that sprang from Adam's cursed ground become the thorns woven into Christ's crown.

00:35:07.480 Adam's death by means of a tree becomes Christ's death on a tree. 0.60

00:35:17.260 and Adam's return to dust

00:35:20.920 becomes Christ being laid in the dust for us

00:35:25.040 Psalm 22 15 says prophetically of Christ

00:35:30.200 this is essentially the words of Christ in the Old Testament

00:35:34.520 it says my strength is dried up like a sun-baked clay

00:35:37.400 and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth

00:35:39.960 you lay me in the dust of death

00:35:42.340 Galatians 3 13 says

00:35:47.580 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

00:35:53.280 For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

00:35:59.680 And so ultimately what we see in the gospel is what happened to the first Adam is redeemed in the second Adam.

00:36:09.040 Jesus essentially steps fully into the curse and he absorbs it all.

00:36:14.820 The work, the suffering, the sweating, the thorns, the death, all of it.

00:36:23.620 Christ takes on all of these things on behalf of his people.

00:36:29.120 And not only that, he fulfills the demands of the fall.

00:36:36.360 And he imputes his righteousness to us.

00:36:39.360 it is an incredible story of redemption truly we are redeemed in christ and it is something that

00:36:48.660 we shouldn't ever forget amen let's pray father we thank you lord for this truth for these words

00:36:55.100 for the beautiful connection of the first and second adam lord we ask that you'd help us to

00:37:00.660 understand this in a more deeper level or that you would give us these truths that we might

00:37:04.600 worship you more greatly. We pray for all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Dale Partridge - November 26, 2025

Genesis 3_17-19 - Feminism, Weak Leadership & the Curse on Work

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