Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Very good to see you all here for our Sunday night service.
Find your seats, please. Second hymnal and go to hymn number 209.
We'll begin this evening hymn number 209.
Sunshine in my soul hymn number 209 there is sunshine in my soul today
Let's sing it out on that first verse together now hymn number 209 sing it out
There is sunshine in my soul today
For more
shine, blessed sunshine, where the peaceful, happy moments roll, where Jesus shows this
fire with faith, there is sunshine in my soul, there is music in my soul today,
There is sunshine in my soul
There is springtime in my soul today
For when the Lord is near
The dove of peace sings in my heart
The flowers of grace appear
Mother sunshine, blessed sunshine
When the peaceful past
There is sunshine in my soul, There is gladness in my soul today,
And hope and praise and love.
Four blessings when she gets me down, Four joys laid up above.
Mother sunshine, blessed sunshine, The peaceful happy moments roll.
There is a show, there's a sire, we praise the spirit such on in my soul.
Man, good start to our singing this evening.
We're going to go before Lauren has the blessing on the service, so I'll ask for the Ian Dolphy,
good ladies and gentlemen, please.
Good evening, Father, thank you for this opportunity to gather here today to hear your word preached
and sing praises unto you, Lord, I just pray that you help us to be hearers of the word
and doers as well and to lift up our voices and praise and glory to you.
And then back a few pages, number 200, him number 200.
He's a wonderful savior to me, him number 200.
I was lost in sin, but Jesus rescued me.
He's a wonderful savior to me.
Let's take it out on that first now, 200.
I was lost in sin, but Jesus rest with me, He's a wonderful Savior to me.
I was found by fear, but Jesus sent me free, He's a wonderful Savior to me.
For He's a wonderful Savior to me.
He's a wonderful Savior to me.
I was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in.
He's a wonderful Savior to me.
He's a friend, so true, so patient, and so kind.
He's a wonderful Savior to me.
Everything I need, I always find.
He's a wonderful Savior to me.
I was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in.
He's a wonderful Savior to me.
I was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in.
He is always clear to comfort and to cheer.
He's a wonderful Savior to me.
He is always clear to comfort and to cheer.
Jesus, the bein', he's a wonderful Savior.
He's a wonderful Savior to me
Mine was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in
He's a wonderful Savior to me
All right, this time we'll go through our announcements
together, if you don't have a bulletin,
slip up your hand nice and high, we'll get to you with one.
On the inside, we have our service time.
Sunday mornings at 10.30 is our preaching service.
Sunday nights at six, Wednesday nights at seven
is our Bible study.
This week will be in Psalm 79.
We've got the soul winning times listed there below
as well as salvation and baptisms.
Next Sunday morning, we will have the donuts
before the service in honor of all the birthdays
and anniversaries in the month of May.
But there's still one more installment.
If you didn't go today, you can sign up for next Sunday, May 4th,
but you got to do so right away, please.
Do it in the church Facebook group or by email to the church
and be sure to include the relevant details.
And then this Tuesday, just two days from now,
we're going to have the church roller skating night.
It's a zero charge to show up 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. this Tuesday night.
and make sure you go to the correct location there.
The address is given.
The five o'clock soul winning will be canceled that day.
Speaking of soul winning, also this Friday
is another one of those first Friday events
organized by Brother Steve Tilson.
I know many of you have participated in the past
and so you can get with Brother Steve Tilson
for the details if you wanna repeat
or if you wanna jump in for the first time
and participate in the first Friday soul winning event.
On the back, we've got the expectant ladies listed so you can pray for them to have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery.
A couple other friendly reminders there.
KJV conference coming up in just a few weeks in the Portland, Oregon area, Vancouver, Washington area.
And then we've got May 25th.
Pastor Dylan Oz is gonna be preaching here.
He's a pastor at Anchor Baptist Church in Oklahoma City.
He's gonna be preaching Sunday morning
and Sunday night that day.
And that is about it for announcements.
Let's go ahead and tally up our soul winning
from the past few days.
So going back to Thursday,
anything to report from Thursday?
Okay.
Got it.
Okay, and then what about Friday anything from Friday? Okay?
Got it, okay, and then Saturday
Okay, got it
Okay, oh
There we go
Alright, and then today Sunday
Alright gotcha
Brother Ian okay 11 for the main group with brother Ian okay gotcha gotcha gotcha
All right, very good.
Keep up the great work on soul winning.
Oh yeah, one other thing
that we were talking about this morning,
there's gonna be a thing on Father's Day weekend in June,
a soul winning slash hiking church activity.
So we're gonna get you more details as it gets closer,
but you can start thinking about it now.
Basically the idea is to go up there on Friday morning
to Flagstaff and basically kind of leave late morning.
and then go up to Flagstaff, have lunch and then do like a soul winning marathon in Flagstaff on
Friday afternoon, then the next day to climb Mount Humphreys. So we've done that in the past where
we had these kind of Father's Day Mount Humphreys hikes. And for those of you who don't know Mount
Humphreys is the tallest mountain in Arizona. It's like 12,633 feet.
The tallest mountain in the lower 48 states is Mount Whitney in California at 14,400 feet.
So this one's up there, you know, 12,633.
You get above the tree line where you're kind of on the surface of the moon, and so it's pretty cool.
So if you're not...
to the point where you think you're physically fit enough
to get to the top, because it is quite a challenge.
Okay.
You know, we still often have people come along
that just go partway up the mountain.
Honestly, some of the most pleasant parts of the hike
are at the bottom anyway.
You know, you have like a beautiful forest
and you're not, you know, you don't,
you're not being tortured yet or anything.
But basically, you know, there's also another little
just sort of ramble through the woods,
an easy hike that comes out of the same parking lot.
So, you could also just plan on just coming up and doing like a little easy hike or maybe
just kind of playing in the meadows there throughout the day, just set up a blanket,
have a picnic, hang out, do whatever you want.
So the recreation is not mandatory.
Okay.
Obviously, you know, the soul winning part is the mandatory part if you're going to come
trip if we're gonna if you're gonna ride in the church van or use any of our
resources or anything then obviously yeah the Friday soul winning part is
mandatory but so don't let the difficulty of the hike stop you is what I'm
saying if you want to go up there do the soul winning and flag stuff and just do
whatever hike you want to do a lot of people also will just hike up to the
saddle and not go all the way to the summit and that is still a very
challenging hike just to get to the saddle but the full hike all the way to
the top and all the way back
Realistically is going to take you about 8 hours to do.
It's about 8 hours, because it's really about 6 hours there.
Or excuse me, 6 hours, goodnight.
6 miles there, 6 miles back.
and it's very steep so it's six miles of steep climbing there back and man when
you get to the top after you get to the saddle and you feel like I'm almost there
you know and you keep feeling like the summit is just over the next hill and
there's just like another one and another one and they're like 20 false
summits to taunt you and tease you but anyway
It's fun. It's one of those things that you kind of want to just say that you've done.
Like, yeah, I've tagged that summit. I've climbed the tallest mountain in Arizona.
I've personally done it three times, just saying.
But anyway, it's a, you know, if you want to push yourself and get in shape and do that,
that's cool. If you want to do to the saddle, that's an achievement in and of itself.
You want to just fool around on the easy stuff. That's cool too.
So just throwing that out there, this is the 13th and 14th of June.
So it's Father's Day weekend.
If you want to just mark the calendar,
think about taking that Friday off or whatever
and going up for that.
We'll have more details as we get closer to that.
And Faith Ward's not liable if you kill yourself on the hike
because the hike was mandatory.
Consult your physician before doing this hike.
Sea store for details, void were prohibited,
many will enter, fuel will win, et cetera.
All right, I think that's about it for announcements.
So let's go ahead and sing our next song.
Come lead us.
All right, you should find the answer
in the front of your hymnal with the hymn
entitled Through Tribulation.
If you don't have an answer, please raise your hand and we'll sing it on that first
together.
Though it is dark in this world of sin, though it is dark in this world of sin, though we
1st Tribulation, then with a shout, will be gone away for his wrath poured out.
The Lord will come and take thousands of saints,
He'll judge the earth for his righteous mistake.
and separate us from his love, when sorrows increase.
Be not based, may all us be fulfilled before that day.
The man of sin we will surely see, the Son and who
The Lord will come with ten thousands of saints,
They'll judge the earth for his righteousness sake.
Through tribulation though we must come,
There's not can separate us from...
We must trust in Him, the time seemed dire.
These clouds purify us with refining fire.
When these come to pass, redemption is nigh.
He'll catch us all way in the blink of an eye.
and thousands of saints will judge the earth for his righteous things say.
Through tribulation, though we must come, there's not can separate us from him.
Man, good singing everybody. Take your hymnos now. Go to hymn number 73.
I'm losing my voice a little bit, so really help me out on this one.
Number 73, some golden daybreak. Hymn number 73.
Begin some glorious morning. Sorrow will cease. Hymn number 73.
Lift your voice. Well, nice and loud on that first now.
Some glorious morning, sorrow will cease Some glorious morning, all will be peace
Four days all ended, slow days all done Heaven will open, Jesus will come
Some golden day breaks
Jesus will come, some golden daybreak that holds all one.
He'll shout the name, dream, pray through the blues, some golden daybreak for me, for you.
All shall be right, goodbye forever To earth's dark night, changed in a moment,
Like it to be, oh, for as they break, Jesus I'll sing,
the victory, break through the shrew, some golden day break for me, for me.
Eternally, oh what a daybreak, that horn will ring.
Some golden daybreak, Jesus will come.
Some golden daybreak, battle's all won.
He'll shout from victory, break!
All right, at this time we'll pass our offering plates around as the plates go around let's turn our Bibles to 1st Timothy chapter 2
1st Timothy chapter 2 as we always do we'll read the entire chapter beginning verse number 1
Follow along silently with brother Dan as he reads 1st Timothy chapter 2
First Timothy chapter 2 of the Bible reads,
the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.
Wherein to I am ordained a preacher and an apostle, I speak the truth in Christ and lie not,
a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. I will therefore that men pray everywhere,
lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. And like man are also that women adorn themselves
in modest apparel with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with broodered hair or gold or pearls or costly
but, which become with women professing godliness with good works.
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,
but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve,
and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the
transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in
childbearing if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with
sobriety.
Dear Lord, thank you for faith Word Baptist Church, Lord.
And Lord, I pray that you'd help us to walk in the Spirit
more every day and to love you more
and to love one another more.
And I pray that you'd fill Pastor Anderson
with your Holy Spirit.
Jesus, I pray amen.
Men, we're gonna come back to First Timothy chapter two,
but for now, let's go back to Genesis chapter three.
We're picking up where we left off this morning
in the story of Genesis chapter three.
And tonight we're gonna talk about the consequences
of the sin that was committed there in the Garden of Eden,
these curses that are placed upon Satan and the woman
and the man as a result of that sin that took place.
And we kind of briefly touched on this this morning.
But beginning in verse number 14, it says,
that the Lord God said unto the serpent,
because thou hast done this,
thou art cursed above all cattle
and above every beast of the field,
upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust,
Shout thou, eat all the days of thy life.
And of course, because the serpent is cursed,
the serpent or the snake is the symbol of evil
or that which is demonic or satanic, right?
We all think of snakes that way in our Christian culture.
What's interesting is that if you look at these evil,
kind of idolatrous, pagan religions of the world,
they will actually glorify the serpent.
which is because they are of the devil, okay?
For example, in ancient Greek mythology and art,
sometimes snakes will be glorified
because of the fact that they molt their skin
and get a new skin, so they're like a symbol of,
you know, eternal life or something like that, right?
And obviously, we know that the snake is something evil.
And then if you think about Hinduism.
And with Hinduism it's really crazy because all of our popular conceptions about what Satan looks like like in a cartoon or something
are basically the Hindu gods. Because you see a Hindu guy, he's got a pitchfork.
Literally, he's got a pointy tail and a pitchfork and surrounded by serpents and everything like that and flames.
Everything that we would associate with Satan and hell and that was wicked.
And what's funny is that one of their major deities is even called Devi.
D-E-V-I, and I just wanna walk up and just put an L right there
and tell you who you're really worshiping,
you're worshiping the devil, okay?
You're worshiping demons.
And so the devil is cursed, he's evil,
the serpent represents the devil
and is a symbol of satanic, evil, wicked,
and then you'll have Christians go and get a snake tattoo.
Hey, why not? Why not?
You know, the Bible said not to print any marks on your body.
Why not print a serpent or a dragon or something like that?
I mean, it's madness, isn't it?
To think that God's people would, you know, embrace that type of an image
and print it upon their body of all things.
But I digress.
Now, the serpent is cursed to crawl upon his belly at the end of verse 14 and to eat dust
all the days of his life.
And if you think about being on your belly, this is a humiliating position to be in, right?
Or having your face in the dirt and eating dust.
And whenever I read this, I always think about, you know, riding a dirt bike and when you're
in the back. You know, eat my dust is something that people will say when they're talking trash.
And so the idea here is contempt, humiliation, being brought low. And so it's a sign of just
being the lowest of the low instead of being that anointing cherub that covered which is how
God created Lucifer to be, now he's fallen to the point where he's all the way down at the bottom,
prostrate in the dust, totally humiliated, totally defeated.
But another thing I was thinking about with this is the idea that every knee shall bow one day and
every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Even the most staunch atheist
even people who've mocked and ridiculed the Word of God.
You know, one day after they spend a little time in hell,
that'll soften them up a little bit,
and they will one day fall to their knees and proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord.
And so the idea here of the serpent being brought upon his belly
is that one day even the devils and Satan and everyone
will have to ultimately confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
And even while Jesus Christ was on this earth, you remember how the devils were
even prostrating themselves before him. People that were demon-possessed
were falling on their faces before Jesus saying,
Thou art the Son of God, and that's a foreshadowing
of just total universal understanding and acknowledgement and prostration
Christ as Lord. And so we see this as the devil's humiliation. I don't really want to spend a whole
lot of time on this curse upon the serpent because I think we get it. The serpent is a cursed symbol,
it's a cursed being and it's an animal that people don't like and it represents the devil because
and someday he will ultimately be completely vanquished.
But let's move on to the woman's punishment.
And it says in, well, and we talked about verse 15
this morning already, so I'm gonna gloss over that
because this morning we talked about the seed of the woman
bruising the head of the serpent and so forth.
I don't wanna repreach that in the same day.
But look at verse 16, it says unto the woman he said,
I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception,
and sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,
and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee."
Now, what's interesting here,
is that the punishment on the serpent is just total humiliation,
total contempt, just it's all bad, just eat dirt and go on your belly
and burn in hell for all eternity someday, right?
But if you actually look at the curses upon the woman
and the curses upon the man, these punishments that are being brought out
as a result of their sin, they're actually not really all bad.
But at the same time, there's sort of like a path to redemption or a path to happiness
even built into the punishment.
There's like a solution baked in to the punishment.
Whereas with the devil, it's just you're cursed, eat dirt, you're going to be destroyed,
the Lord Jesus Christ is going to crush you someday and step on you and you're going to be over.
When the Bible says here, I'll multiply your sorrow and your conception,
You know you could look at that as a curse and in some ways it is but at the same time though
What you're gonna find is that this lifestyle is actually a path forward for women to actually live
a better life going forward.
And the same thing with the man.
You know, the man's gonna be cursed
to work by the sweat of his face
all the days of his life.
And then that is something that today
will actually allow us to live a better life
and stay out of trouble and do the right thing.
If we work hard, that keeps us busy.
and it actually ultimately keeps us happy.
And women obviously end up finding a lot of happiness
in having children and so forth.
So we're gonna come back to this,
but I just want you to kind of have that idea
in your head as we're going forward,
that God does not hate.
human beings and he's not carrying out just a hateful punishment on them but rather he even when the Lord punishes us
He's kind of doing it for our benefit at the same time, right? He loves us now. God does not love Satan
Okay, you should not love Satan and you say all that why are you even saying that you know?
I'm not dumb well because I've literally sat at church where they said God loves the devil and you know
And you're just like what the heck but anyway, let's go to 1st Timothy chapter 2
We're gonna come back to Genesis 3
But first I want you to just kind of understand this idea that God loves us and so even when God is
Putting these punishments or curses or chastisement upon mankind
you know, it's not all bad, he still is showing his love for us even in and through these actions.
So if you go to 1 Timothy chapter number two, you'll find the passage that talks about women
keeping silence in the church, you know, it's something that 1 Corinthians 14 teaches,
but it also says in 1 Timothy 2, 11, let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor do you serve authority over the man, but to be in silence, for Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Okay, but here's the key thing that I want to home in on verse 15.
It says, Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing.
if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
Okay, so the idea here is that women could have a tendency to be deceived.
Obviously men can be deceived also, but we're talking specifically about women in this passage.
Women could have a tendency to be deceived or let astray or turned aside after Satan
because that's exactly what happened in Genesis chapter 3, right?
by the serpent that came and tricked her,
that came and beguiled her.
Notwithstanding, in spite of the fact
that she was deceived by Satan,
she shall be saved in childbearing.
And the idea here is not saved like,
oh, she's gonna go to heaven now
because she had babies or something.
Obviously, that's absurd.
And I don't think anyone on this planet
really interprets this verse that way.
That's serious, okay?
That would obviously be a nonsensical interpretation.
But the idea here is that you can be saved from things other than going to hell.
You know, you could be saved from drowning, for example.
You know, Peter yells out to Jesus, Lord, save me.
He's not, you know, that's when he got saved.
You know, he's going to heaven now.
No, he's saying, get me out of the water.
Okay.
And the idea here is they're going to be saved from this deception or dark path in childbearing,
meaning by childbearing, by means of childbearing,
Because having kids isn't enough, you know, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
So the way forward for women in general to live a godly life is to get married, have children,
and then continue as a wife and mother in faith, charity, holiness, and sobriety, right?
That's the way forward.
That's how you're going to avoid the snares of the devil as a woman.
Now, just to prove that I am interpreting this correctly, I want you to go to chapter 5.
because chapter 2 verse 15 that I just read for you
is kind of a subject of controversy
and people have different interpretations.
So, you know, how do we know that what I just explained
is what the verse is actually saying?
Well, by comparing scripture with scripture.
and getting the context.
And especially when we're looking at context,
context in the same book is especially powerful, isn't it?
Because we're right here in 1 Timothy.
And if we go over to chapter 5,
we're going to find the same idea
that I just expressed to you from chapter 2,
because the Bible talks about widows,
you know, being put on the church dole
if they're over 60 years old
and if they meet these criteria.
But then it says in verse 11,
For when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they will marry having damnation because they have cast off their first faith and
With all they learn to be idle wandering about from house to house
Not only idle, but tatlers also in busybodies speaking things which they ought not I were on verse 14 of chapter 5
I will therefore that the younger women marry bear children guide the house give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully
And here's the key right here verse 15
for some are already turned aside after Satan.
Okay, so chapter 2 is talking about the woman being deceived by Satan.
Chapter 5 is now talking about women turning aside after Satan.
So now we've read this whole passage, let's work through it backwards now, okay?
Starting in verse 15, it says some are already turned aside after Satan.
That's what we want to avoid, right? We don't want women
that are going to be beguiled by the serpent
just as Eve was beguiled by the serpent
and taken down this dark path.
Okay?
How do they avoid being taken captive
and snared, tricked, beguiled by Satan?
Well, how do they?
Verse 14.
They get married.
They bear children, they guide the house, and they give none occasion to the adversary to speak or personally.
It sounds like they're being saved from deception and screwing up their lives in childbearing.
if they continue in faith, charity, holiness, and sobriety.
I mean, it's really the same thing that's being taught
over in chapter two, being taught in more detail here
in chapter five, okay?
Now, how in the world does getting married,
having children, and guiding the house keep you
from going after Satan is because it keeps you busy.
And a lot of the reason why people get into trouble is because they are idle.
My mom would constantly drill this into me when I was a kid.
She would say, an idle mind is the devil's workshop.
Who grew up with that saying or grew up hearing that?
An idle mind is the devil's workshop is what she would always say
because whenever she saw us sitting around doing nothing, she'd get nervous.
You know, what are you gonna get up to? She's like, hey, you need to have a plan. What are you gonna do?
She wants us to do stuff so that we weren't just kind of sitting around and scheming and dreaming up
Who knows what trouble to get into you got to get busy with productive things and that's the idea here when God says
I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception
Let's stop and think about just half of that equation conception
Multiply your conception means you're going to conceive more
I'm going to multiply your conception, meaning you were going to conceive a certain amount.
Now that amount that you were going to conceive is going to be multiplied.
Now here's the thing, obviously her conception was not starting at zero, because if you multiply
anything by zero, you still get zero.
So she was going to reproduce anyway, but apparently, and obviously we're kind of reading
into the text here and trying to make sense of it, the idea here seems to be that she
at a lesser rate.
She would not have conceived at the frequency
that she ends up conceiving at,
because God ends up multiplying her conception,
meaning that she is going to have more children
than she would have had, right?
So he's basically gonna make both people's job harder, right?
The man's job is gonna be harder
because the earth's gonna bring forth thorns and thistles
and he's gonna have to work by the sweat of his face.
So he's gotta work more.
The job is going to be harder, you're going to have to put in more hours.
Now, on the flip side of that, the woman's job to marry bare children and guide the house
is going to be harder because of multiplied conception, right?
Obviously it's going to be harder to have more children than to have fewer children.
That kind of is obvious, isn't it?
Should be obvious.
Obviously, just taking care of one child that's little is easier than taking care of four
It's four times the work in a lot of ways and so the idea here is that women in order to stay out of trouble
are to stay busy doing the right things.
You know, busy taking care of your husband,
busy taking care of your children,
then you don't have time to dream up all these sinful things
and you're out having these adulterous affairs
or going out and partying or drinking
or just gossiping and slandering and getting involved
in a bunch of things that have nothing to do with you
and a bunch of drama that's not your business or whatever
because you're staying busy with the right things, okay?
And here's the thing, in today's world,
we have a lot of technology and modern conveniences
that makes our life a lot easier.
We gotta be careful that we don't fall into the trap
of idleness that could cause you to go off this dark path
and go off onto this dark path and get into sin
because you're idle, right?
Because if you think about women throughout history,
they're having to make clothing from scratch.
And when we think of making clothing for scratch,
we're like, yeah, that'd be really hard
to sew your own clothes with a sewing machine
with fabric that you bought from the store.
Yeah, that'd be really hard.
That's a lot of work.
I mean, imagine having to sew all your own clothing
and then sew clothing for the whole family.
That'd be a ton of work, wouldn't it?
Even with the sewing machine.
With the fabric coming from the fabric store, it would be a ton of work. Okay, but now let's go back to before the industrial revolution
Before modern technology and you have women they don't sew from fabric that they bought at the fabric store
They have to make the fabric
Right Tommy. They're they're starting with
you know, the loom here, and they're making fabric
so that they can then sew that fabric into a garment.
That's a lot of work, you know, sowing and making clothing.
And then obviously they had to get water.
And then, oh man, doing all the laundry.
Isn't the laundry a pain in the neck?
With your laundry room?
With your washing machine?
With your dryer?
And it's still a lot of work.
I'm not, you know, being facetious necessarily
because it is a lot of work.
But now imagine how much work it is.
When you don't have a washer and dryer,
you're really gonna stay busy, aren't you?
You're not gonna have a whole bunch of idle time
and free time to be sitting around
and dreaming up sinful things, okay?
So if we look there in 1 Timothy chapter five.
And we're moving backwards now, right?
Because the solution is in verse 14,
I will therefore that the younger women
marry, bear children, guide the house,
give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
Why?
Because if they're not doing that, verse 13,
they learn to be idle.
Wondering about from house to house and not only idle, but
tatlers also and busybodies speaking things which they
ought not, right?
Because they just have too much free time to just be
gossiping and slandering and just kind of going from house
to house, getting into trouble and so forth.
Whereas if they're taking care of their husband and their
family and their household, that's going to keep them pretty busy.
Now, even when you're newly married and it's just you and your husband, you know, you can put a lot of work into those meals.
You can put a lot of work into making his life easier.
And then once the kids come, well, obviously you're going to be busy enough as a result of that.
So, I'm not going to do a huge thing on 1 Timothy 5 because we want to emphasize Genesis chapter 3,
but let's go back to Genesis chapter 3 now with that in mind, okay?
little bit of background there that staying busy keeps you out of trouble and so
God here is multiplying the sorrow and the conception not just to be mean
It is a punishment, but also because of the fact that he knows that ultimately this is going to keep women out of trouble going forward,
just like a rigorous work schedule is going to keep men out of trouble going forward.
Men are not designed to be idle and to be sitting around, and we're not happy when we're sitting around.
I think of one of the most miserable times of my life was when I didn't have a job for like a week.
And I went around telling people that it took me three weeks to get a job and
You know, I'm just telling and I wasn't lying because I believed that was true
I believed that it was I'm like oh yeah
When I got here was three weeks to get a job and I kept talking about took me three weeks to get a job
And I kept saying that kept saying that and my wife finally called me out on it
She's like what are you talking about?
You know it did not take you three weeks and she pulled out a calendar or whatever and the math just isn't checking out
And then I sat down and looked at it and figured out it turned out I was out of work for one week
But in my mind, it was three weeks because it just felt like this eternity of just not going to work and not having a job and just
being stressed out about that because men aren't happy when they don't have a job.
You know, I don't sit around and dream of winning the lottery so that I never have to go to work again.
Because men live for work. We love work, okay? Work is what we're here for.
It keeps us out of trouble, it keeps us busy and having that structure in your life of
getting up and going to work and having that routine, it's not just that it keeps you out
of trouble, it also makes you happier.
People that work hard and are busy and are serious about business, they're happier than
people who just sit around just looking for fun things to do.
and it's the same thing with women.
You know, women wanna stay busy too, right?
And they're gonna be happier when they have something to do
and they're not just kinda sitting around doing nothing.
And so look, let's say you don't have kids, ladies,
and let's say you're just maybe newly married,
or let's say, you know, all your kids
are maybe grown up and out of the house,
or maybe your kids are in an age
where they're pretty much doing their own thing
and taking care of themselves.
You know, you need to find something productive
to do with your time.
You need to find a way to get busy
doing something good, and you could also just step up your game of taking care of your husband,
you know, and just step up your game on having cooked breakfast, cooked lunch, cooked dinner,
you know, and just, and, and, you know, I think it was, it was a pastor Shelley recently that was
talking about the bread of idleness. That's the wonder bread that you buy at the store,
you know, and talking about how like these, these homemade fresh baked goods, you know,
are obviously going to be a step up.
You know, there's no reason not to and then look if that's not your thing, okay
But find your thing and serve your family serve your husband
Serve the children serve the Lord and find something productive to do at your time. Hey get involved in soul winning
Get involved in the work of God but find productive ways to stay busy and you say oh well Pastor
Anderson, you know, you're just trying to just be a slave driver make everybody work so much and everything
I got no here's the thing God is putting us to work because he knows that we're better off working
We're gonna be happier working. I mean I saw somebody posted online recently
Oh the reason why anxiety and depression are at all-time highs because people just weren't meant to be this busy
And we're just so busy now, and people weren't meant to be this busy, and that's why everybody's stressed out.
Bologna, it's the exact opposite. We are the least busy people in the history of this planet.
You know, we're supposed to believe this weird garbage that, oh, if we were hunter-gatherers, we'd just work 20 hours a week,
and then just the rest of the time, we'd just sit around doing nothing.
Folks, this stuff is nonsense.
It's garbage, okay?
Everybody has always had to work hard
in the history of mankind.
We have all these machines helping us.
We got cars, we've got, you know,
all kinds of machines to wash our dishes,
wash our clothes, cook our food.
We don't have to be building a fire
and hewing wood and drawing water.
And I think that people are depressed
because they're sitting around doing nothing.
And you know, I find that the most idle people
are the most depressed people.
You know and the people that are healthier and happier and more well-adjusted are usually busy at their job and
They usually have some kind of an exercise program to actually get their body physical and and and use that energy and blow off steam
That way and relieve stress that way, you know, and and by the way
There's this doctrine that we've been kind of harping on lately that this weird crap coming out of Joe Jones Church
And here's the thing about that is that it's new
In the sense of hearing this in an independent fundamental Baptist church or hearing this from someone who's supposedly a King James soul
Wouldn't you know, but it isn't new at all because I grew up with this garbage
Okay, I grew up my whole life from kind of just these liberal, watered-down Christians
just telling you, oh man, you know, these churches, they've got you so worried about
keeping God's commandments and so stressed out and all these rules and they just push
you to work so hard and they got you working so much and oh, it's just so liberating when
you just realize that God just wants you to just rest all day.
And once you just realize the rest of being a Christian,
it's just, you just take it easy and it's just so great
and it's so wonderful, you know?
And I always remember the sermon that I heard
from Brother Hiles where he is preaching about that
and he talked about people's tendency to think,
oh man, I'm working too hard, I'm doing too much,
I need to just retire.
I need to just retire from serving God,
retire from the ministry.
I've kind of put in my time.
And because my burden is too heavy,
and I remember him saying this,
he said, you know, the day that you put down your burden.
of the Christian life that you're living,
the cross that you've been bearing,
the soul winning that you're doing,
the work that you're doing in the ministry,
whether that's preaching
or whatever you're doing for the Lord.
He said the day that you put that down,
he said you will pick up a bigger burden
than you've ever carried
because idleness is a bigger burden.
and laziness is a bigger burden and I'm telling you these churches that promise
you liberty and talk about how mean the fundamentalist churches are and how mean
the hard preaching is and how mean they are because they want you to go soul
winning and do all this stuff you know the thing about that is that these
people while they promise them liberty they themselves are the servants of
corruption okay and I'm telling you that you will be happier stay busy for the
then you will in one of these sloppy agape churches that will never put you to work.
And I remember when I was in these liberal churches as a teenager,
these watered-down, neo-evangelical churches that were all about being free in Christ and Christian liberty,
and it's not a religion, it's a relationship,
and just kind of just every day we're always just supposed to be sitting around and just being still and knowing that he's God.
Every day we just relax and we don't worry about pushing ourselves and working.
It's all about just relaxing and rest.
Okay, these type of churches, being in these churches, I've been there.
And it's frustrating and it does not make you happy.
And I remember just being so frustrated because I would come to church
and I'd hear a sermon about serving God.
Putting God first keep God number one and you know seek first the kingdom of God
You'd hear these platitudes coming across the pulpit and I remember being so frustrated because I'm just like
Okay, what do I do?
Put God number one keep God first
Seek first the kingdom of God and I'm just like great
Where do I start? What do I do? Put me to work.
And if you go to these pastors and go to the leadership in these churches and ask them,
how do I start serving God? What do I do? Where do I go? Point me in the right direction.
And they have nothing for you to do. There is no work to do in these churches.
You know, I mean, maybe they go, oh, well, you can go clean a toilet or something.
But eventually the toilets are all clean because, you know, the work's all done.
Here's the thing at our church nobody's confused about how to get involved serving God when there's like 20 soul-winning times a week on the calendar
You know, it's like you can kind of figure out what the work is
You know, this is a soul-winning factory
Now here's the thing. Let's let's say this were a shoe-making factory. Let's say this is a factory that made shoes
There would be a guy who cleans the bathrooms in the shoe-making factory, right?
There would be like a human resources department.
There would be an advertising department.
There would be a sales manager, a floor manager.
You know, there'd be all these different jobs.
There'd be a guy stocking the vending machines.
And there'd be a guy, you know,
doing the landscaping on the outside of the factory.
There'd be a cleaning crew.
There'd be all these little menial jobs.
But at the end of the day, you know,
the shoe making factory is mainly about making shoes.
Right?
I mean, that's what they do.
They make shoes.
That's the work.
That's the general work.
So, you know, if somebody gets hired there, they can expect to make shoes.
Right, and yeah, there would be these other side jobs going on and that's how it is in the church
Yeah, there are things that you can do to volunteer for the church and help out in church
But here's the thing primarily the big one the vast majority of people who are clocking in every day at that shoe factory
I'm making shoes well
Here's the thing the main work that we do as the New Testament church is to go out and teach all nations and
Baptize them in the name of the Father the Son the Holy Ghost and to teach them to observe all things whatsoever Christ commanded us
So, we are in the business of winning souls to Christ and getting people baptized and
we are preaching the Word of God to people.
And we want to constantly be reaching new people and this is the only way to prevent
our church from dying is to constantly be reaching new people and bringing in new people
because there are always going to be casualties and any church that stops reaching new people
will start to shrink.
They just will and you see these churches that are the high steeple few people churches
And they'll have 20 people in a 200 seat auditorium, or they'll have 50 people in a 500 seat auditorium
Why because they stopped reaching people they stopped winning souls
They stopped making shoes and just start polishing the equipment all day and just saying oh man
We're just we're just resting
Now look when it comes to salvation, we're at rest
We are as at rest as the bottom of your bicycle wheel when you're flying down the road at 25 miles an hour
Okay, that's how static we are when it comes to salvation
Totally at a dead stop. Okay
We are at rest because we're resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ as our way to heaven
but God has put us on this earth to work.
We're to be working.
We're to say, oh, I'm just so busy.
Oh, I'm working so hard.
Amen.
Praise the Lord.
Be thankful for it.
Be happy.
And you know what?
You should think about is just,
you just think about that you're healthy enough
to work that hard.
You know, oh man, I'm working 70 hours a week at my job.
And praise God for that stamina.
Thank God for the energy to do that.
Because you know what some people today are handicapped and crippled and maimed or ill or in the hospital
And they would love to be at work. I mean would you rather be laying in some hospital bed, or would you rather be out there?
Working
Everybody'd rather be at work. Okay work is not the worst thing in the world folks
And we need to stop having this attitude that the goal of human life is to cease from activity, right?
That's Buddhism
That's like a quote from a Buddhist college professor literally, okay?
No, the goal of human life is not to cease from all activity
Okay, I love activity. I want to be what the Bible calls a man of activity
Somebody who stays busy getting stuff done. So this oh, I'm gonna win the lottery
I don't want to win the lot first of all, I'm not gonna play the lottery
You want to know why people who win the lottery always spend the money on stupid things because it's stupid people playing the lottery
Because you think like oh well why don't these people be smart with their money because if they were smart with their money
They wouldn't have bought the ticket
Right so the same dumb person who buys the ticket is the same dumb person that's going to spend more if they if they win
A million dollars they'll spend two million
Which makes no sense
Right and so the idea here is that no people day dreaming every day holding up the line at the gas station for the rest of
Us normal working people
Holding up the line at the gas station so you can buy your lotto ticket so that someday you won't have to work anymore
That's a bizarre goal because I want to work as long as I hope I'm working when I'm a hundred years old. I
Would love to be a hundred year old man working. Oh
It's so sad you're working at age a hundred. I
Would love to be working when I'm a hundred because you know what that means that means I'm moving
That means I'm shaking these bones it means that my brain is working that my muscles are working
I would love to be getting up and going to work for 40 hours a week as a hundred-year-old man
That's not sad or scary to me
I would hate to just be idle just sitting around
Sitting in a chair just kind of staring off into space all day. That's a little scarier to me
And I'm sure I'll eventually, you know, end up in the chair and the stair somewhere, you know.
But at the end of the day, hey, that's life, you know, life has its stages.
But be happy and thankful for the work that you have because work keeps you out of trouble, work makes you happy.
So the thing I'm showing here is that even when God is punishing us, you know, he's still looking out for us, isn't he?
He still loves us.
So let's go to the text again in Genesis chapter 3.
Because we've barely scratched the surface here in verse 16.
It says, under the woman he said, I'll greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.
Now I think multiplying the conception is pretty straightforward.
We get it, right?
They're going to have children with more frequency.
But then he also says, the sorrow and the conception, that's a little strange, but it's
explained in the very next phrase, in sorrow shout thou bring forth children.
And I think that the idea here behind sorrow
is talking about the physical pain
and the physical ravages of childbirth
because childbirth is extremely painful and difficult,
isn't it?
It hurts, it's scary, it's dangerous, it's hard on your body, and it's also just a hormonal
roller coaster of just getting pregnant, being pregnant, then you have a baby, postpartum,
and it's rough.
And you know, my wife has not had a child in a while, bless you.
Our youngest is going to be three on May 31st and so, you know, this is the biggest gap that we've ever had.
between children, you know?
And so it's possible that my wife is done having children.
You know, I don't know.
We don't do anything to prevent it.
We just are just gonna let the Lord go ahead
and multiply her sorrow and her conception as he planned.
But the thing is, you know, she's to the point now
where, you know, she may just be at that age
where she may not have enough.
Maybe we'll have another one.
But like I said, this is by far, you know,
the biggest gap because usually our kids
are kind of like clockwork about two years apart.
right? And even if she got pregnant immediately, you know, this would be a gap of over three and a
half years. You know, this would be like almost a four year, almost double that whatever spacing
we've had in the past. And so, you know, it's possible that she's at the end of that journey.
But here's the thing is that that has been a challenge for her, just like it's a challenge
for every woman to ride that roller coaster. I mean, you know, you know, when you go on a roller
and sometimes they'll take you on two laps, you know?
She's done 12 complete laps on that roller coaster,
physically, and it is hard.
And it's, you know, the hormonal upheaval
and the ups and downs, it's not just hard physically,
it's hard psychologically, emotionally,
it just has its challenges.
And you know, as men, obviously we need to understand that
and be patient and understanding
that our wives are going through this ordeal by reproducing.
And I just feel like my wife's life is easier now
that she's kind of passed that.
And maybe she's not, but you know,
maybe she's getting pregnant tonight.
I don't know, but the point is that, you know,
maybe she's passed that.
I feel like it's almost in some ways
like a relief to be passed that because it's difficult.
Because it's challenging.
Am I right?
It's hard.
I mean, and it's not just the pain of childbirth.
The whole pregnancy is a challenge.
Postpartum is a challenge and it's not just physical. It's emotional. It's psychological
You know I told the story about when I ran the ultramarathon and just started crying for no reason and I wasn't sad
I wasn't happy crying for no reason and it was just because your body is having all kinds of just reaction
Hormonally like what are you doing to me?
Because your body's freaking out that you're running an ultramarathon, which is just kind of an extreme thing to do.
And I remember just crying for no reason, running an ultramarathon, and thinking,
wow, when women say that they're really crying for no reason, they're actually telling the truth.
You know, because I thought, I thought they're just saying that, like, you know, they don't want to tell you.
Like, you know, the world's first female astronaut, like Houston, we have a problem, you know, what's the problem?
Never mind, it's fine. No, go ahead and tell us. It's fine, never mind.
You know, I thought that women are just saying that they're crying for no reason until I cried for no reason and
When I cried for no reason, I'm like wow women really are crying for no reason
They're actually telling the truth and here's it was almost just worth running that whole ultra marathon to have that epiphany
About women, you know to get that little glimpse one page in the understanding women book is now I can check it off as I've got it
I get it
Why was I crying?
It was just hormones because because you know your body's releasing a stress hormone because you've been out there just
Working hard all day running all day pushing your body to extremes kind of beyond its limits
And so the idea here is, when it says,
I'll greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception,
in sorrow, dash out, bring forth children,
is that having children is difficult on so many levels.
It's painful, it's a ravage to your body in many ways.
It is stressful, even during, before, after,
all the stages of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding,
they all have their challenges, okay?
But then, not only that, then there are just the challenges of having the actual kid.
And then dealing with them as they are teenagers and dealing with them as they are young adults
and everything like that.
And here's the thing.
I think this is a lot harder on women than it is on men because we as men, we don't really
stress out and worry about these things as much, but women, it's like they just worry
about their children all the time.
And we're just like, they'll be fine.
It's fine, you know, it's all right.
You know, like I saw a picture online that showed,
you know, a man and a woman laying in bed at night
and the woman's like worrying if she's a good enough mom
and the dad's just like, yeah, I'm a good dad, you know.
It's cool, it's fine.
And so you can see how this is specifically
kind of directed at women, isn't it?
multiplying the sorrow and the conception,
and sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,
and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee."
But again, baked into the sorrow and the punishment,
There's also a lot of joy from having children right a baby being born is super joyous a lot of people will point to that as
The best day of their life or something when their baby was born and we have all these little precious moments
Every single day with our children
We enjoy them being cute and fun and they're adorable and we love them
So there's a lot of joy baked in as well right there are two sides to this coin
And then the same thing with,
thy desires shall be to thy husband
and he shall rule over thee.
You know, you could look at this as a punishment
that God is saying the man will rule over his wife.
The man is the boss of the home
and the Bible is super clear on this.
So, you know, feminists just don't even start with me
because the Bible says that the husband's
the head of the wife,
wives are to be obedient to their own husbands,
the Bible says in everything.
Wives are to submit to their own husbands.
And so you could see this as a punishment when he says, you know,
he shall rule over the, your, your husband's going to rule over you.
But then it also says your desire is going to be to your husband.
And so you could also see that as a punishment of, oh yeah,
now the woman is going to rely on him even emotionally,
and she's going to desire him and he's ruling over her.
But at the end of the day, that can also be.
Unenjoyable situation and an enjoyable process just like having kids can be enjoyable just like it's really about
The attitude that you have about these things
God is not just punishing. He's also providing solutions in a lot of ways, too
So when you think about oh, I'm gonna multiply your sorrow in your conception
It's not just because the big meanie and just wants to put you through pain 12 times
Okay. No, what it is is that he's also providing you a solution
because it's going to keep you busy.
You're going to be saved in childbearing
if they continue in faith and charity and holiness and sobriety.
And also, having this structure in marriage
is also going to help you
and also going to save you from a lot of problems
and save you from a lot of trouble
by having you desire your husband
and for your husband to rule over you.
And here's the thing, if you have the right attitude,
You can enjoy having children, you can enjoy having your husband rule over you,
you can enjoy living the Christian life the way that God has designed it.
Just like we as men can enjoy going to work, right?
We can go work by the sweat of our face and say,
I love my job, I love going to work, I never want to retire.
Wait, isn't this supposed to be a punishment?
Look, God is just trying to get us to do right,
and this is part of the way that he does that, is by…
laying these burdens upon us, because burdens make us stronger.
And so he says,
that desire shall be that husband, he shall rule over thee.
Now, one thing that people have asked me over the years,
a question that I get a lot,
and I can't necessarily give a dogmatic or definitive answer about this,
but I can base my answer on the principles of God's word.
People have asked this question a lot.
They've said,
in the long run, like in the millennial reign of Christ or in the eternal state,
you know, when we think about faithful Christians ruling and reigning with Christ,
is that going to be men only ruling and reigning or will women rule and reign with Christ?
And I would say that women will also be ruling and reigning with Christ
because if you think about it, the whole concept of the woman
Being under the authority of her husband is sort of a response to the fall of man
You know it's sort of like after they sin. It's like okay now your husband's gonna rule over you
So, if you think about the whole idea of the millennial reign of Christ and of the, you
know, reigning forever and ever, even beyond that, it's sort of a back to Eden, kind of
back to the original state of things, because, you know, for example, all of the animals
initially were all vegetarian.
and then later, obviously we have all these carnivorous beasts and so forth,
whereas in the end, what does the Bible say, you know, the lion is going to eat straw like an ox,
and so nature sort of like returns full circle to how it was in the beginning,
and so that's why I would say, no, I do not believe that, and also we're not going to be married.
You know, so if you have the husbands ruling over his wife here, that's marriage,
but in the eternal state, we're not going to be married.
And I don't think that we're going to be under these type of punishments or curses in that sense.
So in my opinion, I think it would make more sense that, yes, women would also rule and reign in that final condition,
either in the millennium or beyond the millennium or whatever.
And I think it's hard to talk about these things because the Bible doesn't really give us a ton of information,
but that is my answer to that.
I can't be dogmatic about that, but that makes sense to me that it would be so.
And so it says,
the desire shall be that husband and he shall rule over thee.
By the way, if you husbands,
if you're not ruling over your wife,
your wife's probably not gonna have a desire unto you.
Right?
Women do not like a weak milk toast man.
Now women will say that that's what they want,
but women will also say that they wanna eat at home
and they don't wanna go out to dinner.
And we know that's not true.
Women also say they don't want dessert
and we know that's not true.
Right because women are often oblique in the way that they speak and they don't always tell us exactly what they want
Do they they're not very direct and it's funny when I'll be direct talking to people my wife
We like well, I can't believe the way men talk to each other. I'm just like this is how men talk
Should be like man, I'm afraid you're offending people the way you talk to the your pastor friends and stuff
It's like no man. This is how we talk. They're talking to me the same way
We're men men are direct men speak like women do not speak as directly or as clearly and so yeah
Of course women will say oh, please don't throw me in the briar patch
Does anyone understand that reference anymore since that Disney movie was canceled decades ago?
All right, five people know what I'm talking about. All right, so I'm gonna tell you the story of the tar baby
Brr rabbit and the tar baby, okay
So the story of Burr Rabbit and the Tar Baby and what I'm talking about and only five people know what I'm talking about
This used to be huge is Uncle Remus stories
Okay, so Uncle Remus stories is a great book and
Anyway, what it is is that the Burr Rabbit?
Is always the prey of Burr Fox like Burr Fox is after Burr Rabbit. I hope I don't screw up the story
I didn't prepare this. This wasn't in my notes
Burr Fox wants to get Burr Rabbit
And so what he devises is a trap called the tar baby.
So he creates a baby out of tar,
creates like a little scarecrow out of tar,
and Burr Rabbit comes hopping down the trail
and says hi to the tar baby,
and the tar baby doesn't say hi back, it won't respond.
And the Burr Rabbit thinks that this is very rude
that the tar baby is ignoring him
because it thinks it's an actual person
when really it's just made out of tar.
So, he decides to sock the tar baby in the face and then his hand gets stuck in the tar
and then he punches it with his other hand, he gets stuck in the tar,
he kicks the baby and then, you know, his foot gets stuck in the tar and he gets all wrapped up in the tar.
So then the fox comes and says, oh, we got you, you know, and we're going to eat you
and we finally got you because the burr rabbit's really smart and he usually escapes.
So then, this is what Brewerabbit says.
He says, look, go ahead and you can torture me
because they talk about like,
we're gonna roast you over fire,
we're gonna skin you alive.
And Brewerabbit basically says,
hey, you can skin me, you can roast me,
you can torture me, you can do whatever you want to me,
but whatever you don't throw me in the prior patch.
The last place I want to go is a briar patch.
You can do any of these other horrible things, but please, I beg you, don't throw me in the briar patch.
And then, of course, they say, oh yeah, well you know what we're going to do to you?
We're going to throw you in the briar patch.
So they throw a brrrr rabbit into the briar patch.
And the idea here is that Burr Rabbit wants to go into the briar patch
because all those briars can kind of like scrape all the tar off his body
and he can actually use the briars to actually get clean and then he comes out
and laughs at what an idiot the fox is and yada yada.
I might have screwed that up a little, but you know, it's 99%.
And so the idea here is like, oh, don't throw me in the briar patch.
Whatever I don't want to go the purpose. This is what women are saying when they're like, oh, don't tell me what to do
You know, I want to be my own independent woman. I don't want to be told what to do
Don't you go to that faithful word about this church? Don't you be listening to pastor Anderson?
They want you to actually be a man and take charge and take control that's what they want
And you're just like, oh, you don't want to go to the bar
festival, and I won't throw you there.
And she's like, oh, you pathetic loser.
Oh, you're weak.
And see, you know what?
Maybe if they hadn't canceled the Uncle Rima stories,
men would have an easier time understanding their wives
a little bit, you know?
All right, that was a little extra biblical.
Not going to lie.
But he says your desire shall be to your husband, he shall rule over thee.
By the way, the modern versions corrupt this and twist this.
And yes, I've read it in the original Hebrew many times.
And let me tell you something.
The King James is right about the way it translates it.
Your desire will be to your husband.
You know what the modern versions say?
Oh, your desire will be contrary to your husband.
The opposite.
The opposite. No, my friend, the idea here is that women will desire their husband and he shall rule over them
But if you're not ruling over your wife, don't be shocked if she has no desire for you
Because you're a weak milk toast
Queer little sissy. Just kidding. I didn't mean that but anyway
Let's move on. It says in verse 17 and under Adam
He said because thou hast hearkened under the voice of thy wife and has eaten of the tree
of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it,
cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow,
there's that word again, thou shalt eat of it,
all the days of thy life.
So he's gonna bear the pain of the sun and working
and pushing himself.
Look, going to the gym is pain,
but a lot of guys like, who likes going to the gym
as a man, you enjoy going to the gym.
Yeah, it's a good kind of pain.
Right and that's the thing is that even these punishments from God guess what going to work and working really hard all day
Is kind of a good kind of pain?
If you just go to a physical job, work hard all day,
you get home at the end of the day,
you plop down and you sit down at dinner
and dinner tastes extra good and the bed's extra soft
and just feels great to get to Friday
and you've worked hard all week and you get to enjoy.
So again, God loves us
and even the punishments are blessing us in many ways.
And so, what does this go back to though at the beginning, verse 17,
under Adam he said,
because thou hast hearkened under the voice of thy wife.
Now here's the thing,
hearkening under the voice of your wife can be your downfall.
Now, here's the thing about this,
is that obviously, if your wife's right, she's right.
Look, if your wife's right, she's right.
So don't just say, well, I'm just never going to harken
the voice of my wife.
Whatever she says, I'm doing the opposite.
No, that's foolish, because if she's right, she's right.
If your wife's right about stuff, then listen to her.
But what you don't want to do is just harken under the voice of your wife just because you're just kind of like yes, ma'am
And just kind of doing whatever she says and just going along to get along because happy wife. Happy life
You know all this kind of stuff. I got to go ask the old ball and chain
You know if I'm allowed to do this or not
That's not what you want. You don't want to harken to the voice of your wife in that sense.
Now look, my wife and I have been married for almost 25 years.
We're almost about to celebrate our 25-year anniversary, God willing, this August.
And here's the thing about that, is that when my wife and I got married,
she was really newly saved. Like, she hadn't been saved for very long.
And so obviously I was right about a lot more stuff than her because she's coming from like a left-wing, liberal, European-type mentality.
And I could have just said European, you know?
But anyway, the point is that like she's coming from an unbiblical culture.
You know, I've been raised as a Bible-believing Christian my entire life.
Been a, you know, a Baptist my entire life.
So, yeah.
Okay.
I had a lot more of a Christian idea about things, so I'm teaching her and guiding her in those things.
But here's the thing, there were a lot of things, even in the beginning of our marriage,
that I was wrong about, that my wife kind of came into the marriage being right about.
Because here's the thing, even if one person's coming from a Christian background,
and one person's coming from a non-Christian background,
the Bible says the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light,
There are certain things where even worldly unsaved people could sometimes have something
to offer as far as knowledge, wisdom, or understanding in a certain situation.
Like this is kind of a silly example, but I always say that liberal towns always have
the best food.
You know whenever you're in a really liberal city liberal town liberal college campus
that's where all the best food is and you go to these conservative areas and the food is terrible the more
Republican and conservative it is is bad food and
You know a lot of the Republicans and conservatives that you know
They're eating all this junk food and then the left-wing liberals are eating all there all these kind of crunchy granola
healthy eating kind of people
Now, look, obviously I am conservative and Christian and more right than left, although
I'm more of a libertarian kind of a guy.
I'm a right person, more than a left person by far, but here's the thing, I'm kind of
a crunchy granola kind of eating guy, like I like to eat healthy and I like to eat from
the liberals.
I eat like a liberal.
Okay, I want to take the best of all worlds.
And so here's the thing,
you don't want to have this attitude of just,
well, you know, I'm Christian and you're not,
therefore you know nothing.
And I know everything.
Because, you know, another quote from Brother Hiles was,
he said, every man knows something that I do not know.
Therefore all men are my teachers.
Right, we can always learn something from people and here's the thing my wife actually brought a lot of great knowledge and
Wisdom into the marriage and actually influenced me on a lot of things even in the very early days of our marriage
I learned a lot from her. I listened to her. I'm not just well
I'm not gonna harken the voice of my wife because it's just it's just I'm right about everything
It's like if she's right. She's right
If she's right, then listen to her, take her advice, get on her program, and I ask my wife's opinion of things all the time, and if she's right, she's right.
But what I'm not going to do, though, is hearken to the voice of my wife when she's wrong.
And I'm telling you, we just had obviously recent controversy and recent drama at our church, and we lost a lot of people.
And the vast majority of those situations, it was the woman's decision to quit the church.
vast majority of the situations, it's the woman's decision to leave the church, to
quit the church, and then the guy is being dragged out of here by his wife and
you know what, that is a cry and shame. Don't be surprised when your wife's
desire is not unto you.
when you are this hen pecked man that is dragged around
by, you know, your wife's whims and wishes
and you're not standing up and being the leader in your home.
Okay, so, you know,
hearkening into the voice of your wife is sad and pathetic.
And, you know, obviously I understand, and I'm not up here, you know, just to hurt anybody's feelings because I know that it's very hard to be a leader.
And I'm not, naturally, a good leader. I don't have, like, a natural born ability to just lead and I'm just this alpha male that just walks in the room and everybody just does what I say or something like that.
You know, I'm not.
this natural born leader type.
So I've had to struggle and learn
and try to figure out how to lead as a pastor
and as a husband.
I understand that it's a challenge and that it's not easy.
So I'm not trying to make you guys feel bad,
you know, if you struggle to lead in the home.
But what I am saying though,
is that you need to lead in the home.
And I'm not saying it's going to be easy, it can be challenging, it can be difficult,
it can be complicated.
And it's not the same for every woman, because every woman is different.
Every situation is different, but it's something that you've got to do, man.
You've got to take biblical principles, you've got to pray about this, you've got to work
at this, and you've got to be the leader in your home, and you've got to take charge and
take control of your home.
And look, some people are natural leaders.
was just kind of one of these alpha males where just he's just he's just a boss he just walks in
the room and he's just the boss just dominates everything you know and he was just kind of
this larger than life guy that we all kind of looked up to and thought was really cool and
everything like that some people are just like that they just have that charisma but you know
not every guy is like that i'm not like that you know a lot of people aren't necessarily like that
And so you might have to work at this thing of leading.
And that's a whole nother sermon on how to be a leader
and leadership principles and leading your home.
But you gotta be the leader.
Don't just give up is what I'm saying.
Don't just give up and say, well, you know what?
It's just easier to just let my wife run everything,
make all the decisions.
It's just easier to do whatever she says.
Because let me explain to you
how to never fight with your wife.
How to never have a fight in your marriage? There's a couple ways to do this.
One way to never fight as a married couple is if the woman just always does what her husband says.
There's no fighting. He, whatever he says, she does it.
Here's another way to never have any fights in your marriage is when the husband just always does what his wife says.
It's another way to have no fighting.
Right?
I mean, that's just kind of how it is, right?
And then, you know, a third option would be
that basically, you know, both people
are just perfect, sinless, wonderful people,
and that's why they never have any strife
or conflict in their marriage, you know?
And at the end of the day, look, the Bible does say
that wives are supposed to obey their husbands.
So in this equation, the woman obeying the husband is right,
the husband obeying the wife is wrong.
That is just what the Bible says,
as far as how to structure this thing.
But at the end of the day, realistically,
because we're all human, because we're all sinners,
marriages are going to have some conflict.
There are gonna be some spats.
There are gonna be some fights.
If you have a marriage fight or a marriage spat,
don't feel like, oh, I married the wrong person,
my life's over, yeah, don't panic, don't freak out.
Everybody else is going through the same thing.
And these pastors that are getting up lately and saying,
oh, it's not normal to fight with, that's not normal.
They're liars.
They are lying because I know them personally
and I've seen their wives embarrass them publicly.
I've seen their wives mouth off to them publicly.
I've seen their wives talk back to them.
I've seen them fighting with their wives
and they get up and lie about it.
I've always told the truth about this and said,
yeah, marriage has conflict.
There are gonna be fights.
It's gonna get ugly sometimes.
That's just the nature of the beast.
And then you have these lying pastors
who wanna exalt themselves and lift themselves up
to put me down and to put you down
and to put all of us normal mortals down.
Act like, oh yeah, you know,
my marriage is just so wonderful and so perfect.
And oh man, you know, you guys are just so weird
and I don't know what's wrong with you guys.
Everybody that I've ever known in my life
has marriage problems from time to time.
It's a difficult relationship.
It just is.
So don't freak out, don't panic, don't get scared.
Push through.
You know just keep doing your best love each other follow the word of God do what you can keep learning keep growing
Keep doing better, but what I'm saying to you men out there is don't give up and just roll over and just say well
That's it. My wife doesn't want to let me lead well
Then I'm just gonna stop leading and then you just kind of check out of the marriage
It's not the answer my friend. Okay. You got to continue to lead. Okay?
I'm not saying to be a micromanager.
I'm not a micromanager.
I'm not a McGalamaniac.
I'm not saying that you should be overbearing
or super strict or whatever.
But I'm saying you need to be the leader
and you need to maintain that leadership position
where you are calling the shots.
And if your wife can say to you,
we're leaving faithful word because I said so,
you're not the leader.
You're just not.
Because that's a big decision
that the man should be making.
Okay, and here's the you're like well my wife's the one who wants to go here
You know, I'm the one who wants to go to this other liberal church and pastor
Says the man should make the decision well quit being such a watered-down weird little sissy
Don't want to go to these little girly man churches anyway
Here's the thing there's two parts of this of this puzzle my friend, okay number one the man needs to be picking
Where we go to church number two the man needs to pick
a church that's not a scissified, wissified church.
Any questions?
You know, I love our church.
I love, I love our church.
You know, and I enjoy visiting other churches
and you know, other churches in our movement
like our pastor friend churches are awesome too.
You know, and it's just like these churches are great churches like the fellowships great
The people are great the people are so cool in these churches
And you know what I love about our churches is that you look out at our churches and you know what you see
You see a balanced demographic where it's not just all women or all elderly and look
I love having women in our church. I love having the elderly in our church, but something's wrong when you go to a church
It's all women
All women or just all elderly. What's going on?
You know, I love looking out there and seeing a bunch of hair-legged men out there in the congregation and it's not just all women.
And you know what? A lot of people think, they think, oh, religion is for women and old people.
Because they're used to these watered-down, sysified churches where men don't want to go.
Folks, we need to have a church that actually attracts men.
Strong men want to go there and then the men need to be saying, hey, we're going to faithful word.
Not like oh well, I'm sure and I remember again, you know
My pastor back in California when I was a teenager he used to tell the story about how you know
the assistant pastor the first time they came to the church and heard the preaching and
Pastor Nichols up there ripping face on whatever rolls in the home or something like that
They got in the car and the guy's wife just looked over at him and the first thing she said to him was well
We're never going back to this church again
And you know what her husband said?
Actually, we are going back.
And actually, I agree with everything that the pastor just said,
because it was biblical.
And then you know what happened?
Then she got on his program and was still at the church 10 years later,
still serving God, still doing right.
And so I'm totally out of time tonight.
I didn't get as far as I thought I would, but the idea here is that work keeps us out
of trouble, the hierarchy in the home keeps us out of trouble.
God, even when he's punishing us, he's doing it out of love.
Even his chasing and his chastisement, right?
Whom the Lord loveth, he chaseneth, and scourges every son he may receiveeth.
He does it out of love.
Okay, does God love the devil? No, that's why it's cursed on the devil is just eat dirt
Be on your belly. You're cursed. Everybody's just gonna think of you as a symbol of evil
Forever unless they're Hindu then they're gonna love you
Okay, but the point is that you know his his curse on the devil is very different than his curse on the men and the women
Curse on the man and women the punishment on the man and women actually has some baked-in blessing to it, doesn't it?
because God loves us, he wants what's best for us,
and so we need to embrace the order.
that God has created for our lives,
and embrace the order of the home,
embrace the order of womanhood, manhood, going to work,
and look, get a good attitude about your job.
Love the grind, love your job, love going to the gym,
love going to your job and working, love sweating,
love being outside, love working hard,
and you women, you know, love.
having children, love being pregnant, love giving birth,
love breastfeeding, love raising the children,
love cooking, love cleaning.
God has you doing these things for a reason.
It's good for you, it's good for all of us.
We're gonna be happier on God's plan.
And you know, if you get all liberated,
you know, women are more depressed
than they've ever been now that they're liberated.
They were happier when they were,
oh, just so restricted by their husbands, everything.
They were happier.
And you say well you don't know my wife she doesn't want she told me she thought I told me I don't want to go in the
briar patch oh
Well case closed
Well burr rabbit said he didn't want to go in the briar patch either
But he actually did want to go there and your wife wants to go out to dinner and she wants dessert and she wants to go in
The briar patch. You're welcome. Let's borrow it's another word of prayer father. We thank you so much for your word
We thank you so much for these clear teachings in the Bible Lord
And we thank you for the timeless wisdom of the Bible that trumps all of the modern
Psycho babble and all of today's
Trendy ideas about how we should live our lives Lord help us to live our lives in a way
that is pleasing to you and that is in accordance to your word.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen, all right, everybody.
Take your hymnals, please.
Turn to hymn number 271, hymn 271.
Lord, I'm coming home, hymn number 271.
I've wandered far away from God, hymn number 271.
Sing it out on that first now.
I wandered far away from God, now I'm coming home, the haze of sin.
See you next year!
Good evening, we are dismissed.