The Fall of Man

In my last two messages we have seen that Genesis 1 and 2 describe God's original plan of creation. Now let us consider what happened when sin came in. Genesis 3 describes the temptation and the fall of man.

What happened in Genesis 3 is the beginning of the alienation between the male and female. All competition between the sexes is due to what happened in Genesis 3. Instead of just to give direction the man began to give domination and became a dictator. In any home where the man is treating his wife as a slave, in that home sin is ripe. Sin actually pushed the man too far toward being a little god in his home. The result is, the woman instead of deferring to him, becomes defiant and competitive and fights him. We are now living in a world where there is an intense competition between the male and the female; in where women are saying, anything that men can do they can do as well and even better. The high rate of divorce is primarily due to competition between male and female; between two wills striving for mastery - the man wants to dominate and the woman wants to defiant.

How sin came in - according to Genesis 3

Satan got hold of the wife without the husband, and he did it quite deliberately because that is his evangelistic method - he gets her away from the man. Satan was deliberately ignoring God's pattern of the man taking responsibility. She was unprotected, she was vulnerable and she was deceived. Satan seduced her mind.

Someone said it is quite impossible to convert a Jewish wife without her husband. You can do it with the Gentiles but you cannot do it with the Jews because the Jewish wife knows the Old Testament and she knows what happened to Eve when Satan got her away from her husband.

Satan twisted the woman's thinking. She quoted the Word of God at him, but he also quoted the Word of God at her with a little twist. Satan's deceptive quotation of the Bible is always the same. Here are his 3 favorite tricks:

1. He takes a little away from the Word of God.

2. He adds a little bit to it.

3. He then changes it around.

Satan used the same tricks on Jesus Himself (Matthew 4:1 - 110). Beware of satanic Bible teachers - and most of them are women Pastors and women Bible teachers.

The Tempter and Adam

The two main activities with which Satan directs his power against us are temptation and accusation.

Notice that before the Fall, Adam's helpmeet (given by God) was named by Adam himself as "woman" (wife-man or female-man) (Gen. 2:23). But after the Fall, Adam's wife was called "Eve" - mother of every living person (Gen. 3:20). For the sake of clarity we shall refer her name as Eve even before the Fall.

In the Garden of Eden, the serpent approached Eve with an innocuous-sounding question: "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree in the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1, NKJV).

On the surface the question sounded silly, but it actually involved an obvious distortion. God had given Adam and Eve free use of the garden - with one exception. One tree was placed off limits. The rest were fully available. Here we see the subtlety of the serpent. His thinly veiled suggestion is that if God places one limit on human freedom, He has taken freedom altogether. The serpent's question was more than a question. It was an accusation against the fairness and kindness of God.

Eve was quick to set the Devil straight: "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die'" (Gen. 3:2, 3).

Satan's question was an indirect assault on the integrity of God. Satan then moved quickly from an indirect attack to frontal assault. After Eve set the record straight Satan boldly declared: "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:4, 5).

Here the temptation is wrapped in a bold-faced lie: "You will not die." Not only did Satan accuse God of lying, but he also provided Eve with a reason for God's lie. He charged God with a kind of divine jealously. God did not want Adam and Eve's eyes to be opened. He wanted to keep His level of knowledge to Himself. He did not want to share His deity. He was afraid that the fruit of the tree would make Adam and Eve divine. His prohibition was both unfair and selfish.

The whole strategy of Satan is very clear - First, he made sure Adam was not around. Then he got Eve confused in her thinking until she could not actually remember what God actually said to her.

Notice that not only Adam did not repent of falling into sin with Eve, but he also accused both Eve and God Himself: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate" (Gen. 3:12).

Lessons we should learn but failed to learn them

God's punishment for Adam ought to have warned us clearly that a man should not heed the voice of a woman without confirmation from God (Gen. 3:17).

A woman needs a man to protect her thinking and reasoning. That is one of the reasons why in the New Testament Paul said: "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church" (1 Cor. 14:34, 35, NKJV).

In my opinion, the above is a practical outworking of Genesis 3. Satan loves to get hold of a woman alone. He twists her thinking and gets hold of a woman's desire to compete with men. That is why so many "Christian" cults and false religious sects have been started by women's teaching. The whole New Age movement began with women, without mentioning Christian Science. You will find in almost every case, these women are either not married, separated from their husbands or have stronger personality than their husbands.

There is evidence in Church history where a denomination makes a lot of women into Pastors and Bible teachers and sooner or later doctrine slips. The majority Pastors and Bible teachers and home-cell leaders of the Churches in China, Hong Kong and South Korea are women.

There are two areas in which men must carry full responsibility in the Local Church. One is in the area of doctrine and the other is in the area of discipline. And if men do not carry those two responsibilities both will slip, because both are not natural for women to exercise. All through the New Testament (especially in Paul's and Peter's epistles) testified this fact. Women taking leadership in any congregation is foreign to the teaching of the Bible. Any Local Church that does not recognize this fact is the evidence of the outworking of the unredeemed Adamic race.

Adam brought sin and death to the human race

Paul said, "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression" (1 Tim 2:14, NKJV).

The fact that Eve was fooled by Satan but Adam was not, and yet he still took it when Eve gave him the fruit, he had denied his God-given responsibility to watch over Eve and the responsibility to protect her. That is why Adam brought sin and death to the human race. What Adam should have done was to question Satan and argued it through to see if it was the right thing to do. Because of what he failed to do he carried all the resposibility for what happened.

The Punishment

1. Punishment for Adam

The Lord said to Adam, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife ....." Gen. 3:17).

The primary reason why Adam (and all male after him) was punished was because he heeded the voice of Eve. The result of which Adam saw work as a drudgery (Verses 17 - 19).

The nature of Adam's punishment is very interesting. Because of the Fall many people failed to realize that their daily work is their prime vocation for God. Whether your calling is a plumber or a preacher both callings are equally holy and sacred to the Lord. You do not need to enter fulltime ministry to please God - unless of course you are called by God to enter fulltime ministry.

Paul said, "Who (God) has saved us and called us with a holy calling ..." (2 Tim. 1:9).

In other words, every calling that a Christian received from the Lord is holy to the Lord. Only when you are into sin you see your calling as a plumber a secular employment. In God's eyes there is no such thing as secular calling except sin! Everything else, including your employment as a plumber, is sacred and holy to God. Your prime calling is to do your daily work as to the Lord and not to your boss. Your daily work is God's sacred calling for you.

2. Punishment for Eve

The Lord said to Eve, ".... in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Gen. 3:16, emphasis added).

The nature of Eve's punishment consists of two parts - as a mother and as a wife. As a mother sorrow would be multiplied in her pregnancy and in the bearing and bringing up of children. As a wife "her desire shall be for her husband".

The phrase, "Your desire shall be for your husband" is very interesting. Many people think that women will be so desired of sex that they have to have a man. Recently I discovered what it really means. The key to understanding is found in Genesis 4.

In Genesis 4 after Cain's offering was rejected, God said to him:

"If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it" (Gen 4:7, NKJV, emphasis added).

The use of the word "desire" above is the same as that used in Genesis 3:16. In other words, sin's desire is to take control over Cain and he should overcome it.

In the case of Eve and in all cases of women born after her, they have the desire to control and manipulate their husbands - unless the husbands are capable of overcoming this problem.

The problem of control and manipulation

As discussed above, one of the results of the Fall is that women have the natural desire to control and manipulate men. Instead of looking to a man for a lead there is a desire in fallen female nature to have a man so that she can control and manipulate him. But since she is a weaker partner the man will be able to rule her just as she will want to rule him. That is the direct result of sin - competition and clash between two opposite personalities in the home. The wife wants to change the husband but he has the power not to change. This is the scenario with all the seeds for divorce - not a part of redemption.

There are cases of Christian women asking for prayer for their husbands to be converted. Some Christian women are praying for their husbands to change to the men they want them to be. The use of prayer to change someone you want him to be is a subtle form of control and manipulation.

Peter said, "Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives" (1 Peter 3:1, NKJV).

In other words, in order to win over the unbelieving husband, the wife needs to change herself first - from a manipulating person to a submissive person with holy conduct.

The main result of the Fall is clear. In any marriage if the wife is dominating the husband and running his life and taking his place as a spiritual leader at home, it is contrary to God's original creation order and pattern.