Marriage Subject to Futility, Part 1

We have seen in the first couple of chapters of Genesis, we’ve seen God’s wisdom. We’ve seen his kindness to create the institution of marriage. It’s through marriage that God conveys the blessedness of his own goodness to men and women who participate in marriage. Marriage is there to mold and shape them, to mature them, so they might enjoy God and one another in intimate communion. And that happened, that institution was created, not as a remedial institution that is post-Fall. It was created as a shaping, molding, forming institution prior to sin entering into the world, to shape and mold and mature Adam and Eve.

The product of the marital union, our children, “children are a gift from the Lord,” Psalm 127:3 says. And it’s through the gift of children, as those children also, they themselves are shaped by the institution of marriage through the family, God spreads the blessing of his goodness from the home out through the entire society. we learned that God intended for Adam and Eve and for their marriage, he intended that they would enjoy the world that he created, enjoy the work that he gave them to do, enjoy the role that he gave them to represent him, to manifest his image throughout the Earth. They are his image-bearing representatives to the entire creation.

Everything looked just perfect. God pronounced his benediction, Genesis 1:31, stamping “very good” on everything that he had made. And if we stopped at Genesis 2:25, if we knew nothing more, God would’ve sent Adam and Eve out into a good world. He would’ve sent them out into a state of perpetual rest. He’d would’ve sent them out to enjoy the intimacy of communion with one another, an intimacy of communion that, that would also be with himself. God with mankind, and mankind with one another, enjoying the intimacy of communion and relationship.

So we have to stop and ask, what went wrong? Why is it that none of our marriages seem to come close to God’s design, even in the best of our marriages? They are filled with weakness and imperfection, even in the very best marriages we point to, as much as we eulogize a Christian and a Christian marriage and we should do that, we should rejoice in those things, we also realize that there is so much struggle. Struggle to communicate, struggle to understand one another. There’s misunderstanding all the time. Communication is the biggest issue in marriage, is it not? And can I get an Amen from married people? It’s a struggle to enjoy the intimacy God intended and designed for our marriages.

So why is this good gift so hard? Paul tells us in Romans 8:20, what we read earlier, that “the creation was subjected to futility.” It’s a passive way of expressing that. Creation “was subjected.” Who is the one who subjected creation to futility? God did. God subjected all creation. Marriage is a creation institution. God subjected marriage and creation to futility. He did that because it was a part of his perfect plan of redemption. It was to work out an eternal decree of redemption.

So everything good in God’s created order, everything good in his design, it is good, but it is not the end. The end, as we know, is in Christ. Remember that marriage is a formative institution. That means that marriage retains the power that God put into it, pre-Fall and post-Fall. It is a durable institution.

Many people have been taught, especially in our society, they’ve been taught to blame the institution of marriage for the sorrows of marriage. Many choose to end their marriages. They add sorrow upon sorrow, and they add sin to sorrow by breaking a covenant, by severing a one-flesh union. Divorce just shreds the family. It leaves scars on family members, and they take all those scars with them into their relationships, into the streets. They unravel, eventually, the fabric of society. We’re watching that unraveling happen in front of us in our culture.

But none of that, listen, none of that can be blamed on marriage. It’s not the fault of marriage, as if the institution itself is fundamentally flawed. The institution is doing exactly what God designed it to do. Even when marriage, as an institution, when marriage passes on even sins and consequences of sins from generation to generation, listen, it’s proving it’s doing exactly what God designed it to do. It’s passing on what is instilled in that family environment, whether good or bad.

Make an analogy to the law of gravity. Gravity is a good law, right, that governs the physical, material world. It does not become bad or untrustworthy as a law if someone falls to his death. We don’t blame gravity. We say gravity works, and we learn to respect it. We learn to submit to the law of gravity, live with it. It’s actually, gravity is what, the reason we can all sit here right now and not float off into space. Thankful for gravity. We don’t rebel against it. To rebel against it is folly.

In the same way, God designed marriage to govern the relationships of humanity, and give humanity form, and structure, and shape, individually and corporately. So we need to respect marriage. Respect its power. We need to realize that God designed it for good. When marriage is not respected and not regarded, when men and women do not submit to its God-given design, but depart from God’s design and do it their own way, listen, there are consequences. There are relational consequences. There are generational consequences. Sin, sorrow, misery, social evils abound.

Bible, as we’ve said before, it doesn’t shy away from portraying any of that, either. It doesn’t back off from showing the high cost of violating God’s design for marriage. Marital sin in the marriage of Abraham and Sarah, we said that it resulted in a conflict between the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac. It’s in a conflict that totally defines our world. Totally defines the Middle East. Marital sins that David committed, that Solomon committed, tore the kingdom apart.

So whether on a grand scale like those examples or a smaller scale, felt more personally, for many of you, a father ruled by a heart of anger; his mouth in the home releases a torrent of harsh words that shred wife, shred children. His behavior, abusive, that leaves a mark. A mother, through her depression or whatever it is, self-medicating using alcohol, or drugs, or prescription drugs. She’s mentally, emotionally checked out. Parents whose ambitions for money or for esteem, or for prominence, causes them either to neglect their children or to so control their children, always angling to fulfill their own agenda through their children. Whatever it is, those things leave a mark. We feel those things, and we react to those things from our past as we go into the present and into the future, don’t we?

Again, we cannot blame the institution of marriage for these evils or any other evils. So it’s the fault of the sinner, isn’t it? It’s the fault of the underlying problem of sin. Sin is the issue.To see what happened to find out how sin invaded our world, got into our marriages and how it corrupts us, how it continues to affect us, and trouble our marriages.

This applies to all of us as individuals, and all of us as married people as well, and it applies to the entire culture. So try to be thoughtful not only about what we’re learning from Scripture, but also thoughtful to see the implications for our lives, see the implications for our marriages. You’re gonna have to do a little mental work here.

I want you to understand, though, from the very beginning that, if you’re in Christ, you have everything you need to navigate forward. To navigate through the difficulty and the challenge of a sinful, fallen world. You can practice repentance. You have the power to do that, because you have a new nature granted to you by a loving God. He removed, Ezekiel 36 says, he’s caused you to be born again, so he’s “removed the heart of stone,” taken that out, a dead, cold heart, lifeless, and he’s put in “a heart of flesh.” He’s given you a new heart. He’s taken away that dead, spiritually dead nature, and granted you a new nature. “If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come.”

Not only that, but if you’re in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. You have the Spirit himself, the Spirit of the living God lives in you. And he teaches you his Word internally, as your internal truth teacher. He illuminates the truth to you in the pages of Scripture, and he helps you, motivates you, strengthens you to walk in the truth. Gives you new longings. You’ve everything you need to practice repentance, to grow into maturity and holiness, whether you’re married or you’re unmarried, even in a fallen world, even in an imperfect marriage.

I’ve got three words for you which you can write down for an outline. Three words are these: Probation, temptation, and frustration. You’re like, “Well, that’s an encouraging sermon.” Probation, temptation, and frustration, and I think that the encouragement of a sermon like this comes out in the clarity that the Bible provides. That’s, that’s where the encouragement comes from, is to understand, Why is it like this? Why are things difficult? Why are things challenging? Why am I the way I am? Why is he or she the way she is, or he is?” It helps us to figure things out, but also it points us to the only remedy that comes in salvation in Christ. Man, we need to hear it. We need to hear what Genesis 3 has to say. So probation, temptation, frustration.

First, probation: Marriage was subjected to probation. What do I mean by probation? Probation refers to a trial. It refers to a test, which is exactly what God designed for Adam. A period of probation, of testing. Look down at your Bibles, start in Genesis Chapter 2 and verse 9. It says there in verse 9, “Out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree pleasant for the sight, good for food.” That’s a whole lot of trees. A whole lot of food provided.

And then it says at the end of that verse, “The tree of life was in the midst of the garden.” Okay, so eating that tree, perpetuating life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, at this point we don’t know whether that eating from that tree is good or not. We got to keep reading. But that’s the first use of something that sounds bad in God’s good creation, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why, what’s evil? Why do I wanna? What’s going on there?

We get then into verses 16 and 17 of chapter 2, we read this last time, “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden.’” Wide permission, broad permission. “‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.’” We read that last time, and we mentioned that God is doing two things here: He’s setting up Adam’s probation, a test for the head of humanity we’re gonna cover that today, but God was also preparing him to teach his wife. He’s providing Adam with the proper motivation for teaching, which is love. Love is what drives Adam’s ministry to his wife, his care for his wife.

Doctrine matters, teaching matters, knowing and passing on the truth, it marks the difference, really, between life and death. Never make that mistake in diminishing doctrine, in saying doctrine doesn’t matter. Man, it matters. It is the difference between life and death. It is a difference between assurance and a lack of assurance. It is the difference between confidence and wavering, and instability, and double- mindedness. We must have truth. We must have truth rightly understood, which is what doctrine is teaching theology.

We considered how Adam loves his wife by teaching her, by helping her to understand the truth. He’s motivated because he doesn’t want her eating at that wrong tree. He didn’t want her to die, he just got her. He doesn’t want to live with, a, alone with the animals for the rest of his life. He rejoiced in her, Genesis 2:23. He wants to perpetuate this joy that God’s given him. So he wants to teach her.

In Genesis 2:16-17, God set up Adam’s probation. Those verses are meant to show us that God has provided a test, and the test is to prove Adam in his role as the head of humanity. He’s there to represent the human race, and this is a test to prove him. When I say, prove him, I mean like, a, someone who creates a, a container, a vessel that’s got pressure in it, and so we need to pressure-test a vessel, to make sure that when we get it out in the field, that when they put the pressure on, that vessel doesn’t leak, or worse, explode. So they pressure-test that vessel to make sure it, it is, has integrity, it’s sealed, it’s perfectly sound, so they can send it out, and it’s safe and does its job. In the same way, God is here to test Adam. Pressure-test him.

Against the backdrop of God’s abundant provision, a manifestation of his goodness, we see here in Genesis 2:16-17 that God added a single restriction there. Just one little prohibition about one little tree among all the good, wonderful fruit-bearing trees God created. Unrestrained permission from God to eat and enjoy all those trees. And so the test is, will Adam content himself in the goodness of God? Will he thoroughly enjoy the world of generous provision in the way that God designed it, within the boundaries that God set? Or, will he ignore all the good things God gave, and take instead what God had withheld from him?

At its heart, this test here is a question of, will Adam trust God, or will he not? That’s the test all of us face every single day, right? Am I gonna believe God or am I gonna go my own way? Am I gonna trust his truth and believe what he said is for my good? Am I gonna do that and walk in that way, or am I gonna try my own, venture out on my own, do my own thing? That’s the test. That’s what we go through every single day.

As a creature, Adam is not created in a fixed state of moral perfection. To be in a fixed state of moral perfection means Adam is not created as a self-conscious, free, responsible religious agent. To be fixed in such a state would mean his obedience would have been fixed, therefore coerced, not freely rendered, not freely given. And God intends that Adam, created his own image, render his devotion from a heart of love; from a heart of trust; from faith.

Since God created mankind in his own image, he did exist in a state of righteousness. Everything God creates is good, and righteous, and pure, and true, and holy. However, Adam is mutable, and he is untested. He’s untested in that perfect condition. As a mutable being, he’s subject to change, so Adam could move from a state of perfection into a state of further maturity in righteousness. Maturity in walking in the truth, maturity in, in, in, filling out and rounding out his experience of walking with God in communion, and righteousness, and joy and holiness or he could move from a state of perfection to imperfection, right? From righteousness to unrighteousness.

Adam’s state of being created in perfect righteousness, is a contingent condition. It’s subject to testing. His state of being had to be proven. As Augustine said it, “Adam was created in a condition in which he had the power to sin and the power not to sin.” It could go either direction. He’s a free, responsible, religiously moral agent. As a creature created in God’s image, Adam had the freedom and the power to choose. He had the power to sin and the power not to sin. So, depending on what would happen during this period of probation, this period of testing, Adam’s passing or failing the probation, listen, this is gonna affect and determine the future of his race. He is the representative head over the human race at this point. So whatever he does, all his progeny is going to follow in his line, that’s indeed what we see has happened.

Along with everything else that is good in God’s world, this is the ultimate expression of goodness. God set up a trial for Adam. He tested him in order to secure for all of Adam’s posterity a righteous race of humanity. That’s God’s design. He wants a race of people who would never fall away from righteousness, ever, but would enjoy God’s goodness in a state of perpetual rest, and communion, and joy, and holiness.

When that question comes up, why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why this potential for falling? Well, you say this: God gave Adam and Eve a whole world of good trees with all kinds of delicious fruits. All of this intended to show his goodness. He gave them one bad tree, told them not to eat from it. He wanted them to trust him. He wanted them to take his word for it, and taking God’s word for it is good. That’s why God put it there, ’cause he wanted to give them a goodness. If they had trusted God and obeyed him, they would’ve passed the test, lived forever in perfect holiness and happiness along with their children and their children’s children for all of eternity. But let me tell you what actually happened. And then you read Genesis 3.

So God tested Adam. Keep in mind he didn’t tempt Adam. The devil did that, and we’re going to come back to that next. But “God himself tempts no one,” James 1:13 says. That’s what a test is meant to provide. We see that later on in Genesis. In Genesis Chapter 22, when God tested Abraham, calling him to sacrifice Isaac, you may remember the story. God drew out of Abraham, what? Exactly what he was meaning to draw out of Adam: Faith.

We see Abraham prove, his faith is proven as he obeys God even when he doesn’t quite understand. He reasons, according to Romans, Abraham reasons that God indeed is able to raise his son from the dead, and so he says, well, this doesn’t make sense, but I’m gonna go forward in obedience. I’m gonna do what God has called me to do, because I know that God is all powerful and he’s gonna fulfill this promise. Raising my son from the dead, that must be the explanation. He goes forward in faith. So through that test, which, if you’re a parent, imagine yourself being Abraham in Genesis 22, called to sacrifice your son, your only son, your son Isaac, the son of promise. God drew out and proved Abraham’s faith through that test. And that test accomplished exactly what God intended for it to accomplish: to demonstrate Abraham’s faith.

What God designed for good, this probationary period to test Adam with a view to proving him, with a view to his success and his blessing for all posterity, it’s yet another evidence, in God’s good world, of God’s goodness and God’s wisdom. How wise of a God that we worship and serve. Did Abraham’s failure to pass the test mean God failed? Does Adam’s transgression show a weakness in God’s wisdom, some kind of unforeseen error in his plan? Not at all. The image of God in humanity, we just need to understand, was not yet complete in Adam.

As we discover in the progress of revelation, the image of God was perfected and fulfilled and completed in one person, Jesus Christ, that’s the plan. “Thus it is written,” 1 Corinthians 15:45, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” That’s the plan. God is not working out some kind of Plan B, because of an unforeseen failure of Adam in the Fall. This is still Plan A, to glorify God in the image of God in Jesus Christ. That’s the plan.