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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
All right, let's get our Bible and turn to the first book of the Bible, indeed the first chapter of the Bible as well, Genesis chapter 1.
This August, we have been going through, we've been spending a lot of time in August focusing on the family.
focusing on the family.
And if the Lord helps us, we will continue doing that through the month in each of our services together.
And there's probably no better place to go for many, many lessons
and a lot of guidance on the family and not just the family,
but on many, many important issues than the book of Genesis.
Because, of course, the book of Genesis is the first book of the Bible,
the origin of all things.
And so it covers a lot of first occurrences.
And what we're going to look at this morning is no exception.
We're going to begin reading in chapter 1 and verse number 26.
Chapter 1, verse number 26.
The Bible says,
And God said,
Let us make man in our image after our likeness,
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. And God blessed them. Drop down, if you would, to chapter 2, verse 7.
Chapter 2, verse 7. and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden,
and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life also in the midst of the garden
and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Let's pray together.
Our Father, thank you for your love to us.
Thank you for your goodness.
Thank you, Lord, for revealing yourself to us by your word.
Thank you that you've given us the history of the world
all the way back to when you first spoke the world into existence.
But Lord, we glory in you and your person
and your great power.
For Lord, you existed long before any of these things,
any of the space and time,
any of these created things, this created universe.
Lord, you have always existed.
You are eternal.
You stand outside of the world that you created.
And Lord, we thank you that you're a great God
that our minds cannot completely comprehend.
But Lord, you have revealed yourself to us in major ways.
And Lord, we do want for you to have the preeminent place
in our life above all other things.
As we look in your word in Genesis today
and other passages of
scripture, we pray that you would please give us understanding and wisdom. Lord, help me to say
just exactly what you'd have me to say and in the right tone and spirit and attitude
that you would have me to say it. Lord, please control the service, not only what I say, but also
the hearing of your people. Help them to receive your word and to receive it as it is in truth,
the word of God. We just commit the service to you. We ask your blessing and your help and your
grace in Jesus name. Amen. So in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2, you have kind of an overlapping
description, an overlapping account of what happened in the creation of mankind. Of course,
an overlapping account of what happened in the creation of mankind.
Of course, chapter 2 sort of summarizes, verse 7, verse 8, verse 9,
kind of summarize what we read in chapter 1.
And so we see that God made everything and all things in six days.
And on the sixth day, at the very, I guess toward the end of the day,
you might say, although we don't know the time,
the Lord made a man, a single individual. And he made the man, man was at that point perfectly innocent. He had no fault. He had no sin nature like we have, no desire for sin. He was just
perfectly innocent. And he was made in the image of God, the only creature in God's created world.
In fact, the only creature in God's universe, anywhere you go in the cosmos, as you might say,
the only one that is patterned after God's very nature, God's own nature.
And so God created a single man.
We all know that, right?
That's elementary to us.
And so God created a single man. We all know that, right? That's elementary to us.
And at the time that God, we see in verse 26, we see in chapter 2, verse 7,
when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and that man woke up, right, for the first time. He became a living soul. On earth, in all of God's created order, there was but two individuals, two people. There was God,
right? And he's actually outside of his created universe. And then there was the man. And these
two were all that existed concerning intelligent and intelligent, you might say personalities,
right? It was God and the man. That's important
for us to understand because Eve had not yet been created and the children had not yet come later,
you know, Cain and Abel and then later Seth. None of those had been created up to that point,
had been born. And so it's just God and Adam. And that's an important principle
for us to note, especially as we move forward. God and Adam. And that translates to you and that
translates to me in some way. And it always has. Every single individual. God, when you read the
scripture, you see that God often views people collectively. But that doesn't necessarily mean that God does not view us
individually. In fact, when you look, you go to the very end of the story, you see the judgment
at the great white throne before God's great white throne and the Lord Jesus on the throne
and each one of us standing before God as individuals,
not just as a part of a collective,
such as this church or as an American
or however we might define ourselves,
but we stand before God as individuals.
It started that way, it ends that way.
It kind of comes full circle.
And in some way, we are all like Adam in this way
in that we, it is as if it was just me and God
in our relationship to him, right?
The way we relate to him.
And that's the way it was here.
Now notice, I want you to see as we go down to verse number 16.
So when we're still in chapter 2, verse 16,
at this point still, Eve is not being created.
It's just Adam and his God and nothing else. Adam and his God and nothing else. Verse 15.
I'll read verse 15 to get the context. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Now we got to stop there. We can't go into verse number 18 quite yet.
So Eve is not being created, but yet before Eve is created, prior to her creation,
God gives a commandment. I say commandment in the singular because there were not commandments.
The law of God had not yet been given to man on Mount Sinai.
This is a single commandment,
and this commandment is not any of the big things,
you know, the top ticket items that we think of as bad things to do. This commandment regarded fruit, right?
That's it.
And so it tells us something about what sin is.
Sin is not something immoral.
Sin is a violation of God's
commandment, whether it be something we consider moral or something we don't consider moral. You
know what's happening in our world is that morality is constantly shifting, is it not?
It's like sand, sand dudes, constantly shifting with the winds of time and society and all that.
And so what was once immoral 50 or 100 years ago is no
longer considered moral by society, but God's commandments haven't changed. And so that's what
defines what is right and what is wrong and what is sinful and what is not sinful and what is
righteous, regardless of how man might interpret it. And in this case, we see a single command,
And in this case, we see a single command, which is in verse 16.
And verse 16 says, he commanded the man to eat of the trees,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.
For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
Just a single command, and the command dealt with mere obedience to God in what would be to us a kind of a trifling matter, not a serious matter, fruit.
What I want you to see here for the purposes of our study today is this, that this commandment
predated Eve's creation. This commandment was first. Before the woman was made, Adam was responsible to his God for God's commandment.
Before the woman ever came along. Because we know the woman's going to come along and her presence
there and her interaction and all of that is going to have an effect on how this all turns out when
we get to chapter three. But I want us all to see that
before there was ever a woman, and I could, by extension, I would say before there was a family,
before there was a wife, before there were children, before there were in-laws, before
there were cousins or aunts or uncles or grandparents, there was a man and his God.
There was a man and his God.
And that man, before any of that, was already responsible before God for this commandment.
So what does that tell us?
And this is so important for us to get.
This is why these looking at Genesis teaches us so much about what God's expectations of us are today.
Because nothing else existed.
Adam had no other relationship beside his relationship to God.
And because he had this relationship to God
prior to the creation of Eve,
Adam's first and highest relationship
was with his God.
Adam's first and highest relationship was with his God. Adam's first and highest relationship was with his God.
Because that relationship was before Eve came along, and it was before his children came along.
And so his relationship to his God overruled every relationship that he would have later
because it predated it, you see.
Let me ask you a question.
When Eve came along, did God's commandment to Adam change?
No.
When the children came along,
did God's commandments to Adam change?
No.
So those things, by the Lord issuing this commandment with the man, he's
obviously telling him his will. God is telling the man his will, but he's also making a statement
about priority. Before any other thing can come in, God says, right here, look at me. You see me?
You are responsible to me, first and foremost. Now, there's going to be a lot that's going to come
after. You think about the fall. I would say that this was a very simple life, wouldn't you?
Didn't have to worry about, you know, squabbles with your wife or chasing children around and
temper tantrums or in-laws or whatever, you know, whatever all the things in human relationships
that cause us, you know, grief.
None of that existed.
So God says, you are responsible to me.
I'm telling you right now.
The thing I want you to take away from this point is this,
that Adam was a creation of God first.
Adam was a creation of God first.
Adam was a creation of God first.
Before Adam was a husband,
before Adam was a father,
before Adam was a son-in-law or a grandparent,
like he would be later,
before Adam was a boss at a job, before Adam was a sibling, of course he would never
be a sibling, obviously. Before Adam was any of the other things that are good and right
relationships that we have with anyone. Before any of that, Adam was a creature of God. And
because of that, he was responsible to God first.
Now we're going to come at the very end of our study here, we're going to come full circle to that point.
So God gave him the commandment and God therefore required Adam to keep his commandment,
regardless of what would later happen, such as the creation of his wife and his relationship to her.
In other words, we see this, and it's indicated in Genesis 3, which we'll see in a second,
God expected Adam to pass this commandment on.
Obviously, Eve had not been created, so this commandment was given to Adam,
but it wasn't just Adam. The Lord expected Adam to pass it on, and he did.
Chapter 3, if you look at that, verse number 2,
the serpent comes, which is Satan embodied.
The serpent comes and says in verse number 2 of chapter 2,
And the woman said unto the serpent,
We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden,
but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,
God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it,
neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. Now we know she got the wording a little bit off, but she did get the gist of the commandment, right?
She knew there was a tree that wasn't allowed to be eaten from,
and she knew that there was a punishment attached to that.
Where did she hear that?
We don't know, but most likely it came from
Adam. The fact that Adam passed that along tells us that Adam knew he was still responsible for this,
even though Eve had come along. And he wanted to pass it on to her because obviously he cared about
her and wanted her to obey the Lord as well. So in this condition, so now you have Adam. Let me start
up. Now you have God and you have Adam, just them two. God gives a commandment. And now
God creates a woman, his wife, Eve. And in this condition, this condition we might say of innocency, this condition was great.
It was wonderful.
There were no conflicts, there were no issues, there were no problems
as it related to the commandment of God.
Because the only sin that existed at this point was the sin that God had forbidden.
Now, you might have a hard time understanding, well, if they had committed murder, but murder wasn't even a thing at this point, okay? So this condition was great, but when we get to
Genesis chapter 3, verse 6, Satan has entered into the picture. And when he entered into the picture, he put Adam in a very difficult place. Look at
verse number six. So he tempts Eve. I'll just read it just for verse number four through verse six.
And the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die. That's the first lie in scripture.
For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
That's the first deception in Scripture.
Verse 6,
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise,
she took of the fruit thereof and did eat,
and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.
Satan was very slick at this point.
You see, the devil, when the devil's trying to tempt man for the first time,
he's trying to introduce man to sin.
He doesn't go straight to the man.
He goes to the woman.
So what he's doing here,
beware, there's a reason why this is the first occurrence in the Bible of temptation.
You see the source of it, but you also see the method of it. There's a reason. The devil did
not go straight to the man and tempt him. He was wiser than that, if you want to say it like that. What he did is he made use of
another to tempt him. So what he did is he utilized a relationship that Adam had to kind of go around
the backside to tempt Adam in that way.
The result would be the same.
Adam would eat the fruit and thereby sin against God
and all the fallout from that.
But he didn't do it directly.
He went around the backside.
He flanked Adam.
The key thing is this.
This is the only human relationship that Adam has.
And this is a human relationship that Adam has from God.
This is not to say, well, that's the problem with being married.
You always got these problems.
No, no, no.
Marriage is honorable.
Marriage is good.
Marriage is right.
That is a good thing.
And we should, listen, I know marriages have problems. Everybody, every marriage has problems. If somebody tells you there aren't
problems, they don't know what they're talking about or they're lying. All marriages have issues.
So it's not easy, but it's still good and it's still right. And we should honor, right? Can I
get a nod? We should honor marriage as a holy and righteous and honorable institution because it is.
That means we ought to be faithful to our wives and love our wives and be faithful to our husbands and love our husbands.
Just like in the vows, right?
It's an honorable institution, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have issues and problems.
It did for Adam and Eve.
doesn't mean it doesn't have issues and problems. It did for Adam and Eve. The devil used this good relationship to tempt Adam to sin against God. Do you think he's not going to do that now?
Oh, yes, he does. The devil will use every relationship you have to tempt you to sin against
God. He'll do the same for me. He'll use your relationship with
your spouse. He'll use your relationship with your children. He'll use your relationship with
your parents. He'll use your relationship with your in-laws. He'll use your relationship at your
job. He'll use every human relationship that you have to tempt you to sin. He'll use that as an
avenue.
It doesn't mean the relationship is bad.
You just got to be aware that he's been doing this a long time.
He really has.
You see, the devil wanted to use Adam's relationship with Eve
to exert influence on Adam in the temptation.
So here's the question I have for you.
Can everybody just kind of give me a nod so I know everybody's on the same page.
Everybody see what I'm saying here, how the devil used this relationship, right?
I just can't emphasize this enough.
Eve was God's gift to Adam.
It was perfect.
Eve was a perfect woman, taken from his bone of his bones,
flesh of his flesh. There was nothing at all wrong with Eve, right? There was nothing at all wrong with Adam. This was God's idea. Adam wasn't like, you know, it'd be great if I had a woman. He didn't
have a concept of what a woman was. Now, once he saw her, he was glad that he knew what a woman was, I'm sure, when God brought his wife to him. But he didn't know that he had a need.
It was God's idea. Marriage was God's idea. A wife was God's idea. And God gave a gift to Adam. Did
you know that that's exactly how the Bible describes marriage in the New Testament. Paul says it in the midst of that discussion in 1 Corinthians about whether a man should not get a wife or should take a wife because of
the present distress this mentioned, although it's not named. Did you know he says, but God gives some men
gifts, some after this manner and some after that. You know what he's referring to? Some of you are familiar with that passage. He's talking about your wife. He's talking about your wife.
Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtain favor of the Lord.
So if you're married, you have a gift. We should therefore treat our wives as gifts of God.
In the same way, in the same is true of our children.
Children are in heritage of the Lord.
It's the same principle in both.
So this was God's idea.
God brought this perfect gift to Adam.
So you can't say,
well, all of this happened
because of the fact that Adam was married.
He tried to blame Eve in that way,
but that didn't hold water. So now Satan has gone through Eve. Now, I want you to get with me to
verse number six. I'll read it again. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that
it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit Stop there.
At that point in the verse,
she took of the fruit thereof and did eat.
I imagine, although I can't prove this,
I imagine that Eve was probably not with Adam
when that happened.
Adam was tending to the garden.
I don't know, he was pruning something
or picking fruit or whatever he was doing. He wasn't with Eve. I imagine Adam being a man in
innocence, he probably would have spoken up if he had heard the devil so flagrantly tempt Eve
to violate God's commandments. But so we assume, I assume Adam was not there.
Eve has taken this fruit now and she's picked the fruit off the tree and she has
eaten it. Now look at where you're at in that story. Now you have a woman who has sinned against God,
but her husband has not. Now you have a woman who has sinned against God, but her husband has not.
At this point in the verse. Now here's the question I want to ask you,
and I'm going somewhere with this, so hang with me. What did God expect Adam to do at that point?
What was God's expectation of Adam at that moment? When Adam comes and he sees maybe Eve holding the fruit,
whatever kind of fruit it was,
with bite marks, a chunk bitten out of it.
When Adam comes upon that scene and he sees that fruit,
what does God want him to do?
Because at this point, Eve has sinned, Adam is still innocent.
This is an important question.
Adam is still innocent? This is an important question.
You see, some people have, you know, thought through this and have made the case,
or tried to anyway, that Adam partook of the fruit with his wife out of love for his wife. And therefore, it was somehow noble
because he saw, he knew the punishment
that his wife would have to bear eating the fruit.
And so out of just love for his wife,
he did not, I've heard someone say,
he did not want her to die alone.
So he nobly took of the fruit with her
and ate the fruit with her out of love for her.
The Bible didn't say that.
Just reading into it a little bit, you would agree.
But some people have described it like that.
Now I agree, Adam was in a difficult place.
But eating that fruit was absolutely not noble.
It was not noble.
It was disobedient.
And it was sinful.
Why?
Think about it.
I'll say this.
Adam did not give his life for his wife.
That is a complete misunderstanding of this passage.
He did not give his life for his wife.
There's only one person that would give his life for his wife,
and that was Jesus.
Jesus would give his life for Eve.
Isn't that amazing?
For Eve and Adam, Jesus would come many years later
and would give his life in exchange for their souls.
That's what he would do.
He would bear that sin upon his body on the tree that they might be forgiven.
That's what actually happened.
But Adam could not do that.
Because Adam, in innocency, was not righteous.
He was just without sin.
Innocency was not righteous.
He was just without sin.
So he didn't give his life for his wife.
What Adam actually did in eating that fruit from Eve is he sinned and rebelled against God
because of his wife.
That's what he did.
This is not noble.
That's not what nobility looks like.
This is disobedient.
Look, if you hold your place here, we'll come back in just a minute.
1 Timothy chapter 2.
I want you to see it.
1 Timothy chapter 2.
Verse number 14.
Verse Timothy 2, start in verse 13.
Verse Timothy 2, verse 13.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve,
we've already covered that,
and Adam was not deceived,
but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Adam was not deceived.
There was no trickery involved.
What Adam did, he knew full well what he was doing.
I don't know why Adam ate that fruit.
You don't either.
Nobody knows why he did that.
He might have done it because he loved Eve. He might have done it because he loved Eve.
He might have done it because he didn't want her to be alone.
He might have done it because he thought the same thoughts that Eve thought.
He didn't believe the devil.
He wasn't deceived.
He knew better, right?
But it is not noble.
It is not noble to sin for your family. That's what you see here. Because remember that Adam's relationship to God predated Eve. The commandment of God to Adam predated Eve. See,
Adam's relationship to God was supposed to be the first and highest in his
life no matter what. And yet now what is happening? Adam has now put his relationship with his wife
above his relationship with his God. This is what is happening to Adam.
And the reality is, notwithstanding how people have described it
as some kind of nobility,
the evil of that decision is evident
in what we know to come in God's response to his sin.
Did God say, oh, Adam, you've sinned,
but because you did so nobly
and you don't want your wife to die alone,
I'm not going to punish you.
No.
What God said he did.
But what's interesting, look back at Genesis chapter three, verse number six.
Look at what it says.
At the end of the verse, and he did eat and gave also and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her and she did eat. Verse seven.
Notice verse seven.
The eyes of them both were opened and and they knew that they were naked,
and they sewed fig leaves together, and it goes on.
That did not happen till Adam ate the fruit, till both ate the fruit.
I don't want to read too much into that, but there's a lesson there.
But what I want you to see is that the sin ball started rolling when Adam sinned.
And God judges Adam and Eve because of this sin,
regardless of the reasons, because God, listen now please,
God expected, our Lord expected that Adam
and his relationship to God be supreme in his life above the relationship with his own wife.
Again, Adam was first and foremost a creation of God before Adam was a husband.
Well, someone might say, well, God gave me my wife and I don't disagree well God gave me my children
I also don't disagree well God gave me my job and I don't disagree all of those things are true
but all the good things that God gives us and all the blessings that God gives us,
you know, the chief blessings in our lives
are our relationships.
If you're married, the chief blessing in your life
is your relationship with your spouse.
You know what?
That's supposed to be supreme
to your relationship with your children.
Do you know that?
It is.
But above that is supposed to be your relationship to God.
Because you and I are responsible to the Lord above all, above all.
So we can't say, how dare we?
Really, how insulting to God's blessings to look at the blessings that God has given us
and dare say something like,
well, I'm going to,
I'm going to just, I'm going to go ahead and do this thing that I know God doesn't want me to do
that violates God's word. I'm going to do that. Well, because my, you know, my wife or because of my,
my child or because of my, you know, job, they, they make me, I have to do it. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's actually, you don't have to look any further than that. Look at
verse 12. And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, this is the explanation to
God. She gave me of the tree and I did eat. Of course, we know man just shifted the blame to Eve,
but what's more insulting in that comment is the fact that he is blaming God's blessing for his putting that blessing above the Lord.
You see, God did not give us these blessings.
The Lord did not give you your relationship with your wife, with your children, with your job, with your in-laws,
with any human relationship that you might have.
He did not give those things to us,
though they are gifts and blessings,
he did not give them to us to displace himself
as the first and highest relationship in our life.
He gave those blessings to us to be enjoyed
within the right priority in our life,
in the proper order.
And the moment that that gets out of order,
we're gonna have problems.
The Lord expects, just like he did with Adam,
he expects himself and his commandments
and his words to be at the top.
Can I get a nod?
That's what the Lord expects.
Can I get a nod?
That's what the Lord expects.
So what was the end of this event with Adam and Eve?
You might think, well, Adam did that for his wife,
and so that was a noble thing to do,
and he didn't want her to die alone,
and so he went ahead and did it.
Yeah, it wasn't the right thing to do,
but, you know, it'll all wash out. It'll all come out in the wash. It did. And Adam and Eve, as a married couple, did not come out on top as a result of Adam's choice. Because they did not come out on top through Adam's idolizing of his wife above God, being willing to sin for her sake.
He did not come out on top. Because of their sin, they, Adam and Eve, were plunged into a wicked
condition, a sinful state that would bring great harm upon both of them and all human marriages to follow. So listen, sir, listen, ma'am, if you think,
listen, if we think that we're going to have a relationship and we're going to allow, and this
is so, we're talking about marriage here. You might think, well, you're not really, you're not
really saying good things about marriage and family and that. I thought this was supposed to
be about family. But listen, the very first thing we've got to get is,
and I want you to get it, you are a Christian first.
Your family cannot enjoy the blessings of God
unless your relationship to God
is at the top of the pile at all times.
You can't have a right relationship with your wife
or your husband.
You can't have a right relationship with your children
or your in-laws or your people at work
if those things are put on the top
because it will lead you into sin.
Indeed, it is sin.
The only way that you can have a right relationship
with all of your human, in your family,
is if the Lord is at the very tippity top.
It must be.
Anything else is out of order.
And also, this is what the Lord expects.
But how often?
How often is it that through the influence
of our family members, people we love,
people who are gifts of God,
we're willing to just temporarily
perhaps let them sit on the seat at the top. I want to speak to husbands right now, but it's
true of every relationship. It doesn't matter if you're a child. Children are not required to obey their parents no matter what.
They're required to obey their parents in the Lord.
God is above all.
A parent has no power.
Listen, if you're a parent,
I don't know the background of everybody in here,
but I'll say this.
If you're a parent and you're trying to do something
or leading or tempting your child to do something that is evil,
you are wicked.
And you need to repent. And God is going to judge you for that.
And furthermore, the Lord does not expect our children to obey in sin. We have no power
as parents. We have no power to lead our children to sin and expect them to obey.
But listen, gentlemen who have wives, listen, as a husband, as a father,
God has to be on the top of your pile. He has to be supreme.
And there are times in every family
where father, where dad, where husband has to say,
I'm not doing that.
We are not doing that.
I will go no further.
I will not sin against my God for you.
It's so sad, but do you know that the reason,
and just to tie this up,
that's also true of the ladies with their husbands.
It is perfectly biblical to say to your husband,
I'm not gonna sin against God for you.
It is perfectly legitimate to say that.
But how sad it is that our relationships,
the devil has so used those,
that the blessings of our life are now the sources of temptation.
That is so sad.
But you know what it is?
It is all a result of that first time it happened.
It really is.
It's all downstream of all that happened in Genesis 1, 2, and 3.
And some of the fiercest and most difficult temptations
we'll ever face will be temptations related
to our relationships in our family.
You see, putting your spouse or putting your children
in the Lord's place will ultimately bring harm to everyone.
It might seem like an easy way out, but it'll ultimately bring harm to everyone. I have a whole other passage of scripture I want to go to. I just
don't have time. All right, let's go to Luke chapter two, if you would. We're going to flip through a few verses and we'll be finished. Luke chapter two.
I'll just repeat. The only way that we can have a right relationship with our family
is if we first have a right relationship with our family is if we first have a right relationship
with our Lord and Savior. Luke 2, verse number 49, our Lord as a child illustrated this truth.
Let's look at what verse 49 says. Jesus has been left behind in Jerusalem.
Joseph and his mother come back to find him and verse 48, And when they saw him, they were amazed.
And his mother said unto him,
Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
Casting blame upon Jesus.
Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
And he said unto them,
How is it that ye sought me?
I'll add a little bit of emphasis.
It's not in the text, but I think you'll understand.
Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?
What do you see here? You keep reading and you see that Jesus was subject unto them in verse 51.
So he did obey Joseph and Mary, but at the point at which his relationship to his father
came into conflict, he says, why didn't you know I would obey my father? You see, his father
was at the very top. You see this? Look at Luke chapter 8. Luke chapter 8.
Luke 8, verse 20.
And it was told him, told Jesus by certain which said,
Thy mother and thy brethren stand without desiring to see thee.
And he answered and said unto them,
My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it.
You know, this is a tough couple of verses, is it not? Have you ever read these and scratched your head
and thought, I just don't know if I get that.
I admit, I don't understand the breadth of this verse,
but I can tell you one thing.
There is no question that the Lord Jesus
puts his relationship to his father
above the relationship, his natural relationships.
We can at least agree on that, can we not?
He says, I'm about, essentially,
I'm about my father's business right now.
That comes first.
That's what he's doing.
And I know, listen, I'm aware
that some people have abused this.
I know some preachers have abused it.
And it puts so many burdens on husbands, right?
And upon wives that they need to be doing this and doing that
and laying burdens on men
to the point that their families are disintegrating.
But what the preacher says is not what God says.
We're talking about the commandments of the Lord
as recorded in scripture,
not the preacher saying, would you clean the
church or will you do this, will you do that and go there and go there. Look at Luke 14.
Luke 14, verse 26.
These are hard words.
These are hard words.
Verse number 26, Jesus says, If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters,
yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. The thought might cross our minds.
I don't like that verse. It kind of grates on me a little bit, but it's there.
You know that the core, again, this is not a verse we can maybe get our brain all the way around,
but one thing we can take away, who does Jesus expect to be at the top of the pile?
Jesus.
See that?
At a minimum, we can say that.
Above father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters, and one's own life.
children, brethren, sisters, and one's own life.
Look at 1 Corinthians.
We'll go to this last passage here and we'll be finished.
1 Corinthians chapter 9.
1 Corinthians chapter 9. Paul is speaking of his rights as an apostle,
his rights as a man,
his rights for various things.
Verse 5, 1 Corinthians 9, 5.
He says this,
Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife,
as well as other apostles,
and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?
Now this is just a little tidbit.
Notice what it says.
Power to lead about a sister, a wife.
Paul is saying basically,
do I not have a right to get married if I want to?
That's what he's saying, right?
But notice how he defines it.
He says, a sister, a wife.
He's not talking about two things.
He's talking about the same thing,
which is saying marrying another believer.
But notice the relationship.
The relationship between Paul,
that Paul's referring to with a wife,
he's saying, first a sister, then a wife.
Listen, gentlemen,
before you're married to your wife,
you're married to your sister in Christ.
And you and I better treat them
as sisters in Christ first
with the love and the honor
that Christ expects us to give to one another.
You see, what happens is, and you all know it's true,
those of you that are married,
those of you that have kids know how this works.
We get married and we have this natural, right?
This natural relationship, this human relationship
and we start to have a double standard. And the way we treat our spouse and our children is not scriptural. In other words,
we're not following God's commandments in that relationship. We have another set of rules for
that relationship and a different set of rules for our religious relationships. No, no, no.
religious relationships. No, no, no. You're a Christian first. You're a Christian first before your husband, before your wife. You're a Christian and she's a Christian. You're a Christian and those kids are little Christians or potential Christians, hopefully later. yourself within your family according to the principles of Scripture and the commands of God
within that relationship. It's first. You know what you'll find? If you do that and you put God's
commandments at the very tippity top, what you'll find is your relationships will also be right
and good and healthy because God's commandments are at the top. You say, well, that's different.
It's my wife. That's my husband.
This is the reason there's a lot of bitterness and anger within marriages, a lot of dissension.
There's no way to reconcile and deal with problems. This is the reason, because we have a double standard. In other words, we don't deal with things scripturally when we're talking to
our kids or our husband or wife. We don't deal with it scripturally. What we do is we deal with
it humanly, naturally, and it falls apart. You know why? Because that's what God said.
If we take scripture and put it into the relationship and we acknowledge, Lord,
I want to follow your word in this relationship because I want you to be at the top,
what we would find is our relationships would get better. Our families would be better,
at the top. What we would find is our relationships would get better. Our families would be better,
closer, more loving, more kind, more unified. Problems would get resolved easier. It doesn't make it easy, but it would get better, right? Because the Lord tells us how to deal with issues.
I just want you to remember, before you were married, you were a Christian.
After your spouse goes to Jesus, you'll still be a Christian.
Before your kids came, you were a Christian.
After your kids are gone, you'll still be a Christian.
That's why the Lord has to be at the top.
His commandments at the top.
His commandments, a part, a vital part
of your relationships together.
And that'll help us have stronger families
because our relationship with God is stronger.
Let's pray.