Well, tonight as we have our Bible study we return to the third chapter of Genesis, and the 16th Verse. We are looking at the series on origins. As I mentioned to you a few weeks ago, looks like I am going to develop a book, at least on the first couple of chapters on origins. And who knows? In the future we may address these issues as well. And the reason they’re so important is because they frame up a proper and accurate world view. You cannot understand why things are the way they are in the world unless you understand these early chapters in the word of God.
Now, as we said last time in introducing the section where God curses the woman, Verse 16, as we said last time, the plight of women in the world is very hard throughout human history. For most of the world’s women, it is still very hard. There is, of course, a general hardness of life produced by sin, and that everybody experiences; men and women and boys and girls, everybody. We all suffer the consequences of the fall, which generally are weakness, danger, disaster, disease and death. We all experience measures of sadness and sorrow and disappointment and unfulfillment and loss and heartbreak, et cetera. We all know all of those things. Those are general areas of the curse that fell when man sinned.
But beyond those general consequences, which everybody experiences to one degree or another, God pointed out some special judgments. In addition to the general hardness of life caused by sin, God placed a special consequence, a unique judgment on the woman and on all women, and on the man and on all men. The judgment on the woman because of her sin in the garden is in Verse 16. “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain and your conception,’” literally. “‘In pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’” And what I told you last time I repeat just by way of introduction. Women were cursed to suffer in the two relationships that most define their life; that is, relationships to children and to husbands. Those really are the two realms in which women generally find their life. And through all the ages women have suffered uniquely in those relationships.
While there is a measure of joy there, it is those relationships that bring upon women their most consistent and intimate trouble. All the dangers and pains of pregnancy, all the dangers and pains of child birth, and particularly through centuries and centuries of time when there wasn’t the modern medicine and the modern care. And beyond just the pain of child birth and the danger of bearing children, there is all the disappointment and all the sorrow and all the sadness that comes from the lives their children live and from those things that threaten their well-being. Throughout most of history before this century just past, the 20th century, women lived with suffering and sorrow in great measure connected to their child bearing. And still today, there is a measure of that pain. Most of the suffering today in the modern world with the benefit of medicine has reached its pinnacle, perhaps comes in the sorrow and the suffering that comes after child birth, as we struggle seeing our children fall into sin and disappoint us.
Why is it that women suffer? Well, it is according to this verse that they suffer, because God said: “‘I will greatly multiply your pain and conception. In pain you shall bring forth children.’” You remember that God said, when Adam and Eve sinned, if you sin if you eat the — of the tree that I told you not to eat, you’re going to die. This was true. And death did come to Adam and Eve, as God had promised. But they were still to populate the world. Back in Chapter 2 Verses 16 and 17 they originally told them, “Be fruitful and multiply,” populate the world. So in spite of the sin and death, marriage would continue and families would continue. The race would survive, though every member in it would die and then be replaced by someone else. So that the domain of women would still be the home, the children and the husband. And when you come to Titus Chapter 2, Paul says that: “Older women” should teach younger women primarily to do two things, “love their husbands and love their children.” They are instructed to be keepers at home, to provide for their husbands and to provide for their children. These then have continued to be the trouble spots as well as the points of joy in the life of women.
I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand. But obviously, you all, all of you married women, all of you who have mothered children could say you have experienced suffering, you have experienced sorrow because of your children and because of your husbands. Just the sinful reality of your children and the sinful reality of your husband is enough to bring a measure of trouble into your own life. Feminists in the modern world, of course, damn husbands collectively as abusers and inhibitors of women. They disdain marriage, they celebrate childlessness, and they advocate lesbianism as the ultimate assault on men. But in spite of such efforts, it’s amazing that women continue to be naturally drawn and necessarily drawn to husbands and to children as the source of their fulfillment and their joy, even though they know those are the realms in which there is the potential of the greatest pain and sorrow. They’re still drawn there, almost inexorably, because that’s the way God made them. They find their greatest hope in marriage and in child bearing. And so even when the culture has disdain for it, and even when they are told that men will be their enemy and the source of their disappointment and abuse, and children will bring them grief, they find themselves magnetically, inexorably attracted to that environment nevertheless. And that is because it is part of their created make-up.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
