Adam, Where Are You?

Jesus once said, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old” (Matt. 13:52). I believe this teaches us that the minister of the gospel must preach Christ the treasure from the Old and the New Testaments. Jesus also declared that the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms all spoke of him, declaring that Christ had to die and be raised from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins may be proclaimed in his name to all nations (Luke 24:44–47).

Today, then, we want to speak from Genesis 3 about the problem of feminism, which has caused great destruction in the world since the Fall. The title is, “Adam, Where Are You?” We could ask: “Steve, Don, Greg, Joe, where are you? You are the husband, the leader, the ruler God appointed for your family. Where are you?” That is the question that should ring in the ears of every man today.

One example of the destruction caused by the feminist agenda is abortion. Forty years ago, on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court gave women the sole right and authority to kill their babies in the womb. So far American women have killed about 55 million babies. A great sin has been committed in this country. The wrath of God is upon us. We are paying for our sins, and we shall continue to do so. Yet I can say with confidence that no child of a true Christian woman has been aborted. So Christians who are opposed to abortion are celebrating this Sunday as the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, in protest of the evil of abortion.

We want to examine two points from Genesis 3: first, our problem in the first Adam (the problem of sin, guilt, death, and hell; the problem of being under the wrath of God), and, second, God’s solution to our problem. That solution comes to us in the second Adam, Jesus Christ.

I.Our Problem in the First Adam

Feminism is as old as the Fall recorded in Genesis 3. The real cause of feminism was the failure of Adam to rule for God with the help of his God-built and God-given wife Eve. In Genesis 3:9 God asked Adam, “Where are you?” Adam became a rebel and an enemy of God in his failure to rule, and in his failure to love and shield his wife from the seduction of the devil. In this passage we see Eve being deceived by the devil, who appears in the form of an erect, very crafty serpent.

Feminism is a total reversal of the kingdom of God, of the divine order God gives in his word. God is the head of man and man is the head of woman. That has been the divine order from the beginning.In this passage, though, we see Satan acting as the head of the woman, and the woman as the head of man, even though woman was created after man, from man, and for man (Gen. 2:20–23).

In the garden of Eden, we do not hear the voice of Adam. We hear the voice of the devil and we hear the woman responding to the old devil. We hear the serpent questioning and injecting doubt into the heart of Eve: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1).

God was very generous with Adam and Eve. They could eat from any tree except one—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was only this one prohibition to demonstrate who was the Sovereign. Man is a creature, in spite of all his fantasy of deification. And after Adam sinned, man is still a creature, but now a fallen, sinful creature.

Was not Adam in the garden while the serpent was tempting Eve with questions, demonic declarations, and nullifications of God’s word? Indeed, he was. So we read, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Gen. 3:6). Adam was there, but he was silent. He was invisible and passive. He had abandoned his post as the ruler.

Adam, where are you? We do not hear his voice rebuking the serpent. It was Adam who had named all the livestock, as well as the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. This meant Adam possessed authority to rule over all the living creatures, including this strange, speaking serpent. He was also the one who named Eve. So in God’s order, Adam was the head of the woman. Adam, therefore, had the primary responsibility to rule in behalf of God. He was supposed to deal with the devil and cast him out of the garden.

Adam was tested in the most favorable circumstances, yet he failed the test. It was this failure that gave rise to feminism. Feminism is not seeking just equality with men; it is seeking headship of woman over man and God. In opposition to God’s order, under feminism, man is to be subject to the woman.

So we must ask with God: Adam, where are you? Why were you not at your post? Why was your voice not heard, though you were with your wife all along? Why did you ignore the sovereign God and his gracious word to you?

God created man and woman as equal in their persons and dignity, even as all the Persons of the Godhead, in the essential Trinity, are equal in glory and power. Man and woman are also equal in their salvation. Their role differences exist only in this life; in heaven, they shall be like angels (Luke 20:36). The subordination of woman to man, therefore, is applicable only in this age. In redemption, the order at the beginning is restored. So if you are redeemed, then understand man is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of man.

Let us, then, examine several texts, first from the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis 3, and I will make several statements about them.

Genesis 3:1–17

1. In this passage, we see that Adam became a rebel. He was not deceived as Eve was. He sinned deliberately against God.
2. Eve was deceived by the crafty serpent. The devil is a liar and the father of all lies. Any negation of the word of God comes from the devil himself. Look at the history of interpretation of the Bible. Liberal churches abandoned what the Scriptures teach. We are in this morally terrible condition at this time in this country because of the failure of churches that rejected the authority and the truthfulness of the Bible.
3. The devil appears as a fallen angelic being because he acts as an enemy of God. Prior to man’s fall, the devil and his demons fell.
4. Before man’s fall, the serpent, who is a kind of an incarnation of the devil, was erect and speaking lies against God. After he was cursed by God, he began to crawl in the dust and exited from the garden.
5. Eve was to function under Adam as his helpmeet, which means as one answerable to Adam. But she acted independently of her husband and ruled over him. The tragedy today is that modern husbands have become very happy in the role of being passive.
6. Adam obeyed his wife as her subordinate, but he did not obey God.
7. Adam and Eve saw God as their enemy and the serpent as their friend and benefactor.
8. God’s authority always integrates and unifies a family. But the devil’s authority disintegrates and scatters, which results in fights and divorces.
9. There are only two wills in this fallen world: the will of God and the will of devil. Therefore, there are only two peoples: the people of God and the people of the devil.
10. Obedience to God results in blessing—in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Slavery to the devil results in misery and eternal pain.
11. God’s word is truth and proves true in life.
12. The devil always negates and nullifies God’s word. He told the woman, “You shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), although God had said, “You will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). In the Hebrew it is, “Dying, you will die.” It is very certain, in other words. Adam’s sin brought about death, as God threatened. So we read, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
13. Sin brought guilt, fear, flight, shame, anxiety, and death.
14. Adam and Eve failed to confess their sin when they were given an opportunity to do so. Instead, they blamed God and others.
15. Adam and Eve resorted to self-atonement, covering themselves with self-made fig-leaf contraptions.
16. After eating of the fruit, Adam and Eve did not become like God, as Satan declared they would. Rather, they became fallen and dying creatures. They became non posse non peccare (meaning they could only sin).
17. Adam and Eve sought to gain wisdom through transgression. But true wisdom, which God alone gives, will keep us from sinning. “Fear God and shun evil” (Job 28:28).
18. After they fell, all Adam and Eve’s fantasies of becoming like God ended and reality came. They were expelled from the garden as fallen humans, not self-determining and self-sufficient gods.
19. When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost their glory. Their nakedness was showing
20. Adam, the silent husband, saw and heard and agreed with the counsel of the devil. He ate what his wife gave him, and they died. Consider the comments of two scholars on Genesis 3:6. Raymond C. Ortlund says:
    

    Eve usurped Adam’s headship and led the way into sin. And Adam, who (it seems) had stood by passively, allowing the deception to progress without decisive intervention—Adam, for his part, abandoned his post as head. Eve was deceived; Adam forsook his responsibility. Both were wrong and together they pulled the human race down into sin and death.¹

    George W. Knight speaks also on Genesis 3:6:

    It is obvious from the text that Eve encouraged wrongdoing when she gave Adam the fruit. It is equally obvious that she takes the leadership role in that activity and that Adam simply follows her leadership. She allows herself to be drawn into the role of spokesman by the serpent. She does not turn to her husband, from whom she had received God’s command, to ask him about what God had said and meant by His command, but rather acted unilaterally in opposition to the command that her husband had given her. . . . The fact that Adam was following Eve’s leadership and not simply being deceived is borne out by Paul’s inspired evaluative statement in 1 Timothy 2:14 that “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived.” Thus it seems appropriate to say that God’s first comment to Adam, “because you listened to your wife” (Gen. 3:17), is a rebuke to Adam for his failure to carry out his God-ordained leadership role.²

21. The only hope of Adam and Eve, and of all fallen humans, is the promised Seed of the woman, the Son of the virgin Mary, who could clothe them with his own righteousness. He alone is able to crush the head of the devil by his own atoning death on the cross.

Genesis 16:1–6

Another Old Testament text we want to consider is Genesis 16:1–6. Note the old feminism in the life of Sarai. She blamed God for her barrenness. She blamed God for failing to fulfill the promise of giving many children to Abram. Now she is seventy-five, and he is eighty-five. They have lived in Canaan for ten years. So we read: “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.’ Abram agreed to what Sarai said” (Gen. 16:1–2).

Sarai was saying, “You know, God told us certain things, but he has failed.” Certainly she recalled God’s earlier promises to Abram: ” I will make you into a great nation” (Gen. 12:2); “I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth” (Gen. 13:16). And in Genesis 15:4–5 we read, “Then the word of the LORD came to [Abram]: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’”

What happened? In Sarai’s mind, God failed to deliver. So Sarai took control of the situation. She ordered her husband to go unto Hagar and have a son through her. This was not unusual. Surrogate motherhood for infertile wives was an accepted legal custom at that time. We see it also in the life of Rachel, who told Jacob, “Here is Bilhah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family” (Gen. 30:3).

Sarai was saying, “God, if you are not going to do it, I will do it.” Sarai wanted to build a family herself because God has failed to do it so far. But, Sarai, did you hear what God himself says? “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). Vanity and futility result when we make decisions based on our own understanding in opposition to the Bible. Sarai wanted to build. She was leaning onto her own wisdom. She was not acting in faith. (PGM) And because she was not acting by faith in God’s promise, her building would fall with a great crash.

Sarai was doing her own thing.She was sinning. She ordered Abram around, and he obeyed her, just as Adam obeyed Eve when he ate the forbidden fruit. All this was a reversal of the kingdom of God order: God, man, woman. It is now reversed to devil, woman, man.

The result of Sarai’s sin was also pain and misery. There is pleasure of sin for a moment; then comes eternal pain. When we sin, do we ever consider that our children and children’s children for generations to come will suffer for that sin? The Bible says we must pay for our sins. But people do not think about it. And everyone else connected with them also suffers. The devil prevents us from seeing those eternal consequences.

Sarai’s actions are another example of feminism. And notice, as in Genesis 3, there was no divine intervention warning them not to sin. God permitted Abram and Sarai to sin and experience pain. He does not always intervene. He lets us sin when we reject God’s perfect will as revealed in the holy Scriptures.

1 Kings 21:1–16

The third Old Testament text we want to look at is 1 Kings 21:1–16. Here we find King Ahab sulking because Naboth refused to sell his vineyard to him. But Ahab’s feminist wife Jezebel says she will take care of her husband’s problem:

His wife Jezebel came in and asked him, “Why are you so sullen? Why won’t you eat?” He answered her, “Because I said to Naboth the Jezreelite, ‘Sell me your vineyard; or if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard in its place.’ But he said, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” Jezebel his wife said, “Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I’ll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.” (1 Kings 21:5–7)

Jezebel ordered the elders to kill Naboth for a trumped-up charge of cursing God and the king. So they killed the true Israelite, Naboth. Then Jezebel came to the king and ordered him. “As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, ‘Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to sell you. He is no longer alive, but dead.’ When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he got up and went down to take possession of Naboth’s vineyard” (1 Kings 21:15–16).

Amos 4:1

The fourth text is Amos 4:1: “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, ‘Bring us some drinks!’” Amos the prophet called the upper-class women of Samaria “cows of Bashan.” Bashan was the area northeast of the Sea of Galilee. There was plenty of grass there that cows can eat and be sleek.

The wealthy women of Samaria were very pampered. They were the daughters of Jezebel, figuratively speaking. They were bold feminists who oppressed the poor and crushed the needy to increase their wealth.They were in control. So Amos tells us they were ordering their husbands (in Hebrew, their “lords”), “Bring us some drinks!” Wives order and men obey. Such old feminism continues through history.

Jeremiah 44:19

The fifth text is Jeremiah 44:19. When Jerusalem finally fell to Babylon as prophesied by the holy prophets, the people still refused to repent. These women challenged the prophet, “When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes like her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?” (Jer. 44:19). In other words, they were stating that their husbands complied with their worship of the Queen of Heaven.

These women were saying, “If only we had served the Queen of Heaven, we would not have suffered this defeat. We want to worship, not the true and living God, but Ishtar—the Babylonian goddess of fertility, the Queen of Heaven. We did so in the past, and our husbands complied with our plan and purpose.”

The feminism of Genesis 3 continues to our day. Only in redemption is God’s order as in the beginning restored. Let us then look at some New Testament texts.

1 Corinthians 11:3

Here we find the order: God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of a Christian woman. So we read, “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”

1 Peter 3:1–7

Peter tells wives, “Be submissive to your husbands,” two times in 1 Peter 3:1–7. A Christian woman should be beautiful in heart, because God looks at the heart. Men look at outward things; God looks at the heart. Be holy women. Put your hope in God. Be like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham. The word for “obey” in this passage ishupakouô. The same word is used in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents.”

Peter also says, “Sarah called him Kurios, Lord.” Gilbert Bilezikian, an evangelical feminist, calls this statement about Sarah obeying Abraham and calling him “Lord” a joke. This is what he says: “The use of Sarah as an example of obedience show that Peter was not devoid a sense of humor.”³ Bilezikian also refers to Abraham’s obeying Sarah’s order to go unto Hagar as a positive example of a husband’s obeying his wife.⁴ This is sheer stupidity.

1 Timothy 2:11–15

In this passage Paul says he does not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man (i.e., in the home and in the church) because Adam was formed first. Elsewhere we read that Eve was made afterwards, from Adam and for Adam, as a helpmeet (Gen. 2:20–23). Additionally, Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned deliberately. But in redemption, the order before the Fall is restored: God, man, wife. Let us seek first the kingdom rule, which alone results in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

This passage prohibits the ordination of women. The Roman Catholic church is right on this point and also right in their opposition to feminist abortion agenda.

Ephesians 5:18–33

This passage is the constitution of Christian marriage and family. So we read, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Eph. 5:22–24). And in verse 33 we read, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Earlier in this chapter, every believer is commanded to be being filled with the Holy Spirit, that is, continuously, daily, moment-by-moment (5:18). That is the key to living the Christian life. Every believer must worship God in spirit and in truth. Submission to one’s husband in everything is impossible without the Holy Spirit’s power and enlightenment. To love one’s wife as Christ loved the church by dying for her salvation is impossible unless one is continually filled with the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit is to be ruled by the Spirit through his word and power.

II.The Problem Solved by the Second Adam

In Adam all became sinners and all die. We are conceived in sin, born in sin with a sin nature, and daily practice sin. We are by nature enemies of God. We are pervasively sinful, as described in Genesis 6: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and how every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5). This is total depravity.

The wrath of God abides upon every sinner. All people are hell-bound. Kings and slaves, rich and poor, men and women and children, scientists, philosophers, and all—there is no difference. Every descendant of Adam is a sinner.

The question is, is there any hope for sinners? Can sinners be saved from God’s wrath? Yes, there is good news for all sinners.

Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Seed of the woman, the Son of virgin Mary—succeeded. It is he who said, “Here I am; it is written about me in the Bible: ‘I have come to do thy will, O God’” (Ps. 40:6–8).

As Deity clothed in human flesh, Jesus, unlike Adam, was tested in the most unfavorable circumstances—in the wilderness, by the devil. Yet he fully obeyed God by living by his Father’s word. He said, “It is written.” He said, “Thy will be done.” He said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” And he taught us to pray, “Thy will be done.” He himself prayed that prayer in Gethsemane and went to the cross to die for our sins.

No fig-leaf contraption can cover our nakedness from the piercing gaze of our God. But the blood of Jesus shed on the cross does cover it. Christ is our atonement, our propitiation. Yea, he is our redemption, our justification, our sanctification, and our glorification. So we are clothed now, not in a fig-leaf apron, and not even in animal skins, but in the perfect, unimpeachable, divine righteousness of Christ.

By his atoning death, Christ Jesus crushed the head of the devil, Satan, the ancient serpent. So we read, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:15). Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). By Christ’s death, he nullified the effects of sin. In Christ, we are given eternal life. In Christ, we fear not those who kill the body. In Christ, we resist the devil, and he and his demons flee from us. Christ’s victory is our victory; his authority is our authority; his inheritance is our inheritance. Christ is our life!

So Paul writes, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus Christ] the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). Jesus obeyed his Father fully in life and in death, thus reconciling us to God. Paul writes,

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:5–11)

There is a way to be saved from the wrath of God and from hell itself. But there is only one Savior for the whole world. Have you asked the question: “What must I do to be saved?” Heaven responds: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your household. . . . If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

You say, “How can I believe?” God says, “Faith comes by hearing the gospel preached by a man of God.” God assures us, “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” So my counsel to you is, cry out, “Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner,” and you shall be saved.

Thank God for the second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ! Paul declared, “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man” (1 Cor. 15:21). He also said, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:56–57). In Adam, we were expelled from paradise; in Christ, we gained access to paradise, to the presence of God, by a new and living way, as we read in Hebrews 10:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:19–22)

We come to God through Christ. Jesus himself said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). And in Hebrews 7 we read, “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Application

1. Feminism is anti-God and anti-Scripture.
2. Feminism is as ancient as Genesis 3.
3. Feminism is due to the failure and rebellion of the man.
4. In redemption, the pre-Fall order is restored. Man is under Christ. He is to rule in sacrificial love and be accountable to Christ. A woman is to submit to her husband in the Holy Spirit.
5. The Christian family is to function under God’s constitution, as found in Ephesians 5:18–6:4.
6. The truth is, in many Christian homes, the man is virtually absent. He is passive. To such men God asks, “Husband, where are you?”
7. Do not judge the word as the serpent did. Obey the word. God’s word is truth; it is absolute truth. Let God be true and all men liars (Rom. 3:4).

Thank God for the second Adam who gives us eternal life in place of eternal death. So I say, “Rise up, O men of God!”

¹ Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship,” inRecovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, John Piper and Wayne Grudem, editors (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991), 107.

² George W. Knight, “The Family and the Church,” Recovering, n. 6, 529.

³ Wayne Grudem, “Wives Like Sarah, and the Husbands Who Honor Them,”Recovering, 197.

⁴ Ibid.