Human government and discipline are founded on the principles established in Genesis 9:6, which mandates capital punishment for murder. This divine commission to Noah, the father of the human race, authorizes governments to exercise authority, including lesser punishments like imprisonment and fines, as extensions of this ultimate penalty. The contrast this with the personal application of turning the other cheek, as taught by Jesus in Matthew 5:38, emphasizing that vengeance belongs to God and should not be sought in personal relationships. The sermon also explores the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, highlighting the distinct creation of man from dust and woman from man's side, signifying both equality and a complementary headship, and God's hostility to blurring the distinctions between male and female.
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Bating. Caleb J. Baker and a Dr. Lockwood provided a tent that seated about four hundred. Families came in for many miles around for the ministry of the word and gospel preaching. But there was frequent hostility and there were vandals. And sometimes the vandals tossed whiskey bottles into the tent or cut the ropes. And then the Lord got even by getting some of them converted. And they became active Christians active witnesses for Christ. Well, if none of us have been here for all seventy-five conferences, if I understand Matthew eighteen twenty correctly, the Lord Jesus Christ has been here all seventy-five times.
And the Holy Spirit. And they're certainly here today because we are meeting in the name of the Lord Jesus and he promised to be here in the midst of his people. I'm no longer of editor of Interest Magazine. But I'm still on the board of the, not still, I wasn't before, but I'm now on the board of the organization, which is now called Interest Ministries. And Interest is a servant organization. It's been in existence about fifty-five years. Primarily started out to handle funds for home workers and publish a magazine and to publish address lists of home field workers corresponding to the foreign missionary address list. But in recent years, Interest Ministries has taken on some new programs designed to help struggling assemblies and to encourage assembly planting.
And as a servant organization, these programs are available to any of the assemblies that wish to avail themselves of them. If you have any questions about them, feel free to ask me. I'd be glad to try to answer if I can or to find an answer for you. If you have any criticisms of these programs, I'd be glad to hear that too. The programs have evoked some criticism and perhaps some of it justified. They are new programs and they are subject to, we are subject to making mistakes. I remember over the fifteen years I was editor of the magazine, I undoubtedly made some errors in judgment about what articles to publish and what reports to publish or not to publish. Every month I have to do that with a lot of things and I tried to maintain that humility that Paul Sapp has talked about, the humility of being willing to listen to critics, and I'm not sure I always succeeded, but humility requires that we take adverse criticism and study it and listen to it and be concerned whether it's valid or not, and sometimes the criticisms help us to adjust the way we do things.
It's often been the case. And so if you are critical of any of these programs, and you'd like to share that with me too, I would be glad to to hear what you have to say about it and perhaps share it with our board of directors now I would like to go back to Genesis chapter nine talk a little bit more about Noah Adam and Noah and then turn back to Genesis one and pick up the story of Adam and Eve Genesis chapter nine and we've got down really to about verse six in the chapter We've talked about the introduction of the right of the human race to eat animal food and how that required a couple of limitations not to eat blood and not to kill human beings.
All right to kill an animal but not a human being. And then we saw that God requires a punishment for murder and we call that capital punishment today. We touch briefly on the fact that the Bible later goes on to limit that. It's proper for a government to set up degrees of murder and only the most extreme cases receive death. And it's also very proper for mechanisms in our government to allow for the commutation of death penalty sentences. That is, the governor or the judge or the president should have the right to say, no, I'm going to commute that sentence. And that grows out of Psalm fifty-one and the fact that David himself had his death penalty commuted by God.
God is a merciful God, and there are times when it is proper for government officials to act like God in showing mercy. And at other times the government should act like God in bringing judgment. God does judge sin. And that balance is not always easy to obtain, but it's very clearly taught in the Scriptures. And we make a mistake if we are hard-line and show no mercy, but we also make a national mistake of national disobedience if we take capital punishment off our books when God says, I require it. We also talked about the strong distinction made between man and animals by virtue of the fact that God says man is made in the image of God.
It's all right to have an animal for dinner. but it is not all right to kill a human being. We talked a little bit about the evils that have resulted from Darwinism in such things as the Holocaust and such things as people behaving like animals so much today. You wonder why you hear about all these terrible cases of child beating and battering and then you realize that our intellectuals have been teaching people in the school system now for decades that man is an animal and we shouldn't be surprised if he acts like one because ultimately what the intellectuals teach in the country affects the behavior of the country sooner or later now we want to say that the verse of five and six here are the basis of all human government and discipline now this is a very important point you know we we say we have a court system we have a police system we have jails and where in the bible do you find that say the state of iowa or this or the city of atlantic or the United States has the right to put anybody in jail.
Where did God give the government the right to do that? A state policeman arrest you out on the interstate highway? Where did he get the right to arrest you? And where does the judge get the right to find you seventy dollars or whatever that fine might turn out to be? Well, it's not spelled out in the Bible in that detail. What the Bible does is give us the extreme case And then we reason from the extreme case to the lesser cases. That is, here in Genesis nine, God says to Noah, the father of the human race, we're all descended from him, the father of all the nations, God says to Noah, you are to exercise a governmental discipline.
And when, verse six, whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed by man. That is by human beings. There is to be this system. whereby a murder can be put to death well then it derives from that the authorization of the greater implies also the lesser if it's all right for a government to execute a murderer then it is also all right for a government to put a hijacker into prison for twenty years or to send a second floor burglar up for five years for break and enter or to find somebody for speeding on the highway you see The capital punishment takes the life, the prisonment takes the freedom, and the fines take the money out of the wallet.
But all these lesser things derive out of God's commission to Noah to exercise the most extreme if that is necessary. Now follow with me through a few passages here. We will go to the book of Exodus again, chapter twenty-one. We were in this chapter before, and it's part of the Jewish law in this case. Exodus chapter twenty-one verse twenty-three. No, I better start reading with verse twenty-one. It has to do with a pregnant woman getting injured.
Exodus twenty-one, twenty-two. If men fight and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no lasting harm follows. That is, the baby survives, I think that means. He shall surely be punished as the woman's husband imposes on him. The woman's been injured, but the child lives, no permanent damage, and so the culprit, the fighter here, has to pay some fine or some penalty. And he shall pay as the judge is determined. The thing would be brought to court, and he would be fined appropriately. Verse twenty-three, but if any lasting harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Now out of this one particular case grows one of the greatest statements the world has ever seen regarding the principles of judicial government. Punishment must be proportionate to the crime. And when it says eye for eye, it means that this woman loses an eye. Well, then you punish the culprit accordingly. We might not want to take his eye out in this country, but we would consider that a very serious harm. Knock out a tooth, it would not be considered quite as serious. Cut off a hand, that would be dealt with quite severely and so forth.
The principle that is written in here is a beautiful principle. of proportionate punishment. And one of our problems in justice in the United States of America today is that proportional punishment has really been violated to a great extent. If a black man in the inner city breaks into a currency exchange and steals twenty or thirty dollars, he's likely to end up with twenty years in prison. But if a white-collar criminal on Wall Street deprives the general public or some corporation of a hundred million dollars, he may only get a slap on the wrist.
Now we're beginning to crack down a little more on white-collar crime. But things have been out of proportion. And when you get things out of proportion, then the judicial system ceases to be a deterrent against crime. One of the arguments that the anti-lawful capital punishment people use is to drag up some old pictures from England in a century or two ago when pickpocketing was a capital crime. If you were, if the pocket stole a wallet, you could hang for that. And so here's a picture that somebody's painted of a huge crowd gathering to watch the execution, which were public in those days.
And going through the crowd were pickpockets stealing the wallets of other people. And they say, see, it's no deterrent. You can hang a man for pickpocketing, and while you're doing it, somebody else will be working the crowd. Well, that's right. That's because the punishment was all out of proportion to the crime. To hang a pickpocket is totally in violation to this principle that's laid down in this passage. That's not I for I. That's life for a relatively minor crime. offense now in our country we've gone the other direction whereby even mass murders like we have one in Illinois is still lingering in jail and whether he ever goes to the electric chair or a gas chamber will be quite a surprise we have just gone to the other extreme but anytime you get the legal system out of proportion you lose a lot of its deterrent value this is a biblical principle for government for judges that punishment should be geared to fit the crime.
Now turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew chapter five, verse thirty-eight. Matthew five, verse thirty-eight. And this is part of the sermon on the mountain. The Lord Jesus is talking. And he says, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you not to resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.
Whoever compels you to go with him one mile, go with him too. When I was a college student at a non-evangelical university, I used to have a lot of students who knew where I stood regarding the Lord and the Bible, coming to pick a little argument with me. And they'd say, oh, you read the Bible all the time. Don't you know the Bible is full of errors and inconsistencies? And I learned to say to people, oh, is that so? Name two of them. For a while, I'd just say name one. And every time I'd say that, somebody'd say, well, it says an eye for an eye in the Old Testament. And the Lord Jesus said, don't do that. See, that was the only one I found that the average... scoffer could name in the Bible.
The only inconsistency in the Bible. So I quickly learned to say name too, because I found that they ran out of gas after the first one. One time when I was working as a setup man at a factory and a construction line and setting up some grinding machines for some girls that operated them, the layout, when I was an engineer doing a piece study on it, but the layout man was sort of trying to pick away at me in the presence of these girls and he said, you know the Bible's full of errors. I said, oh, yeah, can you name a couple? No, he said, but I've got a list of them at home. I said, well, you bring the list in, will you? Oh, yeah, I'll bring in it. No, you're sure to bring it in. I said this in the front of these girls. Be sure to bring it in. And then every time I'd see them, I'd remind them, when are they going to bring that list to me?
And he never did bring it in, but I wasn't worried about him. I was worried about those girls that had heard him say that, and I was reminding them all the time that this list never showed up. No longer you study the Bible, the more you realize that this is the infallible, inspired Word of God. Now, there are things that I don't understand. There are cross currents there that I can't reconcile. Some of them, after a few years of thinking about them, all of a sudden I see the answer. Others, I may never know until I get to glory. But this is the Word of God, and it proves itself as you go along. Anyway... This is the one that everybody quotes, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Well, the answer to this is really rather simple here. I think it's simply that the Lord Jesus is talking about personal relationships.
That's the way you're to run the government. The government has to set a scale of punishments that's fitted to the crime, but don't carry that into your personal life. Don't get even with people. Don't take vengeance on people. God says vengeance is mine. I will repay. Vengeance belongs to God, and he does convey some of that to the some of that authority of the government, but he does not give it to you. It is not for you to get even with people. And if somebody does you wrong, don't do them wrong in return. turn the other cheek so that's the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and it applies to personal relationships Romans chapter thirteen Romans chapter thirteen reaffirms the right of government to execute judgment the government is not told to turn the other cheek let every soul Romans thirteen one let every soul be subject to the governing authorities For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Now that goes back to Genesis nine. See, that's where that appointment comes. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God. Verse three, rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Verse four, he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. If you're going to do evil, you should be afraid. He's God's minister, an avenger, says in the end of verse four, to execute wrath on him who practices evil. The government official, while there's an allowance for mercy at times, generally speaking, he's got to follow the principle of proportional punishment. Now one more verse here, and that's in Genesis chapter four.
Genesis four. I'm still thinking of chapter nine as a base. But in Genesis four we have the story of Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel. Cain is a murderer. This is before Noah now. We are back a thousand fifteen hundred, two thousand years before Noah. And Cain has murdered his brother Abel. And then Cain appeals to the Lord because the Lord said he was going to be a vagabond. He said the punishment is more than I can bear. And so the Lord put a mark on Cain. This is Genesis four, fifteen. The Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.
And the Lord set a mark on Cain lest anyone finding him should kill him. Now, if you want an inconsistency in the Bible, this would be it. Genesis four, fifteen compared to Genesis nine, six. Don't you touch Cain. He's a murderer. Don't you dare lay a hand on him. Genesis nine six. If anybody kills a person, by man shall his blood be shed. That's not really an inconsistency. What it is is a change of dispensations. Dispensations, the word dispensation is a word that in other branches of history than the Bible is usually, you have a word like epic or era or period.
And historians inevitably divide history up into various epics or eras or periods. They do that with American history. They do that with world history and so forth. And Bible expositors inevitably end up dividing the Bible up into various historical periods. All systematic theologies recognize different periods, and usually they call them dispensations. This includes non-dispensational theologies as well as dispensational theologies. But virtually every historian recognizes, if nothing else, the old dispensation before the cross and the new one afterwards. And usually they go farther than that and recognize that there are other periods in Bible history.
Now, we have had the word dispensation for this, and perhaps that's an unfortunate word for periods of time. But the ones I learned when I was a young Christian, I've come to appreciate much more as the years have gone by. For instance, you had what I was taught, the first dispensation was called innocence, and that was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and they were innocent. And the next one was called conscience. Once they sinned, it was called conscience. Well, it took me quite a while to realize that conscience is just another word for what you get when you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's knowing right from wrong. And once they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they had the knowledge of good and evil, and we call that conscience today.
And so after Adam and Eve sinned, they had these sons, Cain and Abel, and the human race, small as it was, was governed by conscience. That was the only restraint on evil. The evil nature was there. And if you violated your conscience and murdered your brother, there was nobody could do anything to you. You were protected. Not much wonder that the race ended up in the chaos. of the years before the flood. There was no law and order. There was no system of government. There was nobody to enforce right or wrong, and the murders would go around boasting about it. As you find at the end of chapter four, when one of Cain's descendants is bragging about the fact that he had murdered somebody. Conscience was all there was. to act as a restraint on society.
And human beings could say, well, God, how did you ever expect us to do the right thing when you set us into a culture that lets murders run free? All right, God says, we're going to change the rules. And when Noah comes out of the ark, God says, here are the new rules. From now on, the murder is to be put to death. And, of course, out of that comes the whole system of government. So the old writers said, Well, we'll call this new dispensation human government. It took me years to figure out why they ever came up with a name like that for a dispensation until I got to studying in Genesis nine. And there it was. Here's the whole right of government being added to the restraint of conscience.
Now you've got a conscience. You know you shouldn't do certain things. You know you shouldn't get drunk and go out on the highway. But beside the conscience, there's the state police out there that are looking for you if you're waving down the highway. There's government. There's human government to restrain the forces of evil. You rob a bank, you may get caught, and you get put in jail. Now maybe the human race will succeed. Well, it didn't, of course. It ended up using the powers of government in opposition to God at the Tower of Babel. Let's organize so we don't have to do what God told us to do, spread out across the earth. Then you go on to law. I personally don't recognize a dispensation of promise. It seems to me that that's sort of a misnomer that the law age really started coming in with Abraham and Moses, but some divided up that way.
But the law comes in the Ten Commandments as a further expression of the will of God and so forth. Well, so much for the early flow of the dispensations. It's a very helpful understanding. Dispensations are not different ways of salvation. They can be described as different ways of demonstrating that the human heart, under whatever circumstances you put it, is corrupt. And here we live in a dispensation of grace. Just believe and be saved. It's a free gift. So everybody crowds in to get saved. Not on your life, they don't. And people say, well, if I could only see him, I'd believe you if I could really see Jesus, but he's alive. All right, you'll be here in the millennium. Then you have a millennial dispensation.
And Christ will be here, and there won't be any intellectual doubts whatsoever. And still at the end of it, you'll have multitudes ready to revolt with Satan against God. All right, so much for Genesis nine. I think this is a very helpful chapter to understand. I'd like to go back now to chapter one, verse twenty seven, and talk a little about Adam and Eve today, and then continue that tomorrow morning. Genesis one twenty seven we talked about this this morning in connection with Adam and Noah I'll just briefly touch on it now so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them God created man in his own image we talked about that we passed over the expression male and female he created them that is God made a distinction between male and female in Genesis one twenty seven now if I understand the Bible correctly the tone of the Bible from years of studying it I believe that God is very hostile to all attempts to blur the distinction between male
and female you see that in the Old Testament where he writes in a prohibition about men wearing women's clothing And women wearing men's clothing, you see it in your own natural built-in repulsion to these males who dress themselves up like females in show business. It's depravity. You see that when you look at that. And your own heart tells you that that's wrong. And you see it in the New Testament when it has a passage like, is it long hair on a man? A shame onto him? Ask a question like that. So it does seem that God has a hostility to the attempts to blur the distinction between male and female.
Now, he goes on, of course, to tell this couple in verse twenty-eight to multiply and fill the earth, be fruitful and multiply. And obviously the sexual distinction is necessary for the multiplication of the race. And that explains to us why God is so intensely hostile to sodomy. Homosexual behavior is not reproductive behavior. It is a depravity. It is a departure from the plan of God who built the sexual system in order to multiply the race. And sodomy is an enemy to the plan of God.
And it's not much wonder God is very angry about it. incidentally homosexual activity is as much an enemy of Darwinism as it is of Christianity because Darwinism teaches the survival of the fittest the propagation of the race through reproduction and going on and getting better and better and homosexual activity contradicts that too so it is a contradictory to both viewpoints of how people came into being Now, chapter one gives us a very generalized outline description of creation. In the second chapter of Genesis, we have a much more detailed description of the planting of the Garden of Eden and the creation of the first man and the first woman.
Again, if you go to a secular university and take any courses on Bible, you'll be told that These are two different accounts and some editor picked them up and they're not consistent with each other and it shows us that the book of Genesis wasn't written by Moses but was compiled by some editor centuries later who apparently didn't have the sense to know that he was putting contradictory things together. To my mind that's all a bunch of hogwash and the pattern in the book of Genesis is often you get a brief statement and then you get an expansion of the thing, a more detailed account. Chapter two gives us a more detailed account of Chapter one, it tells us in a lot more detail what happened. We'll go down to verse seven. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.
Now we're not talking about Eve here. This is not male and female. It's in chapter one. This is Adam. This is the man Adam. And how he was formed. God took dust, molded a human body from it. breathe into it the breath of life. I believe this literally. I take this a lot of things I don't understand about the account of creation, and I'm not dogmatic on a lot of things, but I personally believe that this is to be taken literally, that this is how the first human being was formed, and the Bible is telling us in no uncertain terms that we are not descended from animals. He breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. This is the soul being put in. Man becomes a living soul or a living being.
Now, the word for Adam here is, well, it is Adam. That's what the Hebrew word is, Adam. And the word for man is Adam, sometimes translated man. And it derives or is related to the word for ground, which is Adamah, A-B-A-M-A-H, Hebrew word for ground. Man is related to the ground. God took the ground, the dirt, the soil, the dust, formed the body. then he plants the garden in verse eight the lord planted a garden and verse nine out of the ground adamah he the lord made all the trees grow and he asked man to tend this garden and later on he will curse the ground that's in the third chapter and he'll condemn the man to toil the ground all the days of his life chapter three verse seventeen and then he says in in death to return to the ground for out of it you were taken For dust you are, and the dust you shall return.
The woman, as we shall see, is not so related to the ground. She doesn't have that close relationship to the soil. She was not created from it, and she is not condemned to toil in it all the days of her life. And I suppose it's true that, like the man she returns to dust, the specific passage about returning the dust was addressed to Adam and not to Eve. We go on to verse eighteen. Now the Lord says, it is not good that man, that this man, Adam, should be alone. I will make a help meet for him. Now begins the search for a companion for Adam.
And in preparation for this message, I looked up this verse in seven or eight different translations, and there's no two of them alike, which suggests to me that this has not been an easy word to translate. The Hebrew word is Ezer. It's one word, but we have translated from it a noun and an adjective, a noun and a modifier. In the King James, the noun is a help. And the adjective is an ancient word meat, M-E-E-T, not M-E-A-T. And we don't use that word today. It means suitable, appropriate for him and help. meet or appropriate for him today we have combined the noun and the adjective into a single word help meet now we have a noun called help meet that's not what the King James says it's two different words there a help meet for him the King James says a help meet for him the new King James Bible says a helper comparable to him revised standard version says a helper fit for him the Jerusalem Bible a very interesting Roman Catholic version says A help mate, one word, a help mate.
The new international version, God says, I will make a helper suitable for him. And then you have a little variation in three more versions here. Some new words introduced. All these others have been helper, helper. You have in the Living Bible paraphrase a companion for him, a helper suited to his needs. In the Good News Bible, a suitable companion to help him. and in the new English Bible I will provide a partner for him I like that word partner I think that that goes very much to the essence of the meaning here but not right away to start out with this companion for Adam was to be first of all a help or a helper that's a very definite aspect of the purpose of the creation of the woman help helper help mate companion partner five words attempting to translate this one Hebrew word and the twenty one times in the King James Version in the New Testament the word appears always translated help help best known of the occurrences of this Hebrew word probably is from the book of Psalms one twenty one where it appears twice I will lift up my eyes
under the hills from whence cometh my help my help cometh from the Lord I know that's significant because if God is described as my helper, then the word helper in itself does not imply an inferiority. The man is not superior to the woman because the woman was created to be his helper. After all, if God is my helper, God is certainly not inferior to me. I'm not superior to God. So the word itself does not convey... Any sense of inferiority. It does not teach us that the woman is inferior to the man. That's important to recognize that.
But the term does strongly imply an assisting role. Offensive as that may be to a lot of modern thinking. A lot of women today, and some men too, are very offended by the Bible's suggestion that the woman was created to be a helper to the man. They don't like that. And I can't help that. I mean, it's not me that's teaching this. This seems to me what the Bible is saying. And if we're going to be subject to God, if God is going to be God, then we have to study what he says, and we have to be obedient to that, whether we like it or not. The problem is your relationship to God on this matter. And there's a New Testament verse that parallels this quite strongly.
First Corinthians, eleven, nine. You don't need to return to, but you might like to write the reference down. First Corinthians, eleven, nine. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. You can see how that would be offensive to people, especially to young women growing up with the tremendous peer pressure that's put on young women, to be totally equal or independent or whatever you want to call it. It is an offensive thing to be told that they were created for the man. But this is in the Scripture. This is what the Word of God teaches. Nevertheless, there's a lot of merit to the translation, companion or partner. That's part of it too. Because the balance of the translation of this Hebrew word is meet, fit, comparable, a help meet for him, fit for him, comparable to him, suitable for him, suited to him.
Five different terms used in those translations I looked at. and none of the animals were found suitable to play this role. Many of the animals, like a horse or an ox or a dog, could indeed be helpers. But a wife was to be far more suited to the man's basic need than these animals could be. Hence the validity of terms like companion or partner. Hence also the error, the profound error of men who treat their wives like servants or slaves. They haven't understood that a wife was not just another animal created to be a helper like a horse.
She's not just a servant to the man. The helper aspect of the wife is very different. A helper suited to him, which the animals were not. And when a man treats his wife like a servant, he not only hasn't understood what God created her for, but he does not understand his own need. He doesn't understand that he has a need that is not supplied by servants, that is only supplied by partners. You go down to verse twenty-one now, and we come to the creation of Eve. Verses twenty-one to twenty-three. Adam sleeps. God takes a rib.
God puts Adam to sleep. God takes a rib. Forms the woman. Brings her to Adam. Adam calls her woman because she was taken out of man. There's a play on words here. The Hebrew now uses a different word, not Adam this time, but ish. And then the word for woman is isha. Isha. Isha. Ish. And becomes is-h-a. This play on words is translatable into English because we have woman, which takes the word man and adds two letters to it. It's not Adam from the ground now, but this is Ish. The animals were made from the ground, but the woman was made from the man, and she has an identity with him that the animals lack.
She is not of the ground, but she is of the man. She differs from him in sex only, not in nature. says Matthew Henry she shares his humanity Matthew Henry wrote his commentary the first volume is dated seventeen oh six later volumes are dated a little later I shouldn't wonder there's about four thousand pages in the fine print edition that I have some three million words and it's an outstanding commentary on the whole Bible And I think that Matthew Henry's commentary, comment on this creation verse is one of the most beautiful things that's ever been written about a Bible passage. He says, and I quote, The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam, not made out of his head to top him.
I guess today we would say to boss him. Not made out of his head to top him. not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. I think you have a marriage like that. You've got a hefty marriage, right? Isn't that beautiful, though? God took the rib out of the side, under the arm, to be protected, close to his heart to be loved, not out of his feet to be walked on, Not out of his head to boss him. I like the little story about the woman who said to her husband, You're going to be the head of this house if I have to break every bone in your body.
Creation teaches us two things here. It teaches us an equality. between man and woman, not a superiority, inferiority relationship, but a side-by-side relationship, unequality. And yet at the same time, it teaches us that there is a headship, that God had created Adam for a purpose, and that the creation of the wife, that he had formed Eve to assist him in fulfilling that purpose, which implies a headship. Now let's go into some New Testament passages here. First Corinthians eleven. Verse three.
First Corinthians eleven. Verse three. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ. The head of the woman is man, the head of Christ is God. Now, this is not arranged in a hierarchical order. If we wanted to arrange it more hierarchical, we would say, first there's God in Christ, God is the head of Christ, and then there's Christ is the head of the man, and then there's man the head of the woman. Now, the order is a little different here, maybe to avoid that hierarchical nature.
But I'd like you to notice that the equality is here, at least in the reference of God and Christ, God being God the Father, and Christ meaning God the Son. And our doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Father and Son are equal. One is not superior to the other. They are equal. And yet there is a headship. Jesus Christ said, I came to do thy will, O God. In all things he was obedient to the Father. So the doctrine of submission, Jesus was in submission of the Father, the doctrine of submission does not deny the doctrine of equality. Now the doctrine of equality is taught in Galatians three, twenty-eight.
Let's turn to that passage, Galatians three, twenty-eight. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Now this verse relates to our salvation. It relates to our status before the Lord. In salvation we are all equal before the Lord. There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, between slave and master, nor between male and female.
and we must not leave this out of our thinking it teaches very carefully that there is this equality however this verse is being used extensively by people who want to eliminate the other passages in the epistles that draw a distinction between the husband and the wife or in the matter of leadership in the church that put some limitations on the woman's role of leadership in the church The elders in my home assembly in Wheaton have just been asked to review a paper that is soon to be published by F.F. Bruce, who's a very noted