Proverbs 23

Matt 12:33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.

The verses above and the chart below will be used for the principles and themes used in this report. The name Adam represents the man and the name Eve will represent the woman.

God’s Order	Satan’s Order
The Word of God should drive	Our CULTure drives
The Family, which drives	Our Society, which drives
The Community, which drives	Morality, which drives
Our Politics, which drives	Our Lifestyle, which drives
Our Lifestyle, which drives	Our Politics, which drives
Morality, which drives	The Community, which drives
Our Society, which drives	The Family, which drives
Our CULTure	The Word of God drives

The Christian life is represented in the Bible by two primary means: marriage (between man and woman) and agriculture, so I will stick with that in this presentation.

Love is the greatest thing known to mankind. God is love. It is His virtue love that has set us free from His wrath. The Bible is filled with love, we are even commanded to love our enemies; the Bible teaches us that we were loved before the foundation of creation. This is hard to understand because man’s love is typically conditional and based on the object of our affection which makes our love one of lust and not one of virtue.

We are commanded to Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also

hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour. This is virtue love, it is the type of love that husbands are commanded to develop for their wives. (See Malachi 2, Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 for more on this.)

In contrast man’s love is based on the benefit received from the object of the affection. God’s love has always been there. He does not fall in love. He is Love. His love can not be corrupted, compromised or impacted in any way because He is immutable. Human failure can not affect His Love. His love is totally Divine and is compatible with Who He Is. His Integrity is Virtue. His Virtue is perfect and unchanging and that means His capacity is eternally available. He cannot run out of love. We are commanded to conform to His Image/Character. So if we are going to demonstrate our love, we must demonstrate it to God first and then to our fellow man and that means we must grow in virtue and integrity and there is only one way to do that and that is through His Word. This next statement is tough but it is one that we should strive to understand and do, so here goes: God’s infinite and eternal love does not conform to human standards because it is so far beyond it. His love exists with or without an object and so it should be with us. Think about it, we should be happy regardless of any circumstances in our lives. Before we start looking for friendship and romance, we ought to establish our spiritual lives so that virtue exists. I did a presentation to a single’s group in south Texas a couple of years ago and while researching the material, I discovered that everyone longs to have a deep and meaningful relationship with someone else, but God says that we must first have that relationship with Him.

We are to show our love to God by obeying His Word and that means we have to dutifully and diligently study His Word. It is impossible to love someone who is invisible apart from knowing that person. In order to love God you have to capture His thinking. When you are able to capture His thinking you will love God more than life itself. People are visible so we spend less time thinking and it is more difficult to capture their thinking because it can vary from circumstance to circumstance, but our possession or journey to posses virtue will allow us to love unconditionally.

The bottom line is that we must become filled with the Holy Spirit, because we are commanded to submit to authority and sometimes that authority may merit less than what we are capable of and we tend to look at merit and value to establish respect and positions of respect. Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13 are good passages to study to understand authority. Humility is the fact of obeying the authority that has been placed above us. Arrogance is disrespecting authority. Authority is never a function of ability or capability.

We are to live a life of humility. There is nothing that we have that was not given to us.

It all began in the Garden of Eden. See Genesis 2 and 3. It continues today because we are living a life of arrogance. It shows up in two ways: in Adam and in Eve. This initial document will focus more on Eve and will be followed by a closer look at Adam. In straying away from the commandment of God, we began a life of disobedience.

Gen 2:16-18 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

In her unholy conversation with satan, this is what Eve said that God said: Gen 3:2-3 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.

It is easy to see where the problem is and where we failed. I will attempt to discuss both parts together because Adam and Eve were responsible.

God spoke of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Eve spoke of the tree in the midst of the garden thereby desensitizing the issue. God in speaking thou shalt surely die is translated from the Hebrew with the verb Muth, meaning dying thou shall die speaking of the spiritual death which leads to physical death. Eve chose to say “lest ye die” referring to the possibility of physical death only, completely leaving out the spiritual death. Eve added the phrase “neither shall ye touch it.”

Eve interrupted satan, verse 2 and 3 interrupted verse 1 and 4. This reveals the fact that lust was in full operation. By entering into conversation with satan, Eve became socially unfaithful. Being socially unfaithful distracts us from our relationship with God and it is the first step toward total unfaithfulness. Oftentimes, satan will attack through the ones that we love. Satan attacked Eve because she was not in authority in the marriage. He knew that Adam was the authority in the marriage, and that if Adam was tempted and sinned, the woman would simply obey her husband rather than be deceived by him (satan). So, satan had to enter into a conversation with Eve and when she sinned she would become his agent in persuading Adam to follow her example. By now you should be able to see the problem of Adam. The sin would not only destroy Eve’s reciprocal love for God but would create a breakdown in divinely delegated authority in marriage. Why is this true you say, simple, Adam would now become the follower being led by Eve instead of the leader. By entering into conversation with Eve, satan was rejecting Adam’s authority and leading Eve to do the same. This could only be true because it was what Eve was seeking to do on her own anyway, satan just gave her the vehicle to do it. Let us now examine a couple other issues. Lets look at how satan and Eve identified God (this can only be accomplished by studying the original language so please don’t be concerned if you missed this). God is both Elohim and Jehovah. Satan recognized the Supreme Being but ignored the Savior and if you think about it, savior relates to our redemption which he (satan) is ineligible for so it made sense from his perspective to ignore the Savior aspect. Elohim is God the Son, the Living Word with creature form to create and later with human form to redeem. The essential meaning of Elohim is connected with creation. Jehovah is God in covenant relation to those Whom He created. Jehovah means the eternal One, Immutable. He is the God of Israel and the God of those who are redeemed and are in Christ. Jehovah means “My God” which reflects kinship i.e.

There are more names identifying the function or characteristic of God; however, for purposes of this presentation, these should be enough for you to grab the picture of relationship and kinship. As I stated earlier, satan does not recognize the Lordship of Christ. When Eve spoke she used the word Elohim following satan’s lead leaving out the word Lord. This is an indication of her rejection of the authority of God while accepting the authority of satan. Satan pretended to be shocked and surprised that God would forbid something because God is a God of Grace when he said “Yea hath God said” He was making the suggestion the Eve should question whether it was true that God had indeed said that you shall not eat of every tree. The suggestion was how could God withhold from His creation, maybe Adam said it. Satan introduced doubt, how could God say “freely” you may eat and yet withhold if He was a God of Grace. Eve had left the word freely out, added in touch and corrupted what was said for her own benefit. She got involved in false doctrine by throwing out Grace and adding her own interpretation to what God had said. Remember her first born son did the same thing. The fact that she involved herself in a conversation with satan speaks volume but for this presentation we will restrict it to the following:

We can see signs that she had already rejected Adam’s authority before her conversation with satan even though it was not revealed to us until that time. Adam should have been the one conversing with satan, but he failed in his role. Eve was not given any authority at the time of creation and now she is being talked into rejecting the authority of God. When she rejected Adam’ authority, she was rejecting God. Resentment and rejection of authority are the beginning of arrogance and the end of peace. Whosoever rejects divine authority and divine delegated authority create their own stress, unhappiness and misery. In this passage it is easy to see that Eve became a student of satan in order to reject the authority of Adam and in the process satan was getting her to resent the fact that God had placed her under Adam’s authority. By association she chose to be identified with satan rather than with Adam. Eve had no respect for God and substituted her own false interpretation in order to glorify herself rather than glorify God. By saying the word touch in her conversation with her new found teacher, she identified death in the nature of the tree rather than spiritual death in relation to disobedience. The first apostasy in human history came from Eve and this problem still exists today based on the nature of Eve. Eve entered into conversation with satan in an attempt to find what she was looking for (LUST) i.e. knowledge from a source other than God. First John 2:16 identifies the lust pattern that satan used against Eve and has used on mankind since. Don’t be lazy, look it up. Eve wanted to be as smart as God so she could reject His authority so she looked for knowledge outside of Him. Satan did not ignore the spiritual death, he just played along with what she had omitted. He told her that she would not die. Eve had a choice (as we do) and she chose to follow satan and believed everything that he said fully aware that it was God and not satan that fashioned her from Adam and brought her to Adam.

Lets take a (quick)look at Adam. (He will be presented more fully under separate cover.) He was a weak man, he knew that he was responsible and accountable but what did he do, he gave away his leadership role to someone with a stronger personality and who was seeking more knowledge. He followed Eve to the tree where satan was and stood there during the entire conversation between Eve and satan. He did not step in, he did not use his God given authority over Eve or the serpent. Adam FAILED. Men still demonstrate this failure today, Adam’s nature. Eve brought Adam to the tree knowing that he was not going to try and stop her. He had already chosen Eve over God. Eve took the fruit from the tree and ate it in the presence of Adam and he did not try to stop her. In so doing not only was she rejecting his authority but also she was flaunting it in front of satan. She was so confident, arrogant and filled with self-glory and superiority over Adam that she did an “in your face.” She was the first “in your face” person.” Next, she gave him fruit and he ate it without any objection showing his failure as a husband and as one in authority. Eve was now fully aware of what she already knew and that was Adam was weak and would not try to stop her and she was in charge. Adam is still a failure today, we easily relinquish what we are responsible for in the name of peace, in the name of nurture and in the name of “feel good.” The typical Eve has a stronger personality than the typical Adam, Adam walks away in a temporary state of happiness without regard to the fact that he is causing more damage to his family by walking away. The Bible states that Eve was deceived and that Adam sinned. Eve was easily deceived because of her lust and Adam sinned because of his weakness which led to disobedience. We did a special in one of my seminary classes a few years back where we compared Eve and Adam, Eve received the most character descriptions and Adam only received only one:

The sin nature of Adam has been passed down to all of mankind as a result of his failure. Eve’s disobedience was punished, her lack of humility has led her to be declared under the authority of Adam. Adam followed Eve into spiritual death and all of the ground (this means everything that we see) has been cursed as a result of Adam’s failure. Eve deceived herself prior to being deceived by satan and instead of loving her husband she entered into competition with him. Eve took control of the relationship and as a result of it her punishment was severe, she was to be under her husband’s rule. That principle has never changed, we see in NT Scripture that all are equal but that is relating to salvation and not leadership. I am not equal to my pastor even though I have been called to the ministry.

Lets take a quick look at the Pastor since that is where all of this is going.

The term “pastor and teacher” that is found in Ephesians 4:11 is really one word. The two words belong to one spiritual gift brought together to express the single idea of leadership and teaching of doctrine. The word pastor emphasizes his authority. There is nothing more important than what the Bible has to say. No minister can fulfill the primary objective of teaching the mystery doctrine of the Church Age apart from the authority delegated by God in the spiritual gift and by the power of The Holy Spirit, who is our mentor and teacher. The Bible does not have any Scripture that could be translated that this gift has ever been given to Eve. It is true; however, that Eve succeeded in breaking the earthly power of Adam over her but the irony is that God said that this lust would never change His Will. In Genesis 3:17 the word “desire” translates to the lust of usurping the authority of Adam and not to her sexual desire for Adam. This same lust exists today and the same failure exists today, if it seems as if I am repeating myself, GOOD! I believe that is why Ephesians 5:33 is so important. Look it up. Know it.

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. This passage has reference to mankind having the same opportunity to lead a full spiritual life, it does not alter the relationship of leadership as ordered by God.

The victory is in Christ. No matter how we have failed in the past, as long as we are in the flesh and blood, the blood of the Lamb can redeem us. Too long, Adam has refused to learn Bible Doctrine and has left it up to Eve to do so shirking his responsibility. We have to ask ourselves okay, now that we are saved what? We can not add salvation to salvation so we must learn to overcome our failures and learn of Him Who is the Author and Finisher of our Faith.