Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s command word. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your loving kindness to us and providing us a sure word by which to evaluate ourselves, our world, and more importantly by which to understand our relationship to you and what you have empowered us to do in Christ and what we have left behind in terms of our sins.

Father, we do pray now that your Holy Spirit would do his job of taking the things of Christ, the things of our salvation, redemption, the things of your law out of these texts and help us, Father, to have them written upon our hearts that we might obey them, that we might not be forgetful hearers of this word today, but rather effectual doers. We ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours.

Amen.

We return this Lord’s day to our study of Christian marriage and as a result also the study of the family that I began oh probably a couple months ago now. We began with the account from Genesis 2. Remember we said that Genesis 2 and 3 are really a unit and the assertion I have made and have tried to demonstrate in weeks past is that the section at which we are at today is the central section of the text.

These are the central verses and at the middle of this central section of chapters 2 and 3, the central action, the pivot point of the entire section is the sin of Adam, not the sin of Eve. So we’ve discussed the importance of marriage from chapter 2, the placing of man by God rather in the garden and providing him a helpmate and the goodness of marriage. Therefore, the first thing that God declares not to be good is for man to be alone.

So marriage is a very important institution, a gift. It’s a creation ordinance as they say. It is a very important thing that we must not take for granted and must not let ourselves be culturally determined to think about. I want to talk today about covenantal headship and specifically first of Adam very briefly and then talking about what it means in terms of our marriages as well and what it means to be the covenantal head of a family or of a marriage relationship.

Now on the outline I say there’s a relationship between rocket science and women. Last week we heard several times that you know certain things don’t take a rocket scientist to know this, that or the other thing. But I’m convinced it takes much more than a rocket scientist to understand the nature of the differentiation of the sexes that God has given to us. By sexuality I refer here to the fact that we are created male and female by God.

We have sex in that sense of the term. And we may look at the observations of the world round about us and think that we know certain things. But ultimately, as Christians, we’re committed to the principle that it is only God’s word that can really inform us as to what men and women are and how they differentiate. It is not an easy area of study or endeavor. And I believe that most of our lives we will be working through, I’m sure all of our lives will be working through what it means, the differences, and what the different relationships that God has established in the covenant of marriage and in general in the world in terms of the differences between men and women.

This will occupy much of our thinking as we mature as Christian men and women. The Bible contrasts against the world. It’s easy to look at the world round about us today and make certain assumptions about what women are like or what men are like and then extrapolate from those assumptions and say this is the way it always has been. That is foolishness. I remember years ago in the early ’80s when Jay Adams was in town and a fellow got up in the audience and he had a question and he never got to the question because Jay interrupted him in the middle of the question and the question began like this.

Well, we know that women are more emotional and men are more logical and therefore what about… and Jay said, “No, just a second. How do we know that?” Well, you know, we just observe it around us. Well, yeah, but how do we really know anything? We know it from the Bible. If the Bible doesn’t make that assertion, then we shouldn’t make it either. We don’t want to be molded by our culture. It may be a true observation in America in 1984 to say that men generally are like this and women are generally like this.

But how do we know that isn’t the effect of the sin of our culture or a particular manifestation of the diversity of cultures? There’s all kinds of reasons that may be true. I had a conversation with a godly woman this last week and we talked about whether it’s good to partake of certain substances and the idea was well you know science tells us today that this is the effect of those substances upon the body. Well, okay and that’s not, you know, you don’t want to ignore those things but ultimately our determination is not the current science of the day. If it was we wouldn’t believe in six-day creation would we? And God’s word clearly asserts it.

Now it’s not an exact analogy because in terms of the use of substances the Bible may not command certain things but still give us liberty to do them, so I’m not making a one-to-one correlation. But my point is that as other people have said, he who weds himself to the spirit of the age soon finds himself a widower.

And if our understanding of our wives or our husbands, of men and women in general, comes from the culture, then we need to rethink that. We need to say, what do the scriptures say about the role of the sexes? And that’s what I want to talk about today. I’ll be talking about it for months. We’re going to trace out these large themes from Genesis 2 and 3 as they go through the Bible. And we’re only about a third of the way into Genesis 2 and 3 yet.

Now, I want to say one other thing by way of caveat. I did not—I don’t typically sometimes I will, but I don’t typically choose a sermon topic because of issues going on in our lives individually, corporately, whatever it is. This one has some pertinence to things that are going on in various people’s lives. But in the providence of God, this was to be the fourth talk in this series. And this is where we’re at.

And so in the providence of God, I think that it’s useful and instructive to us to consider this topic, but please understand this is just where God brought us today.

Now first of all then, I want to talk about covenantal headship: what it isn’t and then what it is. But first before that, a little brief introduction, brief statement and point one of your outline, that we want to talk about the fact that covenantal headship is a fact.

Reverend Ashshire was talking last week about people and the relationship to thinking that you know things are easy, you don’t have to work. I remember R.J. Rushdoony years ago was doing a presentation I think at Burke or some such college. And a woman got up and argued with him. And she made the assertion that food is—it’s just a fact. It’s always going to be there. Whenever you want it, it’s going to be there. Forget the sweat of your brow stuff. Well, that’s foolish. But covenants are. God builds in covenantal relationships as a fact of life. And Adam represents man in this covenantal headship that he has that we’ve read about.

Now, you’ve heard a lot about this. Very quickly, though, from 1 Corinthians 15:47, we read that the first man was of the earth made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. 1 Corinthians 15. So what it says is you got first Adam and second Adam. And second Adam is Jesus Christ. First Adam is the Adam of whom we just read at the center of the problem, at the center of chapters 2 and 3. What it wants to really focus us on is Adam’s sin.

His culpability. The race fell in Adam. In Adam’s fall we sinned all. 1 Corinthians 15:47. This correlation between the first and second Adam and covenantal headship. Romans 5:18-19 tells us therefore as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation, even so through one man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.

Now we’re not Pelagian. You say, “Well, I might be. I’m not sure what the term means.” Pelagius was a fellow long time ago, a heretic. And he said that sin of man is by imitation. So, Adam sinned and then his kids watched Adam and they ended up sinning. And that’s all sin is. As we see problems, we’re created neutral, blank slates. As we come out of the womb, we’re neutral. This text, however, tells us that isn’t true.

Arminianism also asserts—at least in terms of people who have self-consciously thought through the doctrines—it asserts the same thing: that sin is primarily by way of imitation. We don’t believe that, at least we shouldn’t believe it. Sin has a covenant. Adam’s sin was covenantally imputed, laid to the account of the entire race. He was the head. He was the captain going out to war so to speak and he lost and so all of us went into captivity.

Judicial imputation of a covenantal act by God. And Jesus comes as the second Adam, our covenantal head, and representing us through his act of obedience and then his death on the cross for our sins. That’s applied to us by God covenantally. We’re not righteous by imitation. We’re righteous by the covenantal imputation of God, by of Christ’s work to each one of us individually and then to the elect as a group.

Okay? Covenantal headship is representational for other people. And those acts, good or bad, have an imputation effect by God’s judicial imputation—not simply by way of imitation. We’re not saying people don’t sin by way of imitation. Obviously, you know that’s a factor. But what we’re talking about here is that Adam represented covenantally mankind as its head. Covenantal headship is a fact. And what the scriptures go on further than that to—rather than just talking about the covenantal headship of the first and second Adam—we then know the marriage relationship itself is a covenant and has a head.

Malachi 2:14-15. You say, “For what reason?” Because the Lord—why are you upset with us, God? Is what they’re saying. The Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth with whom you have dealt treacherously. Yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did he not make them one, having a remnant of the spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore, take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.

The exhortation is to men to not deal treacherously as covenantal heads with the wives who are their wives by way of covenant. And we talked about this when we were earlier in chapter 2 with the first marriage being a covenantal act and the assertions made there. And God says that in that covenantal relationship of marriage, there is a head to it and that head is man. Marriage is a covenant and man is the head.

The point of today’s sermon is just that verse: Don’t deal treacherously against your wife by covenant. Be a sound covenantal head. That’s really what we’re going to talk about. Now you say all it says is covenant. It doesn’t say the man is covenantal head. But we have that in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16. And I’ll quote a couple short passages out of that. Paul says, “I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ. The head of woman is man and the head of Christ is God.

Okay. So he says that the head of the woman is man. So man is covenantally in relationship to woman and the covenant of marriage particularly, the head of that relationship that God has given to us. And he goes on to say in verse 9 man was created not for the woman but woman for the man. So man leads; he has a headship responsibility. So first of all, covenantal headship is a fact of life and men—whether you like it or not, if you’re covenantally bound into marriage with the wife you are the head of that relationship. You can be the head for good or you can be the head for bad but either way you’re going to form the direction of the family one way or another.

But now I want to talk about what covenantal headship is not and then we’ll talk at the final point specifically what it means, how you should exercise covenantal headship in the context of the family. But first I need to make a caveat here and I’ll have to do this at a little bit of length because it is a common notion even amongst our own circles.

That this covenantal headship means responsibility—and it does—but it means that somehow if I’ve—I’ve been told by various people that if a man raises his children correctly they’ll turn out good and if the children turn out bad that means he’s done something wrong in the raising of his family. Now I want to talk about that today. We’ve also heard assertions by people whom we greatly respect and admire that the same thing is true of the husband and the wife.

That there are problems in the wife’s life, it must be because the husband has a problem. I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s very important when difficulties occur in the context of the family, or we could say in the same way in the context of a church when problems occur, it should be a time of great soul-searching on the covenantal heads in those relationships—the officers or the fathers, or in case of children, father and mother.

But I think we want to be very careful here, again not to let our thinking on this be molded by the experiences we come to, but rather by the word of God. And let me go over some scriptures here with you. And we’ll turn in a second to Ezekiel 18. That’s the main text. But I’m going to read some other scriptures first. In Deuteronomy 22:21, we have the case of a woman who has been married to a man and she’s not a virgin.

And this was a big deal. So the man has come back to the courts and he’s saying, “Well, the woman isn’t a virgin.” And the parents were supposed to be able to show proof of the virginity. And if they couldn’t do it, okay, and this woman had actually was proven then to be not a virgin when she entered into marriage, verse 21 says, “They shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house.

And the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel to play the harlot in her father’s house. So you shall put away the evil from among you.” Now, I have heard people read that and said this means that the father is being shamed. The text doesn’t tell us that. It may be an implication of the text or it may not be. I can just as easily look at the text and say it seems like the father’s being exonerated.

The shame’s being removed through the execution of his child who played the harlot in his house. And ultimately she’s played the harlot in Israel, God’s house. And so her stoning is a vindication of the justice of God and a declaration of her personal responsibility for her act.

Deuteronomy 13:6-10. If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul—okay, so we got it all covered now, all these relationships. If one of these secretly entice you, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” when you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, the gods of the people which are all around you, near to you or far off from you from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. You shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him.

Okay? So if your wife or your son or your father attempts to entice you to go serve Baal or to become a statist, then you’re not supposed to listen to him. But more than that, verse 9 says, “You shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death and afterward the hand of all the people and you shall stone him with stones until he dies because he sought to entice you away from the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage.

Now I’m not—you know, we could get into a big discussion. I’m not doing it in terms of the application of this law to today. But what I want you to see is that if the wife or if the child apostatizes, the father or the husband is not held judicially liable. Their liability is if they do not follow the law which says to bring the one forward to the civil magistrate that they might be executed or to the church that they might be excommunicated.

If they don’t do that, then they’re in violation of the law. But this law and the law we just read previously from Deuteronomy about the young woman who’s not a virgin—neither of those laws put any kind of penalty or offense against the man or against the wife who doesn’t listen to her husband.

Deuteronomy 24:16 tells us, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall the children be put to death for their fathers. A person shall be put to death for his own sin.” Personal responsibility. Now, we do know that Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments, and other places of scripture give us some general commands from God. It says that indeed God does visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. But he shows mercy unto thousands that love me. There is a covenantal relationship between the generations of families in a land and the sin of the fathers being visited upon the children.

Okay, that’s a reality. And these two truths must not be seen as in opposition. The fact that God on one hand gives us general promises about faithful children, about training up a child, and about what children of believers will typically grow up to be like, and then how evil or the sin of the father does indeed seem to manifest itself with other children—that’s a truth. It is a covenantal, national truth in the context of a group of people.

But just as surely these individual acts that are cited in the case law show us that it is not—it is a logical error to say that if a person sins then their covenantal head must have sinned. Logical error. It does not follow. It does not follow. And specifically then we turn to Ezekiel 18. If you could turn to that text, let me say one other thing. As you’re turning, I’m going to say this and you can listen while you turn.

Last night on the Biblical Horizons list, there was—maybe the night before—a posting on Ecclesiastes, different commentaries being recommended for it. And we’re going to read a section from Ecclesiastes as our final text today before our final song. And Jeff Myers has pointed out that the Hebrew word for vanity is really the word for mist or vapor. You know, you read Ecclesiastes, you think this guy must have apostatized or something.

He just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But the point of the book, at least Myers thinks so, and I believe so as well, is that this is a wise man speaking who says that life is like a mist or a vapor. We cannot figure it all out. And so the end of the matter is you trust God. You obey the commandments. You do what you can. Myers said that much of Ecclesiastes is the demonstration that it is impossible to control God or to control life.

Solomon attempts to do that. The writer of the book does—can’t do it. Everything is vanity. Everything is a mist, a vapor. There are no ways we can control the future. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, Jim Jordan has said, are kind of analogues to one another, that you need to read them together. You read Proverbs and you think this is the automatic way everything works out. It can be controlled. You can have godly children. You do these things. But Ecclesiastes says, “No, life is a mist and a vapor.” Those things are true in Proverbs. They’re generally true. They’re covenantally true of a group of people. They’re important to attain to the wisdom that’s in Proverbs. But don’t think that it’s some kind of, you know, vending machine that you pull the right lever and stuff comes out. We do not serve a master principle. We do not serve a vending machine.

We serve a personal God. And he is sovereign. We are not. And while it’s important to attain to wisdom, wisdom at the end of Solomon’s life, or at least the writing of the book of Ecclesiastes, wisdom says the end of the day, God is sovereign and we’re not. Doesn’t mean you quit, but it means that you have humility. And that’s why, you know, age is important for being able to rule humbly before God.

Okay. And with that as an introduction to Ezekiel 18: Ezekiel—a couple of things really comment first. Now Ezekiel has in this writing told them that they are in captivity because of the sins of their fathers and he talks about the sins of Manasseh. So he affirms that portion of the Ten Commandments that says that, you know, he visits the iniquity of the fathers and of the children of the third and fourth generation.

He affirms that and he talks covenantally about their position. But now he turns to a specific proverb and says you guys are using this proverb wrong. Don’t use it anymore. Okay. What is the proverb? Ezekiel 18:1-2. The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, “What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?” Okay?

So, you eat grapes, you think they’re going to be sweet and good. They’re sour and your teeth just kind of get that galvanic effect of whatever it is. I don’t know what it is, but your teeth feel terrible. The point here is the father eats the grapes and the kids’ teeth are set on edge. As I live, says the Lord God, you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel. Don’t do it. So, he’s telling us as we read this, be really careful not to think this way.

Behold, all souls are mine. The soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine. The soul whose sin shall die. He asserts his sovereignty over the eternal destination of the souls of men. He says, “Don’t think that depending on what kind of things you eat and dispense to your children, you can get automatically good or bad stuff coming out of it.” And then he goes through a series of three cases to demonstrate this.

And the first case is the most important for our purposes today. If a man is just and does what is lawful and right, if he has not eaten on the mountains—that’s false worship—nor lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, commandment number two, nor defiled his neighbor’s wife, which would be a violation against the spirit who is the ultimate matchmaker, commandment number three, nor approached a woman during her impurity, linked with the defiling of the neighbor’s wife.

If he has not oppressed anyone, but has restored to the debtor his pledge, and we could say commandment number four, because the Sabbath, Isaiah 58 tells us, is to release those who are oppressed. We’ll leave the commandments behind now, but it is interesting that these first assertions of the justice of men follow the covenantal relationship of the law of God, God’s covenant law. Has robbed no one by violence, has given his bread to the hungry, and covered the naked with clothing.

If he has not exacted usury, nor taken any increase, but has withdrawn his hand from iniquity and executed true judgment between man and man, if he has walked in my statutes, kept my judgments faithfully, he is just, he shall surely live, says the Lord God. Now, Ezekiel knows that we don’t live because of our works. He’s going to say at the conclusion, in the middle of this chapter, that a man has to have a new heart which a man cannot get for himself.

Only God can provide it. Ezekiel’s not goofy in his theology. But he does say that if a man lives this way, it’s a demonstration of that newness of heart that he has and he will live eternally with God. Now, we could spend a lot of time and you should probably spend some time and I should spend some time in this text with this overview of what it means to live the Christian life or the God-affirming life in the old covenant and the Christian life in the new covenant.

Very important truths here and I believe every one of them, including the sexual prohibitions that they reference here, are applicable to us today. This is from the so-called holiness code of Leviticus and picks up after God had done in Leviticus dealing with the priests and the special people of Israel; he then gave laws that were applicable also to the foreign in the land, the god-fearing Gentiles, which most of us were or are.

And he says, “These are the laws for you and these are the laws for us.” So, the case that Ezekiel cites first of all is a man with essential conformity to the principles of God’s law. Now, nobody does it perfect. We don’t believe that. But it is—it is and should be our goal to be able to say that we have walked faithfully and righteously in the commandments of God. Sometimes we get so taken up with the doctrine of justification by faith that we think of ourselves as not able to do any of this stuff.

But the Bible says you’re supposed to do this stuff, not perfectly. We always need the intercessor, the Lord Jesus Christ. But there is a standard from God’s word and we are to aim for and essentially conform to that standard. This is an entrance liturgy, can be seen that way. It’s how you get in the door ultimately through the work of Christ. But as manifestation of that work is your conduct in relationship to these activities.

Now, the second case is this: if he—so now we’ve got a man that Ezekiel says is really sharp, he’s a committed Christian dad, he’s a great Christian husband, this guy does nearly all of it right. Ezekiel knows he doesn’t do it all perfectly, he’s a sinner, Ezekiel’s not messed up, but his life is intact. We’d want that kind of guy ruling us. But if he begets a son who is a robber or a shedder of blood, who does any of these things, and does none of those duties, but has eaten on the mountains and defiled his neighbor’s wife.

If he has oppressed the poor and needy, robbed by violence, nor restored the pledge, lifted his eyes to the idols, or committed abomination, if he has exacted usury, or taken increase—shall he then live? He shall not live. If he has done any of these abominations, he shall surely die. His blood shall be upon him, not the father.

Now you see, Ezekiel would not give us this example if it were not possible for it to occur. Of what use would it be to us if we could have a righteous man, if we had a righteous man who couldn’t somehow end up with an ungodly son? Ezekiel is saying that it is possible for godly men to have unrighteous children and it is not their fault. That’s the whole point of the text—it’s the kid’s fault. Now, the text explicitly, of course, is driving home the point that if you sin, it is your fault, your own fault, your own most grievous fault for whatever sins you commit.

But by way of extrapolating an application from the text, Ezekiel tells us as well that if the covenantal head of the family, he can be really great, dedicated Christian god, and his son could still apostatize. He could still go south.

Now, you know, I don’t want to give anybody any loopholes. I don’t want you like—I don’t want to tell you, you know, divorce is acceptable in the scriptures under certain conditions if you’re going to run off with that and say, “I got to work out a condition. I got to get away from this wife, away from this husband.” That’s not the point. I read this stuff and I need to say immediately, I’m not giving you an excuse. I’m not giving myself an excuse if a husband or a wife falls off from faithfulness or if ungodly children appear in the context of a godly family. I’m not trying to give you, you know, comfort that is not biblical comfort. As I said, the first response should be a heartfelt humbling of oneself before God.

I’m sure this righteous man would have done that. What did I do wrong? And you know, he would have done some things wrong because none of us are perfect. I had an odd thing happen yesterday, Friday. We come back for the closing in our house. Now, we have done due diligence. Our realtor says that we have really worked hard at getting the house inspected. There was a question about a possible leak stain in the living room from the roof.

Ended up even cutting a hole in the top of that roof, feeling if it was wet or not. Had the best building inspector that the realtor knows of come out, walk the roof, do the house inspection, had several people look at stuff. We worked hard at it. And you know, I said all along, I use this as an illustration. I said, you know, our job is to do due diligence, but at the end of the day, if God wants you in a leaky house, you’re going to be in a leaky house, and you’re going to say, “Thank you, God. I need that.”

Now, I don’t know yet what my house is going to be like, or our house is going to be like this winter. But here’s what happens. I’m getting the closing. We’ve just spent 45 minutes signing every piece of paper, entering into a covenant. And the seal on the covenant is the handing over of the check, largest check I’ve ever had to get involved with in my life to the title company for this transaction to be affected.

We’re 45 minutes in. Now, I had several weeks ago called a fellow to maybe give us an idea of what he thought the roof was like when we’re having this problem trying to figure out if it was leaking or not. And in the providence of God, couldn’t do that until after camp. So, we’re sitting in the office with my cellular phone. And I mean, right after I had signed everything and given this check to the lady, she walks out the door.

It’s now a done deal. The covenant is now affirmed on our part. And I get this call. Don’t do it. The roof is a joke. The roof is going to leak. You see, I don’t feel bad about that because I did due diligence. I know that we worked hard at trying to inspect things and who knows what God will do. Maybe the roof will leak, maybe it won’t. I don’t know. But if it does, I’m not going to feel like, “Oh, I made some kind of mistake.”

Parents, we do due diligence. We work real hard at it. And you should. And I don’t want anything I’m saying here to have you back off from what you’re doing with your wife or your children as a covenantal head in your family. But I’m telling you, at the end of the day, those souls belong to God. And he’s going to determine what happens to that wife or that husband, what happens to that child.

Now, you may have to come to a lot of repentance over things you did wrong. But don’t get into being a Pelagian that thinks that somehow your children must have sinned by way of imitation of your sins. Other scriptures warn against that. Of course they do that. But understand that it is God’s election or non-election of children that produces their eternal state.

Now it works the other way. And Ezekiel 18 goes on to say that if that child then—so you got a father who’s great, his son is a reprobate, and then his son comes along and he doesn’t act like that guy. He does everything right again. He’s like grandpa. See, and that’s the point of the next set of verses—is well in that case that soul’s going to live. So God spends an entire chapter here with several different angles saying that in the context of a godly generation of people, you can have people fall out in the middle and it’s not to be seen as the fault of the father. Or you can have God—if you have godly seed, don’t think it’s because of your diligence that they turned out to meet you in heaven.

See, it’s God’s work. It’s God’s work. So covenantal headship is not some sort of automatic guarantee of results. I mean, the scriptures tell—like I said, he says, don’t use that proverb. Don’t assert that truth in the context of the covenant community. And he says by way of implication, that if you do that, you’re assuming sovereignty. These souls are mine. God says, “I told you in my case law, everybody dies for their own sin.

I told you that if you might have a child, you might have a wife, you might have a husband who’s going to entice you to sin, and I didn’t punish you. I punished them.” And I’m telling you now, he says, “Don’t say if you see a child go south that it’s necessarily the sin of the father or the mother. Same thing with the spouse. Now, you know the balance is soul-searching aplenty. If you didn’t do due diligence, if you didn’t—if you walked in by faith and didn’t do any inspection on the house and you end up with a leaky roof, well, you know, you should do a little repenting there and a little repair work.

Okay. Now, I just—I want to read a little bit from Matthew Henry. Other commentators would say the same thing, but just so you don’t think this is just me talking, I want to read Henry on this same truth. Okay, here’s Matthew Henry’s commentary on Ezekiel 18. He, that is Ezekiel, applied it largely and particularly both ways. As it was in the royal line of the kings of Judah, so it often happens in private families that godly parents have wicked children and wicked parents have godly children.

Now here he shows first that it is supposed as no uncommon case, but a very melancholy or sad one, that the child of a very godly father, notwithstanding all the instructions given him, the good education he has had and the needful rebukes that have been given him and the restraints he has been laid under, after all the pains taken with him and prayers put up for him, may yet prove notoriously wicked and vile, the grief of his father, the shame of his family, and the curse and plague of his generation.

He is here supposed to allow himself in all those enormities which his good father dreaded and carefully avoided. And the son shakes off all those good duties which his father made conscious efforts at and took satisfaction in. He undoes all that his father did and goes counter to his example in everything. Let those good parents that have wicked children not look upon their cases as singular. It is a case put here.

And by it we see that grace does not run in the blood, nor always attend the means of grace. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. For then the children that are well taught would do well. But God will let us know that his grace is his own and his spirit a free agent. And that though we are tied to give our children a good education, he is not tied to blessed in this. As much as anything, appears the power of original sin and the necessity of special grace.

1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. With the temptation will also make the way of escape that you be able to bear it.” I don’t care what your husband does. Well, I do care, but ultimately, I don’t care what your husband does. I don’t care what your wife does. I don’t care what your children.

I don’t care what your fathers do. It’s never an excuse for your sin. And it’s never a litmus test to those observing outside of the family of what happened in the context of that family. Now, we may observe things that can come alongside and help each other out, but do you understand what I’m saying? Covenantal headship does not mean that ultimately whatever happens is a result of the covenantal head’s action.

What is it then? Briefly, Genesis 2 says that a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. God had put man in the garden to dress and keep it. Man is responsible to his wife. Now, we’re talking here primarily in the sense of marriage. Covenantal headship is to guard and protect and it’s also to provide. The Song of Solomon 4:12 says, “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” Adam had two gardens, a big one and a little one. We can draw by way of analogy that Adam was supposed to guard and nurture his small garden as he was his big garden. And Ephesians 5 tells us explicitly that a man is supposed to treat his wife like his own body. No man has ever hated his own body, Paul says, but nourishes it, nurtures it, brings it to development, makes it firm—is the sense of the Greek word there—and cherishes it.

To cherish means to protect. The word originally in the Greek was of a mother bird protecting and cherishing the young birds with her wings. So, Paul assumes that we feed ourselves, we make ourselves strong, we mature ourselves, we nurture ourselves up to become more beautiful, more glorious, and we also protect ourselves with clothes. And that’s what we’re supposed to do for the wife. I’ve told you before, hopefully you know this, that the English word Lord is a contraction of two old English words—loaf and ward—which meant bread and guard.

And there it is. If you want your wife to call you Lord the way Sarah called Abraham Lord, be a Lord. Bring the bread. Bring the guarding. Nurture with the bread. Cause her to mature and go from glory to glory in the context of relationship with Christ. And guard her from her own sin, from your sin, from the children’s sin, from the culture’s sin, and yes certainly physically as well. Guard and nurture, that’s what covenantal headship is all about in the marriage relationship.

Ephesians 5 says that the husband is head of the wife as also Christ is head of the church and he is the savior of the body. Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Sacrifice is at the heart of covenantal headship, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word that he might present her to himself, to Christ, not to yourself, that you might present your wife to Christ as a glorious church or glorious bride by way of analogy.

Adam dies so that Eve can be born, as it were—opens his side. He is open. He sacrifices at the conception of the relationship. The creation ordinance is sacrifice on the part of the man to establish the wife, the way that Christ bleeds for us and then commands us. And as I said in Ephesians 5, with the nurturing and guarding that it tells us that we’re to do.

1 Peter 3:7 says, “Husbands likewise dwell with those you have covenantal headship over—your wives in this case—with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel and as being heirs together the grace of life that your prayers may not be hindered.” I’m going to read here several quotations from an article found in this book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a response to evangelical feminism. John Piper and Wayne Grudem put this book out, a whole series of articles, well worth getting. The article by John Piper is the one I’m going to quote from here.

What is covenantal headship? Piper says this about his own father. When my father came home—he was now his father was away a lot preaching, itinerate preacher. Mom is home most of the time running stuff. Dad is away a lot. But when he came home, this is what he’s talking about: When my father came home, he was clearly the head of the house. He led in prayers at the table. He called the family together for devotions. He got us to Sunday school and worship. He drove the car. He guided the family to where we would sit. He made the decision to go to Howard Johnson’s for lunch. He led us to the table. He called for the waitress.

He paid the check. He was the one we knew we could reckon with, we would reckon with if we broke a family rule or were disrespectful to mom. Those were the happiest times for mom when dad was home, actively involved in that leadership. Oh, how she rejoiced to have daddy home doing these things. She loved his leadership. Later, I learned that the Bible calls this submission. He defined submission according to the Greek-English lexicon as a sense of voluntary yielding in love.

Mom voluntarily yielded to father’s headship. And then he develops the definition that you have on your outlines before you, the definition of biblical masculinity and it has to do with what covenantal headship is. Here’s his definition, not the only one around, could be improved upon, but it’s good.

At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.

He also provides a definition for submission, which is on your outline: At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership and worth from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.

And then he gives a series of comments on both these definitions. He sort of parses them out. All this is based upon these texts we just read—Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy, 1 Peter, etc.

At the heart of—is the way the definition of biblical masculinity according to Piper reads. At the heart of—and his point here is that this isn’t a comprehensive definition. This is the heart of the matter though in terms of what it means to be the covenantal head of your wife. At the heart of mature masculinity—this is masculinity not when you start out when you’re twenty. This is what you attain to in terms of being your covenantal head relative to your family.

This is the direction you end up at as you pursue being a covenantal head as directed by God’s word. It’s a matter of maturity. And he says it is to have a sense of—this leading of providing and protecting. And he says that he uses the word sense because to be masculine a man must not only be responsible but sense or feel that he is. If he does not sense or feel and affirm his responsibility, he is not mature in his masculinity.

You see, it doesn’t just relate to specific acts. It’s recognizing your covenantal head all the time. And you should have a pervading sense of your responsibility, husbands, to lead, provide, and protect your wives.

Have a sense of a benevolent perspective in this matter. Covenantal headship is benevolent. And here he says the word is intended to show that the responsibility of manhood is for the good of woman. Benevolent responsibility is meant to rule out all self-aggrandizing authoritarianism. In other words, ruling it’ll just bolster me up. That’s not the idea at all. You’re supposed to be nurturing your wife. That’s why God gave her you. Your job is to bring her along, not to see that your own needs are met.

It is meant to rule out all disdaining condescension and any act that makes a mature woman feel patronized rather than honored and prized. 1 Peter 3:7 says, “You better honor your wife. Don’t condescend to her. Don’t patronize her. Don’t think she’s a little thing to be patted on the head. No, she’s to be matured by you, nourished by you, and protected and guarded by you, benevolently, benevolently out of love.”

The word benevolent is meant to signal that mature masculinity gives appropriate expression to the golden rule in male-female relationships. It is so easy for us to take a cultural picture of who women men are and as a result saying things that are patronizing or condescending that do not have this benevolent sense of male headship and covenantal headship the Bible requires of us.

I’ve seen so often where men who are Arminians, Baptists feel they’re the doormat for the wife and it’s awful, it’s an awful perversion of covenantal headship. But it’s just as awful a perversion of covenantal headship when a guy becomes a Calvinist. And usually many of them go through this first fling. I’m sure I did and have tried to work it out. But you go through this thing: “Well, now I’m the boss now. You know, I’m a Calvinist and boy, we’re the men and we’re going to rule and we’re going to do this stuff.” And you end up completely dishonoring, giving no weight to the wife as a mature joint heir of the gracious gift of go of life from God. It’s horrific what we do with this stuff.

We as reformed people ought to be saying covenantal headship is important to us. We’re covenantal. We are to be covenantally benevolently leading our wives, providing and protecting.