We might dismiss the first marriage as too extraordinary to be practically helpful. How could any ordinary sinful husband or wife today relate to those truly innocent newlyweds, with their perfect home in a flawless paradise? They enjoyed a fullness of peace and security and intimacy that’s now alien to the earth we’ve known.

Even for Adam and Eve, however, the honeymoon phase didn’t last long (at least when measured in verses). And we learn as much (or more) from their later failures as we do from their early obedience. As a young, often-failing husband, I find my imagination captured by the only sinless husband in history laying all he had on the altar of sin and compromise. His failures are foils of my callings, strange and dark inroads into what my marriage was meant to be — into what I was meant to be. His failures press our vague and comfortable ideas of what it means to be a husband into higher, less comfortable definition.

The more years I’m married, the more easily I can put myself in Adam’s fig leaves. His sins are unique for being the first, but they’re not all that different in kind or consequence. As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to be a bad husband than a faithful one, even in paradise. So what might we learn from that first bad husband? We’ll study their marital collapse in three stages.

When Temptation Came

The first verses in the single-most tragic chapter in Scripture don’t even mention the man. As a result, we might be led to think Adam was simply a supporting actor (perhaps even a victim) in this awful story. The reality, however, is that his seeming absence was his first great failure.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)

Satan knew how to attack a marriage. He knew that the surest way to undo the man, the marriage, and their brilliant mural of God and his people was to target the wife and seek to reverse the order of their callings. He undermines their matrimony by encouraging her to be the assertive head and him the yielding helper. So he goes after the bride. And where was Adam?

As we continue reading, we realize the husband was not, in fact, absent, but stood by quietly. In the same moment of temptation, he commits two of the most common sins of men: he fails to do what needs to be done (passivity), and he does what ought never be done (compromise). Notice how he finally enters the scene:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

Passivity

Adam was not off gathering food or herding lions while Satan snuck in to deceive Eve; he was there with her. His wife didn’t grab some fruit and run off to find him; she simply turned and held out her hand. He didn’t need her to relay all that was said; he likely heard every word. And yet he let her listen, and take, and eat. His home fell by a poisonous passivity. While it was Eve who listened (1 Timothy 2:14), who took what was not hers, and who prepared the forbidden meal, Adam stood by and let it all happen.

Just a few verses earlier, in Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man” — the man, not the couple — “and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” — to guard it, preserve it, protect it. Jason DeRouchie unpacks this keeping: “[The husband] is to supply spiritual and physical food, and to ward off any spiritual or physical obstacles to the glory-filled global mission to which God called his family.” But when temptation came to his home, Adam failed to keep what God had entrusted to him. Instead of intervening, he tolerated and made room for him.

What kept Adam from stepping in and speaking up? We’re not told. I assume, however, that his temptations weren’t so different from the ones husbands like me face today. Perhaps it was pride. That’s certainly the weakness Satan aimed for: “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Perhaps it was fear, wondering what Eve might feel or say if he refused the fruit. Perhaps it was sloth, simply lacking the strength and resolve to resist and fight back. Perhaps it was a lust for power, longing to taste that one forbidden pleasure. Passivity grows in any number of soils, but as we see again and again, it always bears the same bitter fruit.

Compromise

Adam wasn’t entirely passive, though. The three most haunting words, at least for husbands, might be these: “. . . she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

The husband not only watched as his wife made war on God, but he grabbed a sword of his own. He knew full well what God had said. Again, just a few verses earlier, we read, “The Lord God commanded the man” — the man, not the couple — “saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Genesis 2:16–17). And yet he ate. The deceitfulness of sin made him deaf to the voice that had brought him from dust and breathed life into his lungs. Is anything more destructive and painful to a home than when a husband, who manifestly knows better, dives headlong into sin?

“The surest way for a man to protect the home around him is for him to guard the heart within him.”

And how many homes have crumbled because husbands failed to see temptation for what it is and call sin what it is? The surest way for a man to protect the home around him is for him to guard the heart within him. As husbands, we follow in the footsteps of the Bridegroom, who met Satan and his temptations in the wilderness after forty lonely, hungry days and yet would not bite. Not when the devil tried the same old line, “Did God actually say . . . ?” Not when he was hungry. Not for the glory of a hundred nations.

Our homes and churches need husbands and fathers who refuse to abandon God’s word, even if their wives, children, and friends come to lead them away.

After Sin Happened

After Adam and Eve ate from the tree and fell into sin and shame, the Lord came calling, and when he did, he came first, as we should expect, for the husband.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8–9)

When God asks him what happened, Adam shifts the blame everywhere but himself, even casting accusations back at God. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). She gave me the fruit, and you gave her to me, so who could blame me?

I imagine any man who’s been married for long can relate to the seduction of self-pity — wanting to preserve our name and honor while the house is on fire. How deceitful is sin if we can be convinced to blame God for sin? And yet Adam does. And we do, in our own ways. We feel bad for ourselves about this or that and begin to make excuses for our failures.

The point was not that Eve should take no blame (to her credit, she owns her part, verse 13); the point was that Adam should take the first and greater blame. He, not she, was called to keep. Faithful husbands step up and take responsibility in crisis and defeat. They don’t go looking for excuses or scapegoats. They know that judgment always begins with the head of the home. So they first remove whatever they can find in their own eyes (Matthew 7:5), and then they do all in their power to correct, restore, and protect the family. When sin happens in the home, the husband takes responsibility — not meaning he accepts all blame, but that he accepts his part of the blame and then, more importantly, owns how the family responds to it.

If Satan can convince a husband that his marital problems are all rooted in her sins, he’s removed the walls of their home and opened them to all manner of spiritual attack. Yes, the woman, not the man, was deceived, but Scripture says sin entered the world through the man, not the woman (Romans 5:12).

Before Temptation Came?

We can’t say much about the space and time between the last verse of Genesis 2 — “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” — and the first verses of Genesis 3 — “Now the serpent . . . said to the woman” (Genesis 3:1–2). Had Adam already failed by letting Satan in at all? We don’t know how the devil invaded the garden or how he got an audience with its queen. We do know that God had charged the king to keep — to forbid and withstand all threats.

However Satan slipped in, we know that keeping a marriage and home in a world like ours, corrupted by sin and brimming with temptation, begins well before temptation comes. We know that many temptations can be avoided altogether because Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13) — not just lead us through temptation, but keep us from it altogether. Don’t let his awful lies touch our ears. Husbands and fathers are one great means to this kind of protection. We make sacrifices to stand on the spiritual walls of our homes, monitoring the unique threats and needs that emerge in our marriages and parenting, and then taking decisive, costly action when they do.

“Being a husband means standing guard before serpents come.”

How many husbands today, like Adam, have lowered our guards and let temptation invade and live freely in our homes? How often have we let Satan’s lies go unchallenged — or worse, undetected? Being a husband means standing guard before serpents come.

Proactive Protection

This keeping, however, means not only keeping evil out of the home, but kindling and cultivating good within it. Spiritual protection always involves teaching and encouragement.

Guardians of the home don’t just stand on the wall, scanning the horizon for shadows; they also fill the walls with light. They know that a family’s best defense is a deepening and expanding joy in God, that some of the best keeping happens through consistently reading, sharing, praying, marveling, serving, and singing. After all, Adam and Eve didn’t eat because they got hungry, but because their eyes had grown dim toward God. John Piper says,

Swallowing forbidden fruit is bad. But it is not the essence of what happened here. The moral outrage — the horror — of what happened here was that Adam and Eve desired this fruit more than they desired God. They delighted more in what the fruit could be for them than in what God could be for them. Eating was not the essence of the evil because, before they ate, they had already lost their taste for God. He was no longer their all-supplying life and joy. They preferred something else. That is the ultimate essence of evil. (“The Ultimate Essence of Evil”)

Part of a husband’s charge to guard the home, then, is to do what he can to foster the kind of delight in God that gladly rejects whatever Satan offers. Joy guards our wives and children from temptation and delivers them from evil.

Husbands, we have a high and weighty calling — and with it, a higher and stronger God to help in time of need. Like Adam, we’ll inevitably fail as husbands. Unlike Adam, we now know where to find forgiveness for our failures and the daily strength to love our wives and families faithfully. So when temptation comes, we step in and defy Satan head on, taking as much of his fire as we can. After sin happens, we take responsibility before God and lead the family in sorrow, confession, and repentance. And before temptation comes, we keep a big, satisfying vision of God before our families — through family worship, through informal conversations, and perhaps most of all, through our own contagious joy in him.

What is the difference between those welcomed into heaven and those thrown into hell? Can we imagine a more relevant or urgent question? While depicting the final judgment in parable form, Jesus gives us a surprising answer: their thoughts.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,” wrote A.W. Tozer (Knowledge of the Holy, 1). Jesus shows this true for the evil servant in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30). In the parable, Jesus gives us a glimpse into one difference between those welcomed into heaven and those thrown into judgment: their beliefs about God’s goodness. We get beneath actions into the psychology of the lost man, a window showing what squirmed beneath his disobedient life.

As we consider him, be asking yourself questions such as: What comes to mind when I think about God? Who do I assume he is? What does he love? What does he hate? What kind of Person governs the world? Is he good? Is he happy, blessed, disposed to give freely, or not? Beliefs about his goodness can lead to a useful life with heaven to follow or a worthless life with hell close behind.

At Journey’s End

The master finally returns from his long journey to meet with his three servants “and [settle] accounts with them” (Matthew 25:19). Before he left, he had entrusted them with his property, each according to his ability. He gave the ablest man five talents; the next, two talents; and to the last, he gave one. Jesus focuses the parable on their report of their stewardship in his absence. Had they been watchful for his return and about their master’s business (verse 13)?

“Beliefs about God’s goodness can lead to a useful life with heaven to follow or a worthless life with hell close behind.”

The first two report, rejoicing with their lord that, by their trading, they had each doubled what their master left them. Eyes then turn to the third servant. “He also who had received the one talent came forward” (verse 24).

Had he set off to the happy work like the first two servants? No. He buried the treasure in the backyard. But why? For the same reason as many today: he did not know the goodness of his master.

The God He Thought He Knew

Note the first words out of the servant’s mouth: “Master, I knew you to be a hard man.” What a different assessment from the first two, and what a strange conclusion given the facts we know. Do many masters entrust such valuable property to their servants’ keeping? Pharaoh withholds straw to make bricks, but this master hands over precious jewels from the vault. A talent is not a single coin; it is a treasure chest of precious wealth, twenty years of wages. The master hands him up to one million dollars in today’s wages — and simply leaves. Who is the servant to steward such wealth?

To account for this unbelievable opportunity, the servant twists the interpretation to excuse his thanklessness. “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed” (Matthew 25:24). He thought he knew an exacting master, a groping master, a severe man about the bottom line.

His lord — seemingly generous beyond any master earth has ever seen — was really grasping, not giving; extracting, not investing; extorting, not enriching. We even hear an accusation of laziness against the master — he was one who didn’t get his own hands dirty. Don’t we sometimes project our own sins upon God, as this “slothful” servant did (verse 26)?

So, he saw his master as a giant fly, rubbing his greedy hands in anticipation of profit. Faceless were the slaves who built his house. Should this servant stoop to be ridden as a donkey? Was he an ox to tread grain? This master’s yoke was not easy, nor his burden light.

Finally, his wickedness curls up in the fetal position. “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground” (verse 25). Thus, he knew a God to be feared, but not obeyed. This man knew his master’s will and thought to lazily hide from the failure of trying in the failure of disobedience. He committed his talent to nature’s vault. Better for his master to lose benefit than go bankrupt. “Here, you have what is yours” (verse 25).

The God He Did Not Know

That was the God he thought he knew: a hard and severe master whose generosity was pretense for profit, a master who fed his cattle well. He did not know the master that animated the service of the other two servants.

1. He did not know the master eager to commend.

The passage stresses that the two faithful servants left “at once” to do their master’s work (verses 16–17). I imagine them going forward with excitement. Really, me? I get to serve my Lord in this way? And that same excitement brought them to show their master the fruit of faith-filled trading, as children with a Father: “Here are your five talents, master, and five more!”

And how does the master respond? With that fatherly twinkle of satisfaction in his eyes, he will not let them do one thing more without warming them with his pleasure: “Well done, my good and faithful servants!” (verses 21, 23).

2. He did not know the God who gives for keeps.

In the end, how false and foolish this servant’s meditations of the miserly God. Wonder with me: the master didn’t give the talents for his own profit, but for theirs. He gave for keeps. This Lord designed for loyal stewards to keep their talents and the increase.

The worthless servant learned this lesson the hard way: “Take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents” (Matthew 25:28). He doesn’t say, “Give to the servant who made me five talents.” The talents now belong to the servant, as confirmed in the next line: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance” (verse 29). From before the journey, this master gave intending to make them rich. His joy — “Well done, good and faithful servant!” — was not in what he gained, but in what they gained. Is this your hard and stingy God?

3. He did not know the master who gives in order to give more.

“You have been faithful over a little,” he tells the good servants. “I will set you over much” (Matthew 25:21, 23). Do not let that humble word little pass by unnoticed. The five-talent servant gained another lifetime of value by his trading. Jesus calls this stewardship little compared to the much on its way.

Have you placed your life and all that you own upon the altar before God? Have you left family or fortune for the gospel? Have you despised your life in this world, looking to that country to come? Little your trading, great your promotion. Remain constant, as Joseph governing in prison: soon, you shall stand second-in-command in the new heavens and new earth; he will set you over much. Our greatest labor for Christ in this world is but the small beginnings to our real labor for Christ in the next.

4. He did not know the God of spacious joy.

What did the wicked servant think as he overheard the master’s final remark to the truehearted? “Enter into the joy of your Master” (verses 21, 23). The evil servant did not know that this Master’s joy was a country of happiness. He thought him a hard man, an unhappy man, but he is the happiest of all men. “Leave your joys behind and enter mine!” Or, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Here is a God to labor under. Here is a God to trust. Here is a God who can happify his servants forever.

He Hides a Smiling Face

If he only believed in the blessedness of this master’s heart, that the master really meant to reward and welcome him into his own joy upon his return, how things might have changed. The problem was not his master; the problem was his heart. The problem was not his abilities; the problem was his sloth. The master’s assessment proved him an evil, lazy, unreasonable servant (Matthew 25:26–27). In the end, he is cast into outer darkness. Sinners who spin lies get caught in webs.

So, my reader, what do you think of God? Does he give us serpents when we ask for bread? Is he watching with an eagle’s eye to strike you when you stumble? Is he stingy, heartless, selfish? Does he tax at high rates and offer mere rations to strengthen for tomorrow’s slavery? How does your life answer?

If we think high of him, he is higher. If we think well of him, he is better. If we think base of him, he shall not always correct us. Unjust beliefs that lead to unjust lives provoke his justice. “With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous” (Psalm 18:25–26).

Some of you do not serve him because you do not know him. Others have let hard and bitter circumstances deceive you into thinking he is hard and embittering. Business is not going as planned. You just received news that you lost the baby, again. Life should have been so different by now.

And the perfectly aimed question comes: Is this your good Master? O saints, Satan is asking God about some of you just now — “Does this ‘faithful servant’ really keep his integrity? Does he fear God for no reason? Touch his health, touch her fertility, touch his money, and they will curse you to your face.”

“Our greatest labor for Christ in this world is but the small beginnings to our real labor for Christ in the next.”

O saints, the Master is so good — above our deserts or imaginings — and he proved it for all time. How? By handing us his property, taking the long, faraway journey to Golgotha, and dying on the cross to pay our debts that we might keep his blessings. The Master not only gives his property to us — he offers himself for us. On the cross, Jesus lifted God’s goodness high above any of our earthly circumstances. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So,

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;The clouds ye so much dreadAre big with mercy and shall breakIn blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,But trust him for his grace;Behind a frowning providenceHe hides a smiling face. (William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”)

My son, give me your heart,     and let your eyes observe my ways. (Proverbs 23:26)

This simple proverb is embedded in a series of exhortations and warnings about the dangers of prostitutes and drunkenness. Its simplicity masks its profundity. In thirteen words, it cuts to the heart of parenting and, when consistently embraced, orients everything else we do in raising our children.

The two exhortations together express the remarkable exchange that we’re after in our fathering and our mothering. As our children grow up in our homes, we want to receive something from them, and we want them to receive something from us. We want their hearts, and we want them to have our ways.

Heartbeat of Parenting

The biblical calling on parents is to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). There are many aspects to this calling. We teach and admonish. We establish rules and enforce them. We provide instruction and correction. We rebuke and train and equip our children for life. But if we are seeking to raise them “in the Lord,” then we must keep our eye on the ball. We are after their heart.

It’s easy to lose sight of this. It’s easy to give instruction and discipline because we want our child’s obedience, or because we want some peace and quiet, or because we have important work to do and the fussing, whining, quarreling, and provoking happening in the kitchen is an interruption.

Of course, correction is important. Fussing, whining, quarreling, and provoking are all sins to be addressed. We do want their obedience, and we’re responsible to God to instruct them and discipline them. A peaceful home is a blessing to everyone in it. But it is far too easy to address the sins and lose sight of what’s ultimate. It’s possible to lose sight of the fact that what we really want is obedience from the heart, peace and quiet from the heart. What we want is their heart.

“Is the heartbeat of your parenting, ‘My son, give me your heart’?”

This means that our instructions, admonitions, warnings, corrections, exhortations, and discipline must all flow from our desire to gain their hearts. Ask yourself: When you’re setting the rules, are you after their heart? When you instruct them in God’s laws, are you after their heart? When you enforce the rules, whether God’s laws or house rules, are you after their heart? When you say yes to their requests, are you after their heart? When you say no to their requests, are you after their heart?

In all that you do as a parent, is Solomon’s proverb present in your words, attitudes, and actions? Is the heartbeat of your parenting, “My son, give me your heart”?

Now, seeking their heart is only one side of the equation. The other side is what we hope to give to them. “Let your eyes observe my ways.” A better translation might be, “Let your eyes delight in my ways.” The word observe does not refer to mere disinterested attention. It shows up in passages like these:

The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. (Psalm 147:11)

The Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation. (Psalm 149:4)

The Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights. (Proverbs 3:12)

When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. (Proverbs 16:7)

The sense of the exhortation is this: “My son, look with delight upon the way I conduct myself. Gladly accept my way of life.” In other words, the call is not merely for the son to observe his father’s conduct, but to aspire to imitate it, to follow it, to make his father’s ways his own.

Our ways refer to our habitual conduct, the pattern of thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions that define us. In other words, this is our actual way of walking in the world. It’s not mainly about what we profess, but what we practice. Think of it as your standard operating procedure. This is what our children are exhorted to gladly observe, accept, and follow.

In this sense, the manner of our speech is as important as the content of our speech. It’s not just what we say and do, but how we say and do it. So consider your attitude, your demeanor, your tone of voice, and ask yourself some probing questions.

Do you give instruction with exasperation or with cheerfulness? Do you correct with patience or with frustration? If someone else were in the room when you exhort and discipline your children, would they describe your tone as harsh or firm? Biting or kind? Angry or gentle? What sort of “way” are you asking them to gladly imitate and own? One that abruptly reacts with sharp intensity, or one that wisely responds with sober-minded stability?

Giving Their Hearts to God

These two exhortations hang together. Our ways will be more delightful to them if we are gladly seeking their hearts. One of our fundamental callings is to be the smile of God to our children. That is the heartbeat of our ways. And in reflecting God’s smile, we are also seeking their hearts and calling them to observe, receive, accept, and own our ways.

“Ultimately, we want our children to give their hearts to God. Giving their hearts to us is practice.”

But not just our ways. Ultimately, we want our children to give their hearts to God. Giving their hearts to us is practice for this ultimate giving. They give their hearts to an earthly father (and mother) so that they can learn to give their hearts to their heavenly Father. Gladly observing and imitating our ways is a stepping stone to observing and imitating God’s ways.

But perhaps we can say even more. Jesus tells us that there is a way of receiving children in his name that is also a receiving of Jesus himself. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (Mark 9:37). The two acts of receiving — receiving children and receiving Jesus — become one, because the first is done in his name. When you receive children in Jesus’s name, what do you have in the end? You have the children, and you have Jesus.

Similarly, there is a way your children can give you their heart that becomes, over time, and by the grace of God, a giving of their heart to God. They give their heart to you, and, if you’re teaching them rightly, they give their heart to you in the name of Jesus. And when they do that, who has their heart in the end? You do, and he does.