Adam, You're the Man!

This one goes back a long way. I first dug into it in 2005, preparing a message for Something Else Church in Celebration, Florida, on June 12 of that year. The title of that message was "You're the Man!" More than twenty years later, I was reminded of it while writing Truth or Consequences, where I walked through what happened in the garden the day the first round of that game was played. Near the end of that article I stopped on one sentence God spoke to Adam and said there was a whole article in it. This is that article.

Here is the sentence. "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you" (Genesis 3:17).

I have always found that wording interesting. God does not simply say, "Because you ate." He says, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten." Two things. He listened, and he ate. And if listening to her and eating was the failure, that implies there was another way that moment could have gone.

I want to be honest up front. Part of what follows is my own opinion about what might have happened if Adam had responded differently. Scripture does not tell us, and I will say so when I get there. But the principle underneath it is not opinion at all. From the very beginning, God has held the man accountable.

"Where are you?"

Go back to the order of things. "Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). That word "keep" carries the idea of guarding and watching over. Adam was given the garden to tend and to protect. Then he was given the command about the tree, before Eve was ever formed. He heard it straight from God.

Now watch what happens after they eat. The woman ate first. The serpent spoke to her, not to him. But when God comes walking in the garden, who does He call? "Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, 'Where are you?'" (Genesis 3:9).

He called to the man. Not because Eve was innocent. She was not, and she received consequences of her own. He called to the man because the man was the one He had given the command to and the one He had put in charge of keeping the garden. Paul makes the same distinction: "And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression" (1 Timothy 2:14). Eve was deceived. Adam was not. He knew exactly what God had said, and he ate anyway.

Yeshua put it plainly: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required" (Luke 12:48). Adam had been given the command, the garden, and the wife. Much was required of him.

What if?

So here is my what if. And again, this is my opinion, not Scripture.

Picture Eve coming to Adam with the fruit in her hand. She is excited. It is good for food. It is a delight to the eyes. It is going to make them wise. Maybe she has already taken a bite.

What if Adam had not taken it? What if, instead, he had looked at her and said, "Oh, Baby... what have you done..." and then, "...there has to be a way to fix this"?

What if he had taken her by the hand and brought her to God before God ever came looking for them? "Lord, the serpent deceived her. I know You said that in the day we eat from it we will die. I don't want to lose her. Please... there has to be something You can do."

I believe God's response would have been something like, "Well done." There is justice, and there is mercy, and because the man did what he was supposed to do, I believe God would have made a way to forgive, and things might very well have been completely different.

I cannot prove that, and I will not pretend to. Sin would still have had a cost, because "without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22). But look at what God did even after Adam failed. "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21). Something died so they could be covered. Even in judgment, God was already making a way. If that is how He responded to a man who hid and blamed his wife, I have to believe He would have responded to a man who came running to Him on her behalf.

Adam's mistake was not that he loved his wife. His mistake was that he put her voice above God's. He followed her when he should have carried her.

Standing before the King

Part of why this is hard for us to see is that we are Westerners. We do not live under kings. The whole idea of lordship is foreign to us. We think in terms of rights and votes, not in terms of a sovereign whose word is final and whose mercy is his to give.

But for most of history, people understood it. A serf lived under the protection of his king, owed him respect and obedience, and knew that when the king's command was broken, the only hope was the king's mercy. And very often that mercy came because someone stood between the offender and the throne.

One of the best known examples comes from 1347. According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, after King Edward III of England besieged the French town of Calais for nearly a year, he agreed to spare the town if six of its leading men came out to him bareheaded and barefoot, with ropes around their necks, carrying the keys to the city, to be executed. Eustache de Saint-Pierre, one of the wealthiest men in town, stepped forward first. Five others followed him. They offered their own lives for their people. Edward ordered them killed, and it was only when his queen, Philippa, knelt before him and begged for their lives that he spared them.

Men stood in the gap for their town. An intercessor went before the king. The sentence changed.

Scripture is full of the same pattern. Abraham pleaded with God over Sodom (Genesis 18). When Israel made the golden calf, "Moses entreated the Lord his God" (Exodus 32:11), and "So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people" (Exodus 32:14). When the people rebelled again at the edge of the promised land, Moses prayed, "Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness," and God answered, "I have pardoned them according to your word" (Numbers 14:19-20).

According to your word. One man's intercession.

Even in the parable Yeshua told about the servant who owed his king a debt he could never repay, the servant "fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him," and "the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt" (Matthew 18:26-27). That parable is about forgiving others, but it shows us the heart of the King. He is moved when someone comes to Him humbly.

And then there is this, which is one of the saddest verses in the Bible: "I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one" (Ezekiel 22:30).

God was looking for a man. In the garden, He was looking for one too.

Not a second mediator

I want to be careful here. A husband is not a second savior, and he is not a go-between that his wife needs in order to reach God. "For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). My wife has the same access to the Father through Yeshua that I do, and she is "a fellow heir of the grace of life" (1 Peter 3:7).

But one Mediator does not cancel the calling God gave men to lead, protect, and pray. "For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church" (Ephesians 5:23). And what does that headship look like? "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word" (Ephesians 5:25-26).

That is not a man lording it over his wife. That is a man who brings her to the Word, brings her before God, and is willing to give himself up for her. We have access to the Father through Yeshua and guidance from the Holy Spirit. We use that access on behalf of the people in our care. That is what it means to stand in the gap.

Peter even warns husbands that how we treat our wives affects our prayers: "so that your prayers will not be hindered" (1 Peter 3:7). God expects our prayers to be working for our families.

The same goes for our children

This does not stop with our wives. If we are supposed to be the spiritual leaders of our homes, God expects us to be responsible for what our children are taught and for bringing them before Him.

Job understood this. After his sons and daughters had their feasts, "Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, 'Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.' Thus Job did continually" (Job 1:5).

He did not wait to find out. He got up early and interceded for them. Continually.

God told Israel's fathers, "These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). And Paul told fathers to "bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).

That means we have to filter what comes into our homes the right way. As I wrote in Truth or Consequences, the question is not "Is it good or is it evil?" The question is "Is it true?" Our children will bring us things that look good. Ideas, friendships, entertainment, the latest thing everybody at school believes. Our job is not to be dazzled by how good it looks and go along. Our job is to hold it up against what God said, teach them to do the same, and when they have already taken a bite, to carry them to the Father.

When she brings you the fruit

So let me bring it home.

At some point, your wife or one of your children is going to come to you with something in their hand that looks good. It may be a decision, a purchase, a relationship, a new way of seeing things. It may even be something they have already done. And you will have the same choice Adam had.

You can listen and eat. Go along because you love them, because you don't want the conflict, because it looks good and they are excited about it.

Or you can stop, ask whether it is true, and if it is not, take them by the hand and bring them to God. Not with condemnation. Not with "What were you thinking?" but with "What do we do now? Let's go to the Father."

That starts long before the moment comes. It starts with a man who listens to God first. Yeshua said, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38). The foremost. Loving God first is not loving your wife less. It is the only way to love her well. A man who has put his wife above God has nothing to carry her to.

This may look strange in today's culture. God is still God, and we are not. He has told us what He expects, and as men we will be held accountable for it. "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).

The last Adam

Here is the good news. The first Adam failed to stand in the gap. The last Adam did not.

"For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Yeshua did exactly what Adam should have done. When His bride had taken the fruit, He did not follow her into sin, and He did not leave her in it. He went before the Father on her behalf. "He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors" (Isaiah 53:12). And He is still doing it. "Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25).

That is the pattern for every husband and every father. He is the Intercessor. We follow His example, and we bring our families to Him.

So what if you have already failed? What if, like Adam, you listened and ate? Then do what Adam did not do even then. Stop hiding. Come out from behind the bushes and go to the Father. "Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

God is still calling the question He asked in the garden. "Where are you?"

Be the man who answers, "Here I am, Lord... and I brought her with me."