Gn.2 (continued)		Marriage pt.2    The Curse on Marriage   	9-16-2001 
	
Last week we began a study of what Scripture says about marriage, and we studied Gn.2 – God’s picture of the ideal marriage.  
	There is more to Gn.1-3 than meets the eye at first.  When people asked Jesus about divorce and He responded by saying, “Haven’t you read Gn.1?” He was giving us a signal that God intends for us to think deeply about the implications of the brief comments that are made in these crucial chapters.  (Gn.1 doesn’t say a word about divorce)
	The more you think it, the more beautiful it becomes.
	and he brought her to the man. 
23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called `woman, 'for she was taken out of man." 
	These are the first human words ever recorded, and they are poetry.  The very first utterance of the human race was the man rejoicing over the woman.
	This is God’s ideal.  It’s what’s supposed to happen in marriage.  The marriage relationship is to be one where you find joy in your spouse.  We don’t see anything about duty toward your spouse, just joy and intimacy.
	The 2 become one flesh.  This involves both the physical union and procreation, but I think goes far beyond both.  It’s a profound fusion of two lives into a single circle of shared existence for life.
How are we to relate to one another?
	The whole reason we are doing this study in Genesis in the middle of a study of Col.3 is we got to vv.18,19, which talk about the woman’s role and the man’s role in marriage.  And the most striking and obvious thing about it is the instructions to women are different than those to men.
	Men are to behave differently toward women than women are toward men.  There are different roles.  
	That fact couldn’t be more obvious when you look at how God designed us.  Not only is it obviously God’s will for women and not men to bear children, but there are may other physiological differences as well.
	Our differences go way beyond anatomy.  Every cell in a man’s body is different than a woman’s.  Our metabolisms work differently, our bones, tendons and ligaments have different density.
	Men have larger windpipes and bronchial tubes, and 30% more lung capacity, larger hearts, and 50% more muscle mass. 
	I could read you 30 pages of differences just from one source.  And those differences are clues to the fact that God did not design us for identical functions.  
	The skin of a man has fewer nerve endings.  This makes him more able to endure injuries to the skin.  And he has 10% more red blood cells which makes those injuries clot and heal faster.
	The skin of a woman is much more sensitive, giving her a far superior sense of touch.   She has more white blood cells, enabling her to fight infection better.
	Along with her acute sense of touch, women have superior senses of hearing, smell and taste.  This makes women much more aware of their environment and more able to pick up on subtle environmental cues.  That’s why you sometimes see a women dash over to catch a baby who is about to fall off a couch or something, and she moves before the father notices anything is about to happen.
	That’s not intuition – it’s the way God designed the woman’s entire system.
	Women have a finer discrimination of color – especially at the red end of the spectrum.  That’s why a woman is more likely to notice a slight rash on a baby’s skin, or notice someone blushing.
	Because a woman’s nerves interact with more neighboring nerves, women have more meaningful processing of sensory input.  So if a man interviews someone for a job, the man will come away knowing how the person responded to each question.
	But if a woman does the interview, she will come away with all kinds of information about the person’s mannerisms, facial expressions, dress, hygiene, when the person was nervous, when he was comfortable, and all kinds of other cues regarding personality and temperament. 
	Just as men have far more physical strength than women, women completely out-gun men in how they are equipped with regard to relating to other people.
	The brains of men and women are different not only in shape, but in the way they function.  The whole process is different.  If you numb the left side of a man’s brain there will be a severe loss of verbal skill.  If you numb the right side, there is actually an increase in verbal skill. (maybe I should smack myself on the right side of my head before I preach)
	Women register almost no difference in verbal skill with either side numbed.  They are far superior to men’s either way.  (A woman can literally out-talk a man even with half her brain).
	And these differences are not environmental – they are present at birth.  Baby girls are more likely to focus on a face and be comforted more by voices and human touch.  They learn to talk sooner, and when they start drawing, they mostly draw people.  
	Baby boys orient more to objects, lights and toys, and they are comforted more by patterned mobiles or ticking clocks.   They draw objects more than faces, and learn 3-dimentional drawing sooner.
	Men and women’s bodies react differently to stress, and are stressed by different things.  The reaction of a man’s body gives him an advantage in the short term reaction, but makes him more prone to heart disease and shorter life spans.  Women don’t do as well on the short term, but do better on the long term.
	Men’s brains are designed to react more quickly and to be able to make decisions faster (helpful in leadership).  Women’s brains enable them to be more patient and tolerant (helpful in child care and family relationships).  
	The cries of a baby have a definite automatic physiological effect on a woman.  Oxytocin is secreted, her pupils dilate, etc.  None of that happens to a man.
	There are psychological differences.  God made men with a need for accomplishment.  He made women with a need for healthy relationships and families ties.
	These are all clues that we have different roles – roles that were beautiful in the paradise before the fall, and then twisted and perverted by the fall.  The purpose of passages like Col.3:18 or Eph.5 is to help us return to the way things were designed to be.
	So we are not going to rush through our study of Gn.2, because we will never have success returning to that standard unless we have a solid understanding of what that standard was.
	And the beginning point is the very first mention of the two different kinds of people: Gn.1:27 in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them
	They were created male & female, not designated male and female.  Your gender is an essential part of your being.
	Here we see the first paradox in Scripture – men and women are the same and yet different.  They are the same in that they are both in the image of God, yet they are different in that they are male and female.
	They share the same dignity, the same importance, the same degree of resembling God, and yet there are things about them that are very distinct.
	And those very differences create a more profound kind of unity than two identical things.  Diverse counterparts properly joined together create a greater unity than things that are exactly the same.  
	If we all sing the same note, it’s unison.  But if we have soprano, alto, tenor and bass doing different things, we have harmony.   And anyone with an ear to hear knows that beautiful and complex harmony touches us in a deeper way than mere unison.
	That’s why God created heterosexuality and not homosexuality.
	And God brought the two together, and united them with a unity that I spent a half hour trying to put into words last time, and still fell short.
	That oneness is so important to God, He devotes the second chapter of the sacred Scripture to describing it.  That chapter gets a lot of exposure, and we may have thought God would use it to describe the Holy Spirit, or explain salvation by grace alone, or give the 10 commandments…
	Why isn’t marriage itself enough?  Why is it so important to God that there be such deep intimacy?  The answer to that question was a mystery that was not revealed until thousands of years later.  God doesn’t say why here – He just hammers home the incredible importance of intimacy in marriage. 
	In the NT we finally discover the reason.  God designed the marriage relationship to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church.
 
So right at the beginning of the Bible we discover the fact that your maleness or femaleness is not an incidental part of who you are.  It’s part of the very fabric of your being.  There are some things that are essential parts of you, and other things that are non-essential.
	It’s really incidental what the color of my hair is, for example.  (And it’s becoming more and more incidental the less and less hair I have).  Things like my shoe size, or how high I can jump are non-essential parts of my identity.  
	But the fact that I am male is not in that category.  My maleness is right at the core of who I am and how I am to interact with other people.
	For that reason, it’s vital that we define masculinity and femininity as best we can.  If you are male, the reason you are male is because God intentionally made you not female.  So obviously it’s important for you to figure out what it means to be male and not female.
	If you are a woman, you need to discover from Scripture and from wisdom (life experience and common sense) what it means to be female and not male.
	Let’s see what we can glean from Gn.2.  
In a Perfect World, What Does It Mean to Be Male?
Leadership
We established last week that by the way God went about creating man and woman, He made the man the leader.  
•		He created the man first, then commissioned him, then created the woman to be a suitable helper to him in that work.
•	He gave the man the responsibility to name the woman, implying headship and authority.   
•	We will also see in our study of ch.3 that by the way God first demands an accounting for the fall, we see that God regards the man as the leader and the one who bears ultimate responsibility.
•	God called both the male and female “man.”   He does that in 1:26
	Ge 1:26-27
26Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule…
27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 
	Clearly both the male and the female are called “man.”
	“Why is that significant?”  Then God makes a big point of it in ch.5.  
	Gn.5:1-2  When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man." 
	If it weren’t significant, God wouldn’t twice make a point of telling us.
	If He had wanted to indicate female headship, He could have called them both “woman.”  Or if He wanted to imply no headship one way or the other, He could have come up with a neutral term like “persons.”
	So in a perfect world what does it mean to be male and not female?  It means to be the leader, and it also means to be the provider.
Provision
This we will also see in our study of ch.3.  As we will see in the language of the curse, God identified the woman’s role primarily in terms of the home, and the man’s role primarily as out in the field working as the provider.  
	And numerous other passages confirm that.  In 1 Tim.3:5 we see that it is a man’s responsibility to take care of his family.
	That’s why when a woman is widowed, God becomes her provider in a special way, because she is without a normal provider.
	So masculinity involves being a leader and a provider for the woman.
	John Piper: Biblical masculinity includes a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.  
	(I am indebted for much of what I learned in this study to the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood)  I highly recommend it.  I ordered two copies for our library.
	Piper adds a third part – protect.  I see that as included in the general responsibility for provision.  The man is to supply the woman’s needs, including the need to be safe and protected.
	The reason I read you John Piper’s definition is because it is so well-worded.
	For one thing, he says it’s a sense of responsibility to lead…  
	The real issue isn’t so much a man’s actions as much as his desire and sense of responsibility.  
	In some circumstances the wife may have to support him – maybe he is injured or has a disabling disease.  And maybe the wife has to be the breadwinner, and maybe she has to be the one to go downstairs and investigate a frightening noise.  
	In a case like that, that doesn’t necessarily mean the wife is masculine and the man is not.  As long as the man has a sense that those things are his responsibility, and his wife is filling in because of the circumstances, he would still fall into this definition of biblical masculinity.  
	And a man like that can still provide for his family the bread of life, and lead them and protect them from the greatest danger – deception and sin.
	I also like the word benevolent.  That rules out all self-aggrandizing authoritarianism or condescension that would make the woman feel patronized rather than honored and prized. 
	So let’s take a look at these two aspects of masculinity – leadership and provision.
Leadership
What does leadership entail?  
Not Being Served 
TT Mt.20
	Leadership in the Kingdom of God is fundamentally different than leadership in the world.  In the world, the leaders are served by those under them.  And they tend to think of them as underlings and inferiors.  In Scriptural terminology, they “lord it over” those under them.
	In Mt.20, James & John make a move to try to gain the highest level in the coming Kingdom.  Jesus points out that the road to those positions is a road of suffering.  And then He makes this important comment:
	Mt.20:25-28
Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave- 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." 
	In the world, being a leader means having a lot of people serving you.  People open doors for you, get coffee for you, drive you around, etc.
	But in the kingdom, it’s the leader who is the one who does the serving, and the one under authority who is served.  
	When the disciples and Jesus were gathered in a room and there was no household servant around to do the normal, menial task of washing everybody’s feet, it became apparent that someone would have to do it.  Whose job was it?  Jesus’ job.
	Jesus was the highest authority in the room – the highest ranking person, and so in the Kingdom of God He was the most logical candidate to do the foot-washing.  This was a hard lesson for the disciples to learn, but it is a crucial part of life in the Kingdom.
	And lest you think that was only part of Jesus’ humiliation: Lk.12:37-38  It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 
 
Part of being a Christian is being humble & selfless, treating others as more important than yourself, and serving.   So every Christian should be eager to serve every other Christian.  And every wife should be eager to serve her husband just because she is a Christian.
	However, is it the duty of one of one partner or the other in a marriage to serve as part of their role in the family – more than the other?  Yes.  As the leader, it’s the husband’s role to be the greatest servant in the family.  Everyone should serve, but the one who serves most should be the husband.
	There are times I’m sitting on the couch and Tracy is walking through the kitchen, and I’ll ask her to get me something to drink, and she does.  That has nothing to do with my role as leader or her responsibility to submit.  That’s not submission.  That’s just one Christian doing another Christian a favor.
	It’s not wrong to ask someone for a favor from time to time.  But if you expect someone to serve you, you have departed from the very heart of the Christian life.

So if it isn’t being served, what is it?
Starting 
When Scripture calls the woman to be responsive to her husband’s leadership, that implies he is the one who makes the first move.  If all she does is respond, and all he does is respond, nothing ever happens.
	The leader is the one who takes the initiative and gets things rolling.  The husband must take the responsibility in general to initiate and carry through the spiritual and temporal planning for family life.  
	That’s generally speaking.  There are many specific instances in which the wife or even the children will plan and initiate certain things, but there must be a general tone and pattern of initiative sustained by the husband.
	Someone has to take the initiative in prayer at mealtimes, get the family out of bed on Sunday mornings, gather the family for devotions, discuss moral standards for the home, 
	A wife might initiate any one of these, but if she becomes the one who senses the general responsibility to address these things while her husband is passive, she is the leader – and that’s contrary to biblical masculinity and femininity. 
	This also applies to disciplining children.  Eph.6:1,2 places the primarily responsibility for disciplining children on the father.  When both the mother and father are present, it should be the father who takes the initiative.  You should never have a scene where a child is disobeying or failing to show respect, and the father sits by as though nothing were at stake.  
	Don’t be lazy in this regard.  And men, realize that discipline is easier for you than it is for her.  God designed you for it.  Children are much more responsive to male discipline.  (Nikki’s teacher especially wanted fathers to come on field trips because of discipline).  
	Because of the distribution of muscle in the upper body, the larger wind pipe & voice box, the deeper voice, the masculine demeanor in general – a man is much more intimidating and has to go to far less effort to get a child’s attention.
	In every area, it’s the husband who needs to aggressively initiate things.  Our time here is short, our mission is crucial, and if you waste your life sitting for hours every night in front of the TV or Internet or goofing around in the garage or spending all your free time with recreation – not only are you wasting one life, but you are leading your whole family into a pattern of being idle.
	So in the garden, Adam was the initiator.  Eve never had to worry about something not getting done, because her husband was an initiator. 
Bringing 
A leader leads somewhere.  There is some direction he goes and endeavors to bring those who are under his leadership.  (We will see this in specific detail when we look at Eph.5)
	The man’s job as a leader is to take his wife by the hand and say, “I’m moving closer to Christ.  Let’s go.”   He does not stand in the place of Christ.  He leads his wife to her ultimate, true Husband – Christ.  He must not stand in the place of Christ and become the object of her highest commitment – lest he become a traitor to Christ.  
	He must not make his wife dependent upon him, but on Christ.  The man who oversees every detail of what his wife does and belittles her with minute scrutiny is a poor leader.  
	Before the fall, Adam always influenced Eve toward being closer to her Maker.  He never dragged her away from that.  Intimacy with God was easy for Eve, because Adam made it easier for her.
	Enabling 
Don’t forget, a woman bears the image of God.  When all the animals came before Adam and he named each one according to its nature, it would have been obvious to him that none of them shared his nature.  They were all below him.
	But then came the woman – an equal.  A co-image bearer.  Human beings are the apex of creation.  
	I hope you realize what a staggering responsibility it is to be appointed a leader over a VIP.  
	Suppose you had a job in which all the top people in your field were gathered together for a project.  Some of them are Nobel Prize winners, others are world-renowned for their accomplishments, others are CEOs of huge corporations, etc.
	And you are appointed as the leader of the group.  You are the authority over these VIPs.  Think of how seriously you would take the responsibility of clearing the way for each one of them to do what they are so good at doing.  
	Think of how humbled you would be to have been placed in such a position.
	Any good leader knows that his job is to remove obstacles so that those under him can reach their maximum potential.  
	God gave your wife gifts that you don’t have.  Your role is to clear the way for her to flourish in the use of those gifts.
	No doubt, in the garden, Eve sensed that she was treasured by Adam, and the more time went on, the more aware she became of her capacities and strengths and gifts, because Adam brought them out of her and nurtured them.
Serving
A husband’s role is to keep his eye open to his wife’s needs, and to work to meet them.  I’m sure the servanthood was so mutual that it would be hard to tell from the outside who served whom more.  But I would be willing to bet Eve had a sense that as much as she loved serving Adam, Adam tended to out-serve her.
Deciding
One of the most important functions of leadership is decision-making.  That’s why every passage that talks about authority calls those under authority to submit – because God expects to one in authority to make the final decisions.
	Every group of people needs to have someone who has the final say in decision making.  
	That person isn’t necessarily always the most capable – but that doesn’t matter.  If your are driving and see some flashing lights behind you, you don’t say, “He looks like he’s in his late 20s, I’m in my mid-50s, I’m sure my judgment regarding safety is far better than his, so I refuse to pull over.”
	When he walks up to your car, you don’t give him an IQ test before handing over your license.   He’s the appointed authority, and society won’t function smoothly unless people submit to the appointed authorities.
	There are many wives who may be better than their husbands at decision making, but it’s the man who will be held accountable by God for the decisions that are made, and so God has given him the final say.
	Of course you need to consult with your wife about every decision.  (1 Co.7 teaches against unilateral decision making when it requires mutual consent in v.5) I never spend more than $10 of the family’s money without talking to Tracy about it.
	And 99% of the time we come to agreement on major decisions.  But every once in a while, we just don’t see eye-to-eye on something.  What does a good leader do then?
	If you can responsibly let her have her way, why not?
	If she wants to go to Subway and you want to go to Arby’s – go to Subway.  What harm will it do?
	On the other hand, sometimes you may be convinced that it would harm the family to do what she wants.  Suppose she really wants to buy a new car, but you are convinced it would put the family in a financial difficulty that’s not worth getting into.
	In that case, a good leader will say “no.”  Some men will go ahead so they don’t have to deal with her disappointment, and then when the financial crunch hits he beats her over the head with “See – I told you.” 
	Don’t do that.  The responsibility is ultimately yours.  If you get into financial trouble, it’s not her fault.  It’s the leader’s fault. 
	Think of the incredible freedom Eve enjoyed before the fall.  She was completely free to do what she was designed to do and to find fulfillment in life without being weighed down with the responsibility of final decision-making.  She could just follow Adam’s lead, and she found herself always right in the middle of God’s will. 
Provision
	Is it wrong for the woman to help with that?  Not in all cases.  The Pr.31 woman earned money.  But it’s the man’s responsibility.  If there is no bread on the table it should be the man who feels the main pressure to do something to get it there.
	And the same applies to other needs besides food.  For example, protection.  That is another part of a man’s role.  That’s why in the OT you see God repeatedly saying that He would protect the orphans and widows.  The idea is that now that the husband is gone, they need protection.
	 If Tracy and I are walking down the street and someone walks up with a lead pipe, I don’t say, “OK Tracy, I’m the leader, and your orders are to hold him off until I can get a good head start.”
	Part of being a man is understanding my God-ordained responsibility to step between my wife and the assailant.  
	And I don’t think it’s just because of physical strength.  If a boat is sinking, even the world understands that you put the women and children in the lifeboats first.  Is that because men are better swimmers?  
	Actually,  the distribution of muscle mass in the male’s body makes him more of a sinker.  If we go by pure physiological differences, the men would get in the boats and let the ladies float.  But to do that would be cowardly and a failure to act as provider and protector.
	So that’s the picture of Adam before the fall.  And before sin entered the picture, Eve was all of what God designed for femininity to be as well.  No doubt she looked up to Adam with deep respect, and joyfully followed his leadership.
	We know she was his helper – ideally suited to him.  She encouraged him, strengthened him, was a companion to him…
	And the result was an intimacy and closeness and oneness that was without flaw.
	So now we know the ideal: two intellegent, humble human beings living out the image of God in beautiful harmony and intimacy through their uniquenesses.  
	The next step is to look at what went wrong – that’s Gn.3.  Something happened in Gn.3 that disrupted and distorted this ideal at every level.
	TT Gn.3
	If we are going to fix the problems that come up in marriage, we need to do the same thing we would do if we were fixing anything else – an auto mechanic will start out with a thorough knowledge of how an engine is supposed to function.  Then he will look for what has gone wrong. Then he fixes it by restoring the part that has gone wrong to the way it was originally designed to be.
	There are an army of marriage counselors out there who are like auto mechanics who are able to figure out what’s wrong, but instead of trying to restore it back to the manufactuer’s original specs, he comes up with his own creative idea.  
	I hope you understand what an important chapter Gn.3 is.  Can you imagine if it weren’t in the Bible?  The Bible would no longer make any sense.
	God makes everything in Gn.1, in ch.2 we have paradise – ideal harmony with God and with one another with full access to the tree of life.  
	Then in ch.4 we have murder – a man kills his own brother.  He is estranged from God.  
	We see sin, sorrow, pain, suffering and death.  By the end of the chapter there is polygamy, and a man bragging to his multiple wives about being 7 times more vengful and murdererous than Cain. 
	In ch.5, eight times we see the phrase “he died.”   The human race is dominated by death – everybody dies.
	And by ch.6 we read The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth  (Gn.6:5-7)
	If you didn’t have ch.3 in between, it would make no sense.  It would seem as though God had created evil.
	I know of no more difficult question that we have to deal with than the problem of evil.  Since we believe in a God who is both all-powerful and perfectly good, how do we explain the existence of evil?
	(An attempt to answer that question is known as a theodicy)
	The problem of evil is the most troubling reality there is for us.  That’s why the attack on Tuesday was so devastating to us emotionally.  It’s not just because of the death.  1.5 million people die every day anyway.  Nothing happened to those people that isn’t going to happen to each of us.
	What was so devastating to us was the degree of evil.   The targets were not military.  Somebody just wanted to kill thousands of innocent civilians.  
	If it were just a symbolic statement  - striking at our symbols of economic and military strength – they could have done that on a Sunday when there weren’t so many people.   The people who did it had to know there would be tens of thousands of little kids crying bitterly because their mommy is dead.
	One man who was in the North tower survived, but when he was contacting his family to let them know he was OK, he discovered his sister and his little niece was on the plane that hit the building he was in.
	When I heard that I thought about the terrorists on that plane – what did they think when they saw that little girl.  
	Then we see people overseas laughing at the news and celebrating.  How could a human heart become that evil?
	The only valid answer is Gn.3.
	Where did all the evil, and sin, and suffering and death come from?  Did God create everything that way?  
	No.  God created paradise, He created man good, and then gave him a choice.  He had access to the tree of life, and to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Man could experience life, or he could experience good and evil.
	It wasn’t a trap.  God clearly warned man that the consequence of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be death.
	Man chose sin and death.  And a lot of things were included in the package of death.  It came with a curse and brought susceptibility to sin, estrangement from God, sickness, pain, sorrow, suffering, decay, death and the domination of evil.
	Suffering, disease and death were not part of the creation – they came from man’s rebellion.  That’s why it’s important to believe in a young earth.  People who want to believe in both creation and evolution will try to impose an interpretation of Gn.1 in which God used evolution as a means of creating everything.
	That makes God the author of killing and suffering and struggling and weakness and disease and death.
	But God is not guilty of evil in any way – directly or indirectly.  He created everything good, gave man the dignity of free choice, and man chose sin & death.  
	God’s response could have been to just let man die and be done with it, but instead He set a plan of redemption in place that would reverse man’s plunge into rebellion & death.  This plan cost Him His own Son.
	Let’s take a look at Gn.3 and what has gone wrong specifically with marriage.
	
-	Adam and Eve enjoyed such intimacy because there was no sin.  So how can we return to that now that sin is in the picture?
-		What does submission mean?  There are different kinds of submission – parents control every detail of their children’s lives, the government has a different kind of authority over you.
	Pastors have a different kind of authority.
	So what are the parameters of a husband’s authority.
-		What about singles?  How does all this apply to them?
-	And what about people you aren’t married to?  If submission is part of being feminine, but Scripture calls women to submit to their own husbands, how do you express masculinity and femininity to people you aren’t married to?
-	What if your husband is an unbeliever or a believer who is not following God’s will?
	We will delve into those questions next week.
•		

	Benediction: 
	Ps 37:1-38:1
Do not fret because of evil men … 2for like the grass they will soon wither,like green plants they will soon die away. 7Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;do not fret when men succeed in their ways,when they carry out their wicked schemes. 8Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;do not fret--it leads only to evil. 9For evil men will be cut off,but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land. 10A little while, and the wicked will be no more;though you look for them, they will not be found. 11But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace. 12The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; 13but the Lord laughs at the wicked,for he knows their day is coming. 14The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy,to slay those whose ways are upright. 15But their swords will pierce their own hearts,and their bows will be broken. 
…17for the power of the wicked will be broken, but the LORD upholds the righteous.