"God Makes Marriage" Genesis 2:18-24 Sunday Morning Worship Service

To say our society is confused about gender would be the understatement of the year.

I want you to appreciate this morning that our society, its basic cultural fabric, our society teaches two contradictory things about gender and sex.

On the one hand, our society teaches that your sexual identity and your gender identity is the most significant thing about you.

It is so important.

It's determinative to your life.

It regulates how society interacts with you.

Your happiness is seen in the context of your ability to live out your gender or sexual identity.

Pop psychology teaches us that subliminally your sexual and gender identity influences all of your life.

Critical theory teaches that your identity in this area is foundational to your identity as a person.

And that if you want success or happiness in life, you must fully be validated in those areas and live them out to their most fullest expression as you define that.

That's on the one hand in our society.

It cannot be overstated how significant that is.

On the other hand, though, our society simultaneously teaches that gender is fluid, somewhat arbitrary, and completely insignificant.

There are no differences between men and women, at least none that are important, certainly none that are determinative, certainly none that would define your role or function in society or a marriage or family.

Men can have children as easily as women can, or at least it's a human right to make sure it seems that way.

Even trying to define what it means to be a man or woman in our society is politically taboo.

It's not even politically correct anymore to say that it is women who have babies.

And if you think it's okay to say that men should provide for their families and be the protectors in society, then ha ha ha, that's hilarious.

So I hope you see the paradox when I articulate it that way, although many people wouldn't articulate it that way, but I hope you see the paradox when it is articulated that way.

We live in a cultural moment where your gender is literally the most important thing about you, and it is also simultaneously completely irrelevant and meaningless.

This didn't occur in our society in a vacuum, of course.

It's the outgrowth of, I think, the pop psychology of the 80s and 90s, the taught the importance of self-esteem for personal happiness.

You think of a whole generation grew up being taught that your personal happiness is the reason you were made, and that you can attain your personal happiness through looking inward, from having a right view of yourself, from telling yourself that you are good enough and you are important enough and you are, you know, you can be whatever you want to be, kind of mantra that those decades brought in.

It created a generation that really thought that happiness could be found for living by living for yourself.

Apart from your family, apart from your kids, apart from your spouse, apart from your dog, happiness was all about you and your thoughts of yourself, and that that was why you were made.

It is not coincidental that those 20 years, the 80s and the 90s, had the highest divorce rate in human civilization, in human history.

I know many of you have come from that generation or are that generation, and so you might not get the full, you know, how the rest of the timeline of human history relates to that your experience there.

But I'm telling you, it's it's very difficult to exaggerate.

Those decades through pop psychology and just cultural influences taught you that your happiness was the most significant thing you could live for, and that you were in charge of whether or not you were happy.

And if you could get married, of course, if that would make you happy.

You could change your careers if that would make you happy.

You could have kids, maybe they'll make you happy.

The kids don't work, try a dog.

And if your wife doesn't make you happy, or your kids don't make you happy, or your dog doesn't work out, then just leave them and start over.

Maybe you'll find happiness somewhere else.

After all, Jesus would want you to be happy.

I mean, that is just that generation gives way and produces a generation that believes that your own gender identity, as arbitrary as that is, can make you happy.

That your own sexual identity, as independent as that is, I mean, already our foundation of this is that you define what is you, not culture.

They can't tell you what gender you are, they can't tell you your sexual identity.

Only you can.

And when you grasp it and live it out, all of society should exist to make you feel content and happy and fulfilled in that context.

Well, I want to argue this morning differently.

I want to try to persuade you that your relationships in your family are the most significant human relationships there are in life.

That your richest expressions of happiness will, of course, be found in your family as well as your richest disappointments in life.

Your happiness on earth is largely seen in your relationship in your family, because that is where most of your life is lived out.

And leaving and starting over, of course, is not going to produce happiness because the source of difficulty is not external, it's internal.

The source of happiness, in other words, is not internal, but the source of sin and difficulty is.

God made the world in such a way that families are the building block of society, that families are where your happiness and your emotions and your triumphs and your failures will be most acutely felt.

You experience happiness with those whom you spend the most time with, and of course, you'll experience difficulty and trials with those whom you spend the most time with, and that is all by God's design.

Moreover, that this design transcends culture, transcends society, transcends nations and language, all of that.

That God's design for marriage and family is, in this sense, transcendental.

It transcends all of that, and it really is something that exists outside of the human experience.

It exists in the mind of God as designed by God that we now attain to and live out, manifest in our own life.

That's what Genesis 2 teaches.

Before sin was in the world, marriage and family was in the world.

Before nations were in the world, before culture was in the world, before there was art, there was marriage and family.

And God designed the world this way.

Now, as I mentioned, we're building up to Ephesians 5 in our study in Ephesians 5, where it says, wives submit to your husbands, that that is such a phrase, a mandate to submit that is so out of left field in our culture that we can lose sight of the fact that when Paul tells the Ephesians, wives submit to your husbands, they're coming at it with the whole fabric of what the Bible teaches about marriage.

They don't come to that verse, you know, brand new about marriage.

They have all of the Bible's teaching about marriage funneling them to that instruction.

Whereas for us, we take a lot of that for granted.

And so I want to have kind of a long runway.

We lift off, we're going to be our cruising altitude is Ephesians 5, wives submit to your husbands.

That's where we're headed.

But to get up to that altitude, we have a long runway to take off.

And so that's why I want to look at Genesis 2 this morning, Genesis 3 next week.

Genesis 2 is how God designed marriage.

Genesis 3 is how sin wrecks it.

But this morning we want to begin with how God designed marriage.

This is helpful for us to understand why the Bible places such importance on marriage and how God defines it and how our human lives fit into that.

I'll give you an outline so you can take notes.

And I encourage you to take notes.

Four foundational words to help you see marriage properly.

Our outline is only going to be four words.

That's so the husbands can keep up.

Four words.

Four foundational words to help you see marriage properly.

This is the how and the why of marriage.

How God designed it, why he designed it this way.

Now, Genesis 1 teaches the creation of husband and wife.

Adam and Eve, male and female, he created them.

That's how Genesis 1 ends.

God looks at it and declares that it is very good.

How the sixth day comes to an end.

That's Genesis 1, verse 31.

Genesis 1:31

So chapter 1 is about the creation of male and female, Adam and Eve.

Genesis 1 is about their equality, their likeness, their sameness at the end of Genesis 1.

There's no distinctions between Adam and Eve.

There's just male, female, but no distinctions are elaborated on.

The equality is what is significant.

They are not like the animals, they're not like the birds, they're not like the fish.

They're humans in the image of God.

That's Genesis 1.

Genesis 2 stresses the differences.

It highlights the differences between husband and wife, between Adam and Eve.

And so that's why these two chapters are complementary.

Genesis 1 stresses the sameness.

We're not going there this morning because I want to focus this morning more on the distinctions, the differences.

One more comment on this before we get to our outline.

Genesis 2 is before Genesis 3.

I know this is just radical, world-changing truth for you.

Genesis 3 is where sin enters the world.

So what we're seeing this morning is how God designed marriage before sin.

Next week we'll see how sin alters that or changes that.

But I know that many of you are coming to this study in marriage from different places.

Some of you are coming from difficult marriages, where the idea of marriage being the source of fun and joy and liberty and love in life seems far-fetched.

Some of you are coming from broken marriages or homes of divorce or contemplating divorce even now.

Some of you come as single people who would want to be married, and so a study on marriages might strike you as unnecessarily provocative.

But know that all of those difficulties and trials that are the result of sin in this world.

Well, certainly Genesis 2 happens in light of those coming.

Genesis 2 takes place before sin enters the world.

And so if you can, with some kind of intellectual humility here, humble yourself and take your own difficulties out of this for a second.

And let's look at Genesis 2 and see how God designed marriage so that when you re-engage in your own life situation, in your own singleness, or your own difficult marriage or divorced background or whatever, as you re-engage, you're re-engaging in light of how God designed marriage.

And so you can have a more, I think, fuller experience or expectation or understanding at least of how God designed it.

So we get to our first word.

Our first word is complete.

Our first word is complete.

Verse 18 of Genesis chapter 2, Yahweh God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

This is a jarring phrase in the course of Genesis.

It is not good that should stand out.

It's the first negative that is used about the skill in which the universe was created.

Everything so far in Genesis 1 and 2 has been good.

In fact, 11 times things have been listed as good.

Every time you see the word good, it's always this is good.

Eleven times.

Chapter 1 calls light good.

It calls the seas good.

It calls seed that produces plants good.

Light, sees, seed.

Light separated from darkness is good in chapter one.

Birds are good.

Plants are good.

In fact, chapter one says everything is good.

Chapter 8, I mean chapter 2, food is good.

Amen.

Gold is good in chapter 2.

Morality is good in chapter 2.

So again, light versus darkness, seas, seed, plants, food, gold.

Everything.

Good, good, good, good, good.

Eleven times.

Good, good, good, good, good.

Until you get to this verse.

Hold on.

This is not good.

Stop the presses.

How can something be not good?

Isn't God perfect?

Isn't he creating the world?

Isn't man made in his image?

So if anything would be good, it would be in relationship to man.

And everything is good.

And so certainly man is good.

But here is something that is not good.

So it's worth fitting out, figuring out how Genesis 2 fits into our timeline here.

Genesis 1 takes you through all six days of creation.

Genesis 2 is backing up back into the sixth day, and it's expanding on what happened on the sixth day.

It's not a second creation account.

It's not like, well, here's two ways God could have done it.

Chapter 1, one way, chapter 2, another way.

Choose your own adventure.

You decide.

No, chapter 2 is zooming in on the sixth day.

At the end of the sixth day, it is very good.

But at 8 a.m.

on the sixth day, not very good.

So God has already declared by the by sundown, things are going to be good.

But at sunrise, something is not right.

And what's not right is that Adam is not complete.

It's not good that man would be alone.

There's only one man, Adam.

He's by himself.

He needs help.

So I'll make a helper fit for him, God says.

People have a mandate.

This comes at the end of chapter one, at the end of the sixth day.

People are supposed to multiply and fill the earth.

They're supposed to subdue the earth.

They're supposed to control the earth, subdue the earth, control the animals, grow food.

They're supposed to be fruitful and multiply.

These are things Adam can't do by himself.

He can't obviously multiply by himself.

One times one is going to be one.

Some of you guys majored math, I can tell.

One times one is going to be one.

So Adam can't do this himself.

He can't multiply himself.

Also, he can't subdue the earth himself.

And honestly, a wife is not going to help either.

The two of them against the earth are going to lose, also.

They need an army of people.

And he can't make an army by himself.

So it is not good that man would be alone.

Now, God's going to do a lesson here for Adam about this.

And before we get into the lesson, understand that this lesson is for Adam's benefit and our benefit.

It is not for God's benefit.

So God didn't create all of the animals and then Adam and then take a step back and go, hmm, something's not quite right.

I think something's missing.

Whatever could it be?

This whole exercise we're about to read about is not done for God's benefit.

God created the animals, male and female.

Some of them, I'm sure, are in flocks and schools of fish and herds, and there's the capability of reproducing.

That's how God made them, and now you're on to Adam and he's by himself.

And so it's not as if God is looking at this going, and something is missing.

What could it be?

No, this is not done for God's benefit.

This is done for Adam's benefit.

Let me give you an illustration of this.

The school I went to, the University of New Mexico, the soccer team there would every year have open tryouts for any walk-ons.

So if you wanted to walk on, if you weren't recruited, you weren't on the team, you wanted to make the team, there would be an open practice for that day for all the walk-ons to come and try out for the team.

And in my four years there, I never once saw a walk-on make the team.

And yet we had to do this every year, and people would get hurt and kicked, and it was, you know, it was kind of a drain, but we did this every season.

The school had that.

Now, why did they have open field tryouts?

I asked the coach once, Coach Klaus, why they had open field tryouts like that.

And I mean, he never took, never took a player.

And his answer was he wasn't doing it for himself, but he'd learned through his 89 million years of coaching.

This guy was older than the earth.

He learned from all of his years of coaching that if how if he didn't do this, these players would go about the rest of their lives thinking they should have been on the team.

But giving them the chance to go out and play would reveal to them that, lo and behold, they do not belong on the team.

That's what's happening here.

This is not for God's benefit.

This is not for the animal's benefit.

This kind of tryout here for Adam's helper is for Adam's benefit.

Look at verse 19.

Out of the ground, Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

So this is the open field tryouts.

All the animals are coming.

This is every the animals are coming by their kinds, not by their species.

I've heard people say there's no way that Adam could name all the animals in one day.

You know, there's 800 billion species or whatever, and you can't.

He's not naming every species.

Not every breed of dog is going to be named right here.

He's naming animals by their kinds, which could go relatively quickly.

This is the category of animals that were on the ark.

He could bust through this in a few hours.

He could go extra fast because he doesn't have his wife with him.

So he's just going through the animals, making up sounds.

This guy's got a long neck.

Let's call giraffe, which is long necked.

I don't know.

I don't know how he named the names.

He's just making up crazy names.

Now, for a while, I'm sure this is going to be engaging.

Perhaps even entertaining.

Fun even.

Here comes two gerbils.

Never seen those before.

They're cute.

How long do you think until Adam becomes aware that he's by himself?

An hour?

I mean, how many how many sets of animals go by?

Lion, lioness.

That's neat.

Oh, there's two cardinals.

One red, one gray.

Oh, and their color schemes offset when they're next to each other.

That's really cool.

Nice design, God.

Well done with the cardinals.

Wait a minute.

Everybody else has a friend.

Where's my?

Where's my friend?

Where's my helper?

Oh, there's a dog.

That can be my best friend.

Not quite, though.

Doesn't talk.

And let me tell you what, they're definitely not helping.

The dog's not able to help the name of the other animals.

Everything just says bark.

It's not helpful.

No, we use that one already.

He's by himself.

By the end of this exercise, I bet it's pretty obvious to Adam that it's not good that he's alone.

It's not good.

He needs a helper.

This is what verse 20 says.

The man gave names to all the livestocks, all the birds of the heavens, to every beast of the field.

But for Adam, there's nobody.

There's not a helper that fits with him.

Even the dogs walked away.

So, first point.

Complete.

It's not good that Adam's alone.

He can't do what God called him to do.

He's by himself.

Secondly, companion.

Companion.

These are four C's, by the way.

All of my words will start with C, and that's because he outlined his four foundational words to help you see marriage properly.

That is such a dad joke, but I embrace it.

Secondly, companion.

God causes Adam to go to sleep.

Verse 21.

The Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam.

This isn't nighttime yet.

Two in the afternoon, let's say.

And a deep sleep comes upon him.

This is the first nap in the Bible.

Genesis describes the creation of everything important.

This is where naps come in.

I claim this verse in faith every Sunday afternoon.

Deep sleep here's not in fairness, it's not even the word for nap.

This is he's out.

This is the word used for Jonah when he's in the boat in the storm.

He is sound asleep.

God causes the sleep to fall on Adam.

And while he slept, God took one of his ribs.

And closed up its place with flesh.

Now, one of his ribs here.

The Hebrew word for rib, it's not necessarily rib.

I think it's translated rib because it's got the number in front of it, one of his ribs, but this could easily be translated, took from one of his sides, or it took from his side even, would be another way you could render this.

I don't think necessarily the rib is in mind.

I know there's a, you know, the um rumor.

I was gonna call it an old wives' tale, but not today.

There's a rumor that men have one less rib than women.

Um I don't think that's true, though.

Um I don't think that's true.

I'm a sociology major, not a medical major.

But I don't think it's true that men have one less rib than women.

You can Google that, not right now, but on your own.

Um somebody did tell me, though, that uh first hour a doctor came up and told me that the rib is the only bone in the human body that will regenerate itself, which I think is kind of neat.

Uh but regardless, the surgery here is happening on the side of Adam.

Um this is interesting.

It's not that this person is going to be made out of dirt.

Everything so far is made out of dirt.

The animals were made out of dirt.

Adam was made out of dirt.

But not what's happening now.

God doesn't grab more dirt to make Eve.

He grabs flesh from Adam to make Eve.

He stitches Eve together that way.

Takes out from his side.

Now this shows right away, you see this, that the woman that's being made here is going to be made from Adam, like Adam, from the same stuff as Adam.

I mentioned earlier that Genesis 1 is the chapter that highlights the equality of the genders.

Genesis 2 is going to highlight their distinctions in a second, but before we get to the distinctions, notice initially it's the sameness that's highlighted even here.

That the woman is going to be more like Adam than like the animals in that sense.

The woman is not, it's not that Adam just didn't find the right animal.

This is not an animal we're talking about.

This is from Adam.

Eve, the woman, will be like him, with the same stuff he is made from.

They're going to stand apart.

Adam and Eve will be in the image of God.

Not the animals in that sense.

The image of God, back in chapter one, that mankind is made in the image of God, male and female, he made them.

That's connected to the image of God.

Of course, that means the ability for fellowship and to magnify the love and the joy and the fellowship of the Trinity between the Father and the Son and the Spirit, the eternal joy and fellowship that just defines who God is, really.

The mutual relationships of the Trinity and that joy defines God in many ways.

We're in the image of God, which means we're capable of that, but that's not confined to marriage necessarily.

You can have joy and fellowship and all that with other people, but it's that joy and fellowship with the capacity to multiply and to rule.

The animals are not going to rule the earth.

There will be no animal that rules the earth.

The image of God has inherent with this this personal fellowship, personal relationship that expresses itself in dominion over the earth and multiplication.

Creation.

That's what the image of God is so far.

Adam is not that by himself.

He cannot rule, he cannot multiply, he cannot have that relationship with the animals.

And so God makes someone from himself to be his companion.

And he's going to meet her.

Verse 22, the rib that Yahweh God took from the man, he made into a woman.

Notice the pun here, Ish being man, Esha being woman, meaning Esha being from man.

It's the same kind of uh pun or wordplay that carries over into English.

English reflects the Hebrew here, where man and the woman, the word man is wrapped up in the word woman.

Same thing in Hebrew here, Ish being man, Esha from man.

And the woman is brought to the man.

So God brings Eve to Adam.

The man awakes from his sleep and said, This at last.

I want to pause before he gets to the rest of his line.

The Hebrew here is Zathafan.

It's like an exclamation.

It's like Adam wakes up and sees this woman not there when he went to sleep.

He sees her not like the animals.

He sees her and right away he's struck by her like this.

Whoa.

You could almost translate this holy smokes.

You gotta be kidding me.

Wow.

It's it's the first exclamation in the Bible.

It's I can't believe how good this is.

Some scholars think that C.C.

Penniston's famous song, Finally It Happened to Me, played right here.

It's probably best not to be speculative, though.

The point is that Adam is blown away at this.

And then he declares, this is bone of my bones.

Flesh of my flesh.

Perhaps he felt the stitching.

She's from me.

She's like me.

I remember back in my single days, I would, the way the church was laid out, it was a similar design to this.

I would sit over there at night church, and Deidre would be on the other side of the worship center, over there, and I could see her from across.

I'd be watching the preaching, of course.

My eyes would be on Pastor MacArthur.

But out of the corner of my eye, maybe I saw her over there.

And I remember thinking, I wonder if she would ever be interested in me.

And I I thought she wouldn't, and I thought so because she had told me I would never be interested in you.

So that, you know, that was I was good on those like subtle signs.

I could pick up on those.

I could still see her and wonder.

And then one day she said yes to a date.

Maybe you have your own thoughts about when you first saw your spouse.

Do you know that when Adam went to sleep, there were no other human beings in the world?

So he wasn't like engaging with us in the level of like maybe she might be interested one day.

When he went to sleep, there was a nobody.

So he went to sleep sad.

He went to sleep knowing that something is missing, knowing there's a lack.

And then he woke up in that sense completed.

The helper is there.

The person like him, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

She will be his companion, different than all the animals.

However, she's not identical to Adam.

And that's our third point.

She's a compliment.

She's a compliment.

She's not a mere image.

She's a compliment.

She fits what's missing.

And a compliment means it implies in a compliment that there's differences and distinctions, of course.

And again, parenting analogy, you have kids that want to start choosing their own clothes, and at first they don't care if their clothes match, and it's just crazy town.

But so you try to try to teach, and you're like, oh, you're you're looking for something that matches.

That's the English word we use.

It has to match.

And so you know the first phase of phase of matching is the kids try to find the identical colors.

Like here's pink sweats and a mostly pink shirt.

So see that matches because they're the same color, and you're like, huh, not quite.

Good effort though.

I like what you're trying for.

And you have long discussions about how can both of those blacks not be the same shade, yet they're both black.

Welcome to the world.

And so you realize you need some contrast in there.

And even that needs help, you know, because then you've got the polka dots and the rainbows, and that doesn't work either.

You're going for some kind of contrast.

And it's almost very hard to explain.

You know, you know it when you see it, kind of thing.

And that's that's the idea of matching here is they're not identical.

They're not identical, but they contrast in a way that complement.

And that's what Eve is like.

She will be called woman because she's taken out of man.

She's a complement, not a duplicate.

Adam welcomes her as his equal, but also names her.

And of course, in Genesis, the person naming is a demonstration of some kind of authority or leadership.

So he recognizes she is bone of my bone, she is flesh of my flesh.

But then he turns around and also names her.

So he's not confused that she's just like him.

I mean, he doesn't look at her and think, cool, finally a friend.

He doesn't look at her and go, hey, another dude like me.

He looks at her and recognizes she is like me, but she's also very different from me.

She'll have a different name.

She's different.

The woman will be different from the man.

In fact, the phrase that's used three times or so in this narrative is helper.

She's called the helper.

In a way that the animals aren't, but in a way that another man couldn't be.

The word helper has negative connotations to, I think, in English that aren't necessarily there in Hebrew.

Certainly there's negative connotations in our culture that aren't necessarily there in the culture that the Bible is written in.

For example, the next person called a helper in the Bible is going to be God Himself.

When Israel is encamped across the Red Sea, God tells them to cross the sea, and the Egyptians are barreling down on them.

God tells them to cross.

They can't cross.

There's a sea there.

That's the problem.

And so God is said to be the helper of Israel when he parts the sea.

He helps them cross.

Very common phrase in the Psalms that he is a helper and a keeper.

And so in light of that, you have to ask, what does it mean to be a helper?

And with the examples that the Bible gives, the helper is someone who helps you fulfill the command.

It's not a the word helper doesn't necessarily even imply authority or power, because if God is the helper to Moses and the Israelites, yet God has the authority and he has the power.

So the word helper here seems to imply that there's a command you can't do by yourself.

The helper empowers you or enables you to do the command.

That's the point, which gets back to why Adam was not good that he was alone.

Because he had the command to subdue the earth.

He had the command to rule on earth.

He was supposed to name the animals.

He was supposed to exercise dominion and he could not do that by himself.

Could not be fruitful and multiply by himself.

And so God brings him Eve.

She will be the helper.

She is like him, but not like him.

And by the way, Ish and Isha is not the only pun in this passage.

Adam's name, Adam, is from a Dama, which is dirt or ground.

Very important that Adam was made out of dirt.

The devil and the angels recognize this is Psalm 8 describes that.

Psalm 8, the devil wanted dominion over the earth.

And then he sees God didn't give the earth to be ruled by angels.

He didn't give the earth and the animals to be ruled by angels.

He gave the earth and the animals and the earth to be ruled by a person made out of dirt.

Adam's name reflects that he was made to rule the animals.

He was made to rule the earth from the earth.

Eve, on the other hand, has a different calling.

In a broad sense, she's going to be part of the creation mandate to subdue the earth.

And in a broad sense, she's going to be fruitful and multiply, of course.

But particularly, she's not made from the dirt.

Particularly, she's made from Adam.

She compliments her husband, and in this way, she's going to be giving life, would be the most obvious way to say it.

Adam is going to be subduing the earth.

This is primary calling.

Eve is going to be giving life, bringing new life.

Adam is made from the dirt to work the dirt.

Eve is made from human life to make human life.

So Adam's name is a pun.

Eve, of course, references being living.

Some say the word Eve even means soft.

Their names reflect their calling.

And their callings are different.

Their differences were not in intelligence.

Their differences were not in the image of God.

It's not like one is more intelligent or one is more in the image of God.

Their differences are not in those categories.

Their differences in a category of calling.

Adam was primarily responsible for subduing the earth.

Being made from Adam's side demonstrates loving unity, but it does not demonstrate domestic equality.

In other words, the fact that Eve was made from Adam demonstrates the unity she has with Adam, but it doesn't mean that their roles in the family will be the same.

I know this is happening before the fall, but next week we'll talk about how these differences are reinforced after the fall.

But the New Testament picks up on this too.

These distinctions remain even in the New Testament.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 9, says, Man was not made for the woman, but woman was made for man.

1 Corinthians 11:9

That's a very direct way of saying it.

Paul is the least politically correct author in the Bible, by the way.

He would be in so much trouble today.

But he just says it man was not made for the woman, woman was made for the man.

You can say it this way: the man is called to the work, and the wife is called to the husband.

That's the pattern that is picked up even in the New Testament.

That pattern is rooted here.

And it will be reinforced next week.

We'll see it then.

But they're designed to complement each other.

They have different areas of focus, but together they're able to live out the creation mandate that God gives to the earth to subdue it and to be fruitful and multiply.

Fourthly.

Marriage was designed to complete, was designed to create a companion, was designed to complement between the two sexes, and finally, commitment.

Marriage was designed with commitment in mind.

Therefore, verse 22, or verse 24, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Remember, be fruitful and multiply is the command given to them back in chapter 1, verse 27.

So now, how are they going to be fruitful and multiply?

They're going to leave and they're going to start new families.

That's going to be the pattern.

And you just need to pause to realize the significance of this verse.

This is a culture-defining verse right here.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother be joined to his wife, the two will become one flesh.

This is talking about Adam and Eve here.

Adam doesn't have a father and mother.

Do you understand?

This is giving the pattern of how Adam and Eve came together.

That's going to be the pattern, the archetype for how everything in our marriage structure flows from that.

We're patterned after that.

Adam did not have a father and mother, so this is not how Adam will leave his father and mother.

It's how we're going to in marriage.

You know, it's a raging debate in the Johnson family household.

Did Adam have a belly button?

You have long arguments about that.

Strong opinions, both sides, strengths and weaknesses.

I can weigh them out.

However, what's totally obvious is that he did not have a father and mother.

So this description, verse 24, Adam will leave his father and mother, a man will leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.

This is becoming the prototype for marriage.

Our marriages demonstrate this.

You're born as a child, a child is under his parents' authority or her parents' authority.

You live in your parents' house, you're raised by them, they are your authority.

You move away to college, you go get a job, you get 27 roommates, you get married.

When you get married, you're leaving your parents' authority, you're joining, and you're becoming a new family.

It's a new family that didn't exist yesterday, it does exist today.

That's what marriage creates: a new family.

Even before there's children, there's a new family.

You see this with sexual intimacy at the end of verse 24, they will become one flesh, but it's not, the one flesh is not exclusive to sexual intimacy.

It's about a whole new family unit is now on the scene.

It wasn't there before the marriage, it is there now.

That's a new family.

Yesterday, these two people were part of two different families.

Now they have left those families, and they're part of this one new family.

Their new family has priority.

Their new family is the family unit that God designs.

Their new family will also multiply.

You have new responsibilities.

You live out new roles, roles seen here between your calling to work and your calling to your family, between the husband and wife.

New roles lived out in a new context, a new family.

Marriage doesn't free you from responsibility to your old family, but it redefines your responsibility in the context of a new family.

Marriage is designed to be monogamous, exclusive.

You're left.

You can't be part of two families at the same time.

You've left the old, you're part of the new.

It's designed to be public.

There's a public proclamation about this.

As I said, yesterday you were in that family, your wife is in that family.

Today, society interacts with you on the a new term.

You're now part of a new family because of your marriage.

Loyalty.

There's commitment here.

There's covenantal words.

Leave and cleave, the King James has.

You've left and you hold fast.

These are words used in the covenants in the Old Testament, the leaving and the cleaving.

You see this even with Ruth the Naomi, where when they come back from Moab and they're hungry, and Naomi tells Ruth, Go back to your own people and to your own gods.

And do you remember what Ruth says?

No, I won't.

Ruth clings on to Naomi, holds on to her, holds on to her side, it says.

Same word, holds on to her side and says, I will not leave you.

Where you go, I will go.

Where you die, I'll be buried.

May Yahweh do more to me if I don't.

It's a covenantal commitment they make by she's leaving her old gods and clinging on to Naomi.

That's this little image here.

That's the design.

That reason that Ruth 1 is so powerful is that's the design for marriage.

That you leave your old life.

You leave your old family, and you now have a new family and a new life and a new context, a new thing.

And that literally becomes the foundation of society.

Society interacts with you on a family unit level.

This is the design before the fall, before nations, there was family.

Before there were laws, there were family.

You know, people, Americans today have a hard time even defining marriage, of course, and we say the government can define marriage, and you know, don't you know this proposition passed but then was shut down by that court and this way and that court, and so that defines marriage.

Fail to comprehend the Christian argument about this.

The Christian argument about this is not that democracy defines marriage and we just object to democracy which way they voted.

The Christian argument about this is that God defined and designed marriage before there was even government, before there was nations, before there was a justice of peace to do the wedding.

God designed marriage as a new husband and wife, family unit, monogamous, exclusive, public, loyal, sexual.

This is all in his design for marriage.

They will leave and they will become one flesh.

Notice that the roles, the distinction of roles between husband and wife are even there's echoes of it here in verse 24, although it's going to be so clear next week in chapter three, but there's echoes of it here.

Therefore, a man will leave his father and his mother.

And Americans sometimes struggle with that passage because wouldn't it make more sense to say the wife has to leave her parents?

Isn't she more, you know, more likely to still be under a parent's authority?

The point of saying, therefore, a man will leave his father and mother is to identify the initiative role of the husbands.

The husband is the leader here.

The call goes to him.

He is the one initiating the separation.

He is the leader.

A man will leave his father and his mother, and the man will hold fast to his wife.

The two will become one flesh, the two will form their own unit.

It was the husband that is given the call to have dominion over the earth.

It's the husband who needs the helper.

It's the husband who's initiating in his pursuit of a wife.

It's the husband who's initiating in the marriage.

Physical distinctions make this obvious in marriage.

The husband initiates and leads, the wife supports, helps, and completes.

And I said one flesh is more than just sexual, but it certainly includes that.

If you look at verse 25, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

They had no sin in the world.

So there's no wicked thoughts.

There was no sinful thoughts.

There's no shame associated with this.

You see how much sin wrecks the world.

Sin is coming next week, but you see how much sin wrecks the world.

It was Martin Luther in his commentary in Genesis 2 that said, Notice how sin has ruined the world.

Now it is the utmost sign of madness when someone walks around naked.

That was their life before sin was in the world.

You see, even before sin, though, the distinctions of the leadership of the husband, who is made from the earth like the animals, the life-giving power of Eve, who is made from life, unlike anyone else.

Together, they'll make a new family and there won't be shame.

Now we know the story doesn't end here.

We know sin does enter the world.

It enters the world, not even at the level of an individual.

It enters the world at the level of the marriage.

It enters the world firstly through Eve.

Although Adam has responsibility for it, as the New Testament makes clear because he was the leader.

And the story doesn't end there either.

You know that salvation will also enter the world.

And salvation will also enter the world through Eve.

Just like when God created the earth, he did not give it to the angels to rule.

When God goes to redeem the earth from sin, he does not send an angel to do it.

An angel will not be born on earth and rule the earth and be the second Adam and exercise dominion and redeem people from captivity.

God is going to send a man.

But that man will be born of a woman to demonstrate his full humanity.

He comes into the world through, I said Eve, but through a woman.

He comes in the world through Mary.

It's significant that Mary was a virgin when she brought Jesus into the world.

She had not yet been married.

So there was no male life-giving power involved with the Savior.

The example of humanity, the example of mankind, par excellence, Jesus, the best example of humanity there can be is the man Jesus Christ.

There was no life-giving power of a man bringing him into this world.

But to be human required a woman to bring him into this world.

And so we see that God's design for marriage and life-giving power of woman is true even in the New Testament, even at the very essence of the gospel.

And Jesus does live as a second Adam.

He does exercise dominion over the earth.

He does redeem his people from their sin by dying on the cross, bearing our penalty for sin, and rising from the grave on the third day.

Showing that sins can be forgiven.

I begin by saying that marriage is the place where blessing and difficulty are both experienced in a magnified and more powerful way than anywhere else in life, because you spend more time in your family than anywhere else in life.

Sometimes sin in the context of marriage and family can be seemed to be too great, too great to deal with, too great to be forgiven.

But understand, even in the precious, sinless context of marriage, God's already providing the equipment, the structure to bring forgiveness from sin.

He can forgive any sin.

He can forgive any sin from those who come to him in faith.

Lord, we're grateful that you are forgiving God.

That you designed marriage to bring the Savior into the world.

And yet Mary wasn't even married.

We're thankful for our Savior Jesus Christ, a second Adam, the head of our race.

Thankful for Mary, a pattern of Eve who brings life into the world.

We're grateful for Jesus Christ, who died to take away our sins and to give us new life.

I pray for anyone who's here today, who is going through difficulty, trial, suffering in their own marriage, perhaps are single and they desire to be married.

I pray that you would show them your grace, that you would increase their confidence in the gospel and the sufficiency of the gospel, even through this study.

I pray for anyone who's here today that doesn't know you, that has never trusted you with their life.

I pray today they would look at the man Christ Jesus, the one brought into the world through Mary, given life.

I pray that as they look to Christ, they too would receive eternal life through faith.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.