Man And Woman

Genesis, the first three chapters are so packed with insight and foundational for how we live as a Christian

that I was initially going to cover Genesis 2 and 3 together as a unit,

and then it turned out that that was going to be impossible unless we meet here for four hours.

So we're going to cover just chapter 2, and I normally have an introduction for my sermons,

but I don't today because it's so interesting that we don't need one.

I'm going to be talking about work and how God calls us to our work as worship,

and I'm going to talk about relationships, talk about marriage and singleness, talk about sex.

These are all very interesting topics, so I don't think there needs to be an introduction.

So here, let's begin in verse 4.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created,

in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

So this opening clause, this formula is a refrain that recurs throughout the book of Genesis to introduce a new section.

So it says these are the generations of Noah or Isaac or Jacob, as you'll see throughout.

And so here it's talking about the heavens and the earth.

So this is the beginning history, really proto-history, if you might call it, the first history of the human race.

Verse 5 says,

Now, I told you that I'm going to be talking about work and relationship,

and this passage tells us that humanity was created for worship and relationship

that represents and resembles the triune God.

Now, if that's the case, why is the narrator going into this description about the field and plants?

And that will become clear in a second,

because it's the bush of the field is a reference to just wild shrubbery

that grows when the spring rains come in the ancient Near East.

So it's the bushes that spring up by themselves without human work.

And then the second part, the small plant of the field, is a reference to cultivated grain,

so grains that only grow when people work on it, when they farm the land, right?

And so these two parts, they constitute a problem.

There's no bush of the field and no small plant of the field.

And because of that, God gives a two-part solution that's for the Lord God had not,

and the reason for this is that the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land.

That's the reason why there's no bush of the field, the wild shrubbery.

And there's also no man to work the ground.

So that's the reason why there's no cultivated grain, no small plants.

And so this sets you up to expect a two-part solution to this two-part problem.

So verses 6 to 7,

And the mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.

Now, the sentence break is in an odd place in the English Standard Version.

There's a sentence break in the original Hebrew at the end of verse 5.

And I think that's the correct way to read it.

And if you read it that way, it fits the structure that we've been working with.

So there was no rain.

So there was no plants in the bush of the field.

So God gives rain.

That's what he does.

He sends a mist is coming up from the ground.

And that's a reference to clouds.

Job 36, 27 makes that clear where it says,

God draws up the drops of water.

They distill his mist in rain.

It's the same word, right?

So God sends the cloud to bring rain to the earth so that the bush of the field might grow.

And people in the ancient Near East, I mean, they don't understand evaporation, condensation yet, right?

So they thought of clouds as rising from the ground.

And that's what it looks like.

If you look on the horizon and clouds come approach, it looks like it's rising from the ground.

And then secondly, God creates man, right?

But why is this part about rain important?

You have to remember that Moses, who's writing this, is riding with the Israelites in the wilderness in mind, right?

That's his primary audience.

And if you know of the ancient religions in the ancient Near East, especially in the land of Canaan,

they worship the god named Baal.

And they live in it.

It's a land where there's no irrigation.

There's no rivers like Egypt or Nile.

You, through irrigation, water the ground.

Canaan is a land that's watered by rains.

And because of that, rain was an extremely important part of life.

If there's no rain, there's no life.

If there's no rain for that season, you die.

I mean, because there's no food.

And so they were very desperately in need of rain.

And because of that, the temptation to idolatry, to worship the god of rain, Baal,

was extremely appealing for the Israelites as they entered the land of Canaan.

So Moses includes this here to indicate that, no, Baal did not give rain.

He's not the rider on the clouds, as they called it.

It's the Lord God who gives rain.

And that was the case from the very beginning.

And so the rain brings forth wild vegetation in the field,

but there's still no cultivated grain, so God forms man.

Verse 7,

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostril the breath of life,

and the man became a living creature.

He forms man intimately, personally, directly.

The language is reminiscent of a potter shaping his work.

And he breathes the breath of life into him to make him a living creature.

And this is a living creature.

He's not setting man apart from the rest of the animals,

because the animals are also described as living creatures in Chapter 1.

It's rather referring to, it's separating conscious beings, conscious animals from animals that are not,

I mean the plants and other aspects of creation that do not breathe.

But what distinguishes man from animals is not the fact that he has a birth of life,

but the fact that he's created in the image of God, right?

And we saw that in Chapter 1.

So God sends the mist and then forms the man,

and by doing so he brings about this garden.

Verses 8 to 9.

The Lord God had planted a garden in the east,

and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up

every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

The tree of life was in the midst of the garden,

and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now, so this sets up the rest of the narrative, so it's important.

And the garden is basically paradise.

The word Eden means pleasure and delight.

And it's impossible for us to locate it precisely where it was,

even though many people have tried,

because that's not really the point of the narrative.

So Moses, when he writes Genesis 15, 18 of God's promise,

of the promised land to Abraham, he says,

to your offspring I give this land from the river of Egypt

to the great river, the river Euphrates, right?

That's mentioned in the description about the Garden of Eden.

And so the Garden of Eden is basically a type.

It's a picture of God's promised land.

And so when Israelites, as they're approaching Canaan,

the land of Canaan that God promised them,

Moses paints this picture of Eden and says,

see, what you lost in Eden, that's what you're returning to

as you obey God and follow him and pursue him.

That's why the Garden of Eden is described here in this way.

And it's supposed to remind people of the land that's ahead of them,

the land of Canaan.

And of course, for us, we recognize that the promised land

is itself a type of heaven, right?

It points to our ultimate dwelling with God.

And so in Hebrews 11.8, he writes that Abraham was looking forward

to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God, right?

And so that's why Eden is described as in the east,

because east represents the presence of God.

It's where the sun rises, right?

And so here, Eden is a picture of paradise,

what it looks like, what it's like to be in the presence of God.

So it's no wonder then that later,

when Israelites build a tabernacle for God's dwelling

or the temple for God's dwelling,

that they build it as a replica of the Garden of Eden.

So they reference the descriptions here in Genesis 1.

So the precious stones set to abound in Eden,

like gold or onyx are all used copiously

in the construction of the tabernacle and temple.

The temple, like the Garden of Eden,

is set to have its entrance in the east, right?

And the temple, like the Garden of Eden also,

is set to be as God is seen traversing in it,

and you see God walking in it in the Garden of Eden as well.

And in the temple, in the description of Ezekiel,

in the eschatological temple, the temple of the end times,

he says there's a river flowing through it,

like the Garden of Eden.

And so Eden then is a picture of the presence of God.

So now continuing the description of Eden in verses 15 to 17

confirmed this connection between the temple,

the presence of God, and the Garden of Eden.

So Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden

to work it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, 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.

God commands Adam to work and to keep the garden.

That's why the whole description of the plants coming up was important,

because this is part of God's commission to Adam.

And now this pair of words,

to work and to keep it,

only occur again in the rest of the Bible

in the context of work in the temple.

Again, so it's used to describe the duties of the Levites,

to work and keep the temple grounds.

So then Eden is a big, basically a paradise,

and it's a picture of the presence of God.

It's the temple.

And Adam and Eve are created as his representatives,

as his images in the temple.

And so that's what's going on.

And that shows us that we were created for worship.

That's one of the main reasons for which we were created.

We were created for worship,

and we were created for relationship.

And because we were created for that way,

without worship,

there's always a nighed sense of an emptiness within.

An acclaimed American novelist,

David Foster Wallace,

spoke of this in his commencement address in Kenyon College.

He says,

Here's something else that's weird but true.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life,

there is actually no such thing as atheism.

There is no such thing as not worshiping.

Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God

or a spiritual type thing to worship,

be it Jesus Christ or Allah,

be it Yahweh or the wicked mother goddess

or the four noble truths

or some inviolable set of ethical principles,

is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things,

if they are where you tap real meaning in life,

then you will never have enough,

never feel you have enough.

It's the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure,

and you will always feel ugly.

And when time and age start showing,

you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

On one level, we all know this stuff already.

It's been codified as myths,

proverbs,

cliches,

epigrams,

parables,

the skeleton of every great story.

The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power.

You will end up feeling weak and afraid,

and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

Worship your intellect.

Being seen as smart,

you will end up feeling stupid,

a fraud,

always on the verge of being found out.

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is they're unconscious.

They are default settings.

We all worship.

And until we are in proper relationship with God,

until we are worshiping God as our creator,

we will never be able to fill that void in our hearts.

Then how then are we to worship God?

There is, of course,

the temple worship of Christians gathering together corporately and worshiping God.

That's an important part of worship.

That's what we do as the gathered church.

But there's also worship as the scattered church,

when we are not together.

And that's what Moses here talks about in Genesis 2.

We might call that garden worship.

Romans 12.1,

Paul says,

To present your bodies as a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God,

which is your spiritual worship.

So then our entire life is supposed to be one uninterrupted spiritual worship to God.

And this makes sense, doesn't it?

I mean,

if we think of worship only as what we do when we're gathered together on a Sunday morning,

then you're worshiping God maybe 3,000 to 4,000 hours in your lifetime.

But compare that to the fact that the same person probably works 60,000 to 80,000 hours at work.

If you're only worshiping God when you're gathered as a church corporately,

then you are giving God a meager and inadequate portion of your life

because he deserves your all.

Your whole life is supposed to be a life of worship.

And that's where this is striking,

this striking and life-altering insight comes in in Genesis 1 to 2.

God puts Adam in the Garden of Eden to work and keep it.

And that's an act of worship to God.

And this work that he does is described in amazing terms

because it says in Genesis 2.2,

God finished his work that he had done, right?

So the cosmic work of creating the entire universe

is described in exactly the same terms as Adam working and keeping the garden.

Same word, work.

There's cosmic significance in the work that we do every day.

We can't create like God does.

We talked about that, right?

The word create in the Bible is only used in reference to God.

But we are sub-creators, right?

And J.R.R. Tolkien, I think, coined that term.

We create, we can't create out of nothing, but we reorder things.

We reorganize things.

We make things react.

We put things together.

And we are sub-creators, secondary, derivative kind of creation.

And that's what's implicit in God's blessing and charge in Genesis 1.28.

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it

and have dominion over the fish of the sea

and over the birds of the heavens

and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So the dominion that we exercise over all of creation

is what we do as God's representative rulers in the world.

And that's at the heart of the Bible's definition of work,

what we do when we work.

And in his classic book, Christ and Culture,

you've probably heard of it, right?

H. Richard Niebuhr defines culture as the artificial,

secondary environment which man superimposes on the natural, right?

And that's a great definition of work as well, work and culture.

It's incredibly simple but helpful.

So if you think about it, then rocks are nature, right?

Walls, however, are culture.

You can see the difference.

River is nature.

A canal is culture.

Noise is nature.

Music is culture, right?

Forest is nature.

Agriculture is culture.

People are nature, but politics is culture, right?

Colors, patterns, and shapes are nature.

Art is culture, right?

Sight is nature.

But insight, idea, that's nature.

I mean culture.

In all our work, then everything that we do,

then we are sub-creators working with what God created

and imitating what he did in his act of creation.

So then when you as an administrator organize desks and email clutters

and facilitate effective communication in your workplace,

you are imposing order on creation and working as God did.

You're imaging him and you're glorifying him as you do that.

When you create a business and take disparate parts and processes

to make a better product available to people,

then you are imposing order on creation and working as God did.

When you as a teacher impose discipline and diligence on the students

and prepare them also to be sub-creators,

you are imposing order on creation, imitating God as you do that.

Students are doing the same thing, right?

When you as a medical professional take a disordered or dismembered body

and put it back together, make it orderly again, make it whole again,

and you are imaging God again.

You are imposing order on creation.

When you write codes to govern a machine

and you discover a new way to make things work through engineering,

you are imposing order on creation and working as God did.

When you make phone calls for sales,

so that you can sell and distribute something that's going to help people in their work and life,

you are imposing order on creation.

When you pick up garbage in the streets or dig ditches for sewers,

you are imposing order on creation and working as God himself did.

And if that's what work is,

then there's something profoundly God-like and dignifying about all forms of work

when we do them with the right mindset of representing and resembling God in his work.

So if you are tempted to look down on yourself for the work that you do,

because you do a work that society no longer values,

then I want you to think about your work in this way.

I saw a funny General Electric commercial sometime last year.

It was called,

What's the Matter with Owen?

The Hammer.

You guys have seen that?

Basically, in the opening scene,

there's a burly, bearded father.

He's kind of a big, muscular guy.

And he's wearing rugged blue jeans and a country plaid shirt.

And he's holding this huge sledgehammer.

And next to him is his wife sitting next to him,

very gracious and kind-looking.

And then his son is sitting on the other side on the chair.

And then the dialogue starts.

He says,

The son is in this geeky pair of black glasses and slacks.

And he looks very nerdy.

And now the father speaks to him,

I'm proud of you, son.

General Electric, manufacturing.

Well, that's why I dug this out for you.

It's your grandpappy's hammer,

and he would have wanted you to have it.

And then he slams it down on the table in front of his son.

And his mother then looks at him with loving concern and says,

It's meant a lot to him.

Right.

And the son flinches defensively and then replies,

Yes, GE makes powerful machines,

but I'll be writing the code

that will allow those machines to share information with each other.

I'll be changing the world.

And at which point the father interrupts and asks

while shaking his head in disappointment,

You can't pick it up, can you?

Go ahead.

You can't lift the sledgehammer.

And the mother says with a condescending motherly concern,

It's okay, though.

You'll be changing the world.

Right?

I mean, this is a funny commercial that illustrates how our world is changing.

Right?

How different societies and cultures value different skill sets.

Right?

The son may be a gifted coder, which is highly valued skill today,

but a generation or two ago,

he would have been pretty useless in a manufacturing job.

Right?

So if you have a job that compensates you extremely generously,

and if you have a job that's very valued in our society today,

it's because you happen to be born in this particular time and space

where that skill is valued.

It's not all about you.

It's not because you're better than everybody else.

So that's the reason to be grateful to God,

and the reason to be generous with the gifts that God's given you,

to be stewards of what He's given you.

The fact that you have a higher earning

and that you occupy a higher echelon of the society just because of that

doesn't mean you can look down on other people.

Likewise, if you think that your work is menial,

recognize that your work is valued.

It's dignifying.

You're imitating God as you do it.

There's no such thing as menial labor.

Manual labor is not menial labor.

That's why if there ever comes a time when we no longer work

because all the robots do the job,

then that will be a terribly disorienting and dehumanizing experience

because we're created for work.

We're supposed to worship God as we work.

That's why you have things like affluenza, right?

Kids grow up with entitlement and wealth and don't have to work.

They don't know how to function in society.

There's still one other crucial part that we were created for.

The first part was worship, which entails our work.

The second part is relationship.

Verse 18,

It is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make him a helper fit for him.

Now, that's a mind-boggling statement if you recognize it in the context of Genesis 1

because all throughout Genesis 1, after each successive stage of his creation,

God said,

It is good.

God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was very good at the end of it all.

And so after that sevenfold refrain of it was good,

as God looks at Adam, the pinnacle of his creation,

the man that has the breath of life, the man created in the image of God,

God says,

It is not good that the man should be alone.

That's the first thing and the only thing in this dialogue that God says is not good.

Relationship is so fundamental to the man's constitution

that the man not having a companion, God says, is not good.

And so just as he gave the rain and formed the man earlier to account for the barrenness of the earth,

God now says,

I will make him a helper fit for him to account for the aloneness of man.

And this person that God creates will be man's helper.

She's described.

The word conveys an assisting, promoting role.

So it might initially sound demeaning to us.

A helper, I mean, you think,

I don't want to be a helper.

I want to be the main show, right?

And that's what we're all trained to think.

But to be a helper is not a demeaning role at all, right?

In fact, it conveys a differentiation of roles, but not intrinsic value.

The word is used, in fact, most frequently in the Bible to refer to God

and his role as a helper of his people.

It's not a demeaning role.

It's not a role that's inferior.

The word says nothing about whether the person helping is weaker or stronger than the person that's being helped.

The word simply conveys the fact that the person that's being helped is incomplete.

He's inadequate.

He needs something else.

He needs a helper.

This is confirmed in the following description.

A helper fit for him.

The phrase fit for him can be literally translated as like opposite him.

It expresses the notion of complementarity.

Complement with an E, not an I.

Complementary rather than identity.

The wife is created as a helper fit for her husband, here Adam and Eve.

The man cannot fulfill, then, God's mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it apart from the woman.

And there's probably a strong reference to procreation here because the word helper sounds very similar to the word seed,

which is used in the context of Genesis 3.

So that's in view.

But that's not the only thing that's in view, multiplying and being fruitful.

But also God's call to work and keep the garden to Adam.

He can't do that apart from the woman.

And this male and female complementarity runs through the entire created order.

We saw that in Genesis 1.

Heaven and earth, light and darkness, sky and sea, dry land and water, birds and fish, and then male and female.

There's a certain fitness and order to all of creation, and creation of man likewise is the same.

It's meant created to complement each other.

And that's why it's unfortunate that the laudable efforts by feminists to secure gender equality and inclusion

have come with the collateral damage of minimizing gender distinction.

This wasn't always what feminism was like.

In her opinion piece in the New York Times, Dartmouth philosophy professor Amy Allen writes that within the second wave feminism,

which was from 1960s to 1980s, there were two conflicting camps within feminism itself.

Both camps had the same diagnosis of the same problem.

They both observed that there was a series of conceptual dichotomies, so reason versus emotion, culture versus nature, mind versus body, and public versus private.

And they correctly noted that there were value attachments to these differences.

And all the things that society valued more highly were associated with masculinity.

And all the things that society valued less were associated with femininity.

And so they had the same diagnosis, but they had two entirely different prescriptions.

The first camp said that the best solution for women was for them to claim the values traditionally associated with masculinity for themselves.

They needed to become more like men by becoming more educated, more active in public life, and less active in the private life of the family.

And by becoming more career focused, the women could overcome their disadvantages.

The second camp argued that the first camp failed to challenge the deeply problematic value structure that underlay the discrimination.

So they sought instead to bring society to revalue those qualities and activities that have traditionally been associated with women,

such as childbearing, mothering, and homemaking.

And you can guess from around you, looking around you, the first camp won out.

And the third wave feminism seeks strenuously to minimize all gender distinction.

But according to Genesis 1-2, according to this creation, there are undeniable differences between man and woman.

It's rooted in our biology right from conception.

We know pre-born male babies, their brains have a testosterone bath.

Their brains are shaped differently from female babies.

The girl's corpus callosum, which is the connection between the right and the left hemisphere,

is so much bigger and stronger than their male baby counterparts

that she has so much better facility early on with defining words and judging rhymes.

Psychology professors Janet Hyde and Nita McKinley of University of Wisconsin-Madison

and University of Washington, respectively,

they do meta-research on all the researches on sex differences.

So they research the research.

So they aggregate all the researches, account for bias, sample size, and changing social attitudes.

And even after their careful research, of all the research and aggregating it,

they find that women still tend to have better verbal fluency,

and men are better at rotating a three-dimensional object in their heads.

Dr. Richard Lipa of UCAL writes in his article,

Gender, Nature, and Nurture,

men have a more independent view of themselves.

They view themselves more in terms of their individual achievements,

traits, values, and abilities,

the ways in which they are unique and separate from other people.

In contrast, women have a more interdependent and connected sense of self.

They view themselves more in terms of their relationship with others

and in terms of social roles and obligations.

So for this reason, and you guys know this,

if you have a relationship with other men and women in your life,

that women tend to see communication as a way to connect

and enhance the sense of closeness,

while men see communication more as a way to accomplish objectives.

Right?

So the humorous effect of this is that

men feel that there's no need to talk about a relationship that is going well.

And women feel that relationship is going well

as long as they're talking about it.

Right?

I mean, it's true for me and my relationship with him.

So women also score higher on self-report scales of empathy.

And this was news to me, but Hannah has known this all along.

And research also shows that women are better at recognizing sadness

or happiness in a person's face.

Right?

Now, these are all generalizations, right,

to demonstrate the differences between male and female.

The different genders do have areas of specialized strengths.

But, of course, it's a spectrum.

Right?

And in the spectrum, within the spectrum,

even if there are general differences,

there are areas that overlap.

And you may be one of those couples

or you may be one of those men or women

where you're in that area of overlap

so that maybe you're a female math professor.

Maybe you're a male poet.

Maybe you're a very sensitive and empathetic man

or a woman that is not so.

Right?

I mean, that could happen.

But that's why it's important that we recognize

that gender and sex is not the same thing.

A gender is a biological reality.

That's the platform upon which this distinction

and these roles are based.

But the sex does not exhaust gender.

Gender is a theological reality.

And that's why even if you as a,

if the couples in here,

you have overlapping areas of specialization

and maybe in that relationship,

the woman's more like the man typically

and man's more like the woman,

you're still called to accept

and live in light of God's call for you

as male and female,

as husband and wife.

The gifting doesn't change that.

In the same way,

some of us are more timid

and conflict-averse by nature.

But the biblical command

to speak the truth in love,

to admonish one another,

to evangelize,

they all apply to all of us,

whether you are naturally gifted in that or not.

That's why Genesis 1.27 tells us,

so God created man in his own image.

In the image of God,

he created him.

Male and female,

he created them.

Animals also have biological sexes,

but they were not created

in the image of God

as male and female.

Only humans are created

in God's image as male and female.

So then we didn't create gender.

Gender is not a social construct.

And both genders,

in a complementary way,

reflect the image of God.

And as such,

it should be celebrated,

not covered up.

That's why Eve is described

as a helper fit for Adam.

Men and women complement each other.

And the plurality of male and female

in humanity reveals the plurality

within the Godhead,

within God of himself.

Because remember from last week,

it says Genesis 1.25,

let us make man in our image

after our likeness.

Let us,

because God the Father

and God the Son,

who is the Word of God,

and God the Spirit,

who is the breath of God,

three persons of one God

who are working together

in creation.

And so likewise,

because we're created in that image

of the triune God,

humanity is supposed to reflect

that community

and diversity and unity

in being male and female.

But Genesis is a masterful narrative

and the helper doesn't come immediately.

There's a suspense

that builds through verses 19 to 20.

Now out of the ground,

the Lord God had formed

every beast of the field

and every bird of the heavens

and brought them to the man

to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called

every living creature,

that was its name.

The man gave names

to all livestock

and to the birds of the heavens

and to every beast of the field,

but for Adam,

there was not found

a helper fit for him.

All the living creatures

pass before Adam

and Adam names them one by one.

Naming throughout Scripture

is a ruling function.

And so in naming them,

the animals,

Adam is acknowledging

his responsibility

over the living creatures

as God names his creation

in Genesis 1.

But for Adam,

there was not found

a helper fit for him.

It's as if all the other

living creatures go by him,

but he sees all of them

and says,

well, everyone has a helper

except for me.

Right?

So there's a suspense

that builds.

And then so,

and there's a wonderful wordplay

because the living creature,

haya in Hebrew,

is very similar

to the name of Eve,

which is hawa.

Right?

So there's a,

all these living creatures

are going,

but there's no hawa,

there's no Eve.

And so that longing,

God answers in verses 21 to 22.

The Lord God caused a deep sleep

to fall upon the man,

and while he slept,

took one of his ribs

and closed up its place

with flesh.

And the rib that the Lord God

had taken from the man,

he made into a woman

and brought her to the man.

It's a beautiful picture

of creation,

of complimentary helpmate.

Right?

She's taken from the man's rib,

and like a rib,

will always be by his side,

standing by him

and helping him,

bound up with him,

body and soul.

That's what that represents,

taken from the rib.

Bible commentator Matthew Henry

puts it in a really eloquent way.

He says,

not made out of his head

to stop him,

not out of his feet

to be trampled upon by him,

but out of his side

to be equal with him,

under his arm

to be protected,

and near his heart

to be beloved.

And when God brings

the woman to the man,

the man's response

is classic.

Ordinary prose

can't convey his ecstasy

when he sees the woman.

So he bursts out in poetry.

Verse 23,

This at last

is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman

because she was taken

out of man.

That formula,

bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh,

is a traditional

kinship formula.

It's the family language.

In English,

we speak of blood relations,

right?

But in Hebrew,

they speak of flesh

and bone relations.

So here he's saying

that she's his kin.

Eve is part of,

when they're part of his family,

his intimate relation.

And so this shows

that it's not just talking

about a random relationship

between a man and a woman,

but a relationship

between a husband and wife.

Right?

So God's giving Eve

to Adam to be his wife.

So if the wife's

distinctive role

can be summarized

by the word helper,

the man's distinctive role

can be summarized

by the word head.

Head helper.

We see this in several ways

in this passage.

First, Adam is created

before Eve,

and Eve is created

out of Adam.

In ancient Near Eastern culture,

the firstborn of the family

was supposed to function

as its head.

This is the logic

that Paul uses

in 1 Timothy 2,

12 to 13,

where he says,

in the context

of the church family,

I do not permit a woman

to teach or to exercise

authority over a man,

for Adam was formed

first,

then Eve.

Right?

So the man's priority

in God's creative work

entails his headship

and the woman's helpership.

I made that word up.

Now, that's why

Paul says in another place,

1 Corinthians 11,

7 to 8,

woman is the glory of man,

for man was not made

from woman,

but woman from man.

That's the reason

why the word Adam,

which is the same word

that's used to describe

the entire humankind,

mankind.

That's why Adam

is seen as the representative

head of the entire

human race

in Romans 5,

12 to 21,

when he says that

through Adam,

sin came to all of humanity

and through Jesus,

who is the second Adam,

the new representative head,

righteousness and justification

comes to all creation,

all of humanity.

So if that shows

what a man is supposed,

if this shows

that man is supposed

to be the head of the wife,

what does that look like?

What does that mean?

Right?

We see what it means

in Ephesians 5, 28,

where Paul commands husbands,

husbands should love

their wives

as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife

loves himself.

This is such a beautiful picture

of the husband's call

to love and lead his wife

in a sacrificial way.

You are not head

to lord it over her,

but to take responsibility

for her

and to represent her.

So much so that

by loving your wife,

you're loving your own body.

Isn't this an ingenious way

to turn man's natural selfishness

on its own head?

Like,

if you don't love your wife,

you hate yourself, man.

Love your wife.

Cherish and nourish your wife.

Take responsibility for her

and represent her.

But just as the wife's identity

as the helper

does not suggest

intrinsic inferiority,

the husband's identity

as the head

does not suggest

intrinsic superiority

because the relational pattern

in marriage

reflects the plurality

within the Trinity

as we talked about.

That's why it says

in 1 Corinthians 11, 3,

but I want you to understand

that the head

of every man

is Christ,

the head of a wife

is her husband,

and the head of Christ

is God.

Our relationship

in marriage

of the male and female diversity

reflects the triune God.

So even though

Jesus,

as the Son of God,

is equal in deity

and power to the Father,

He submits Himself

to the Father

by virtue of His relationship

with Him.

And it's in that pattern

that we are called

to have the relationship

of male and female,

of husband and wife,

with the man as the head

who leads

and takes responsibility

for his wife,

and with the woman

as the helper

who comes alongside Him

to support Him.

The narrator adds

in verses 24 to 25,

Therefore a man

shall leave his father

and his mother

and hold fast

to his wife,

and they shall become

one flesh.

And the man and his wife

were both naked

and were not ashamed.

These two verses,

really even just one,

the verse 24,

is so incredibly insightful

for understanding

God's ideal for marriage.

So first,

it says,

a man shall leave

his father and his mother

and hold fast

to his wife.

They're both singular,

one man and one wife.

God intended marriage relationship

to be monogamous,

not polygamous.

There's a sacred exclusivity

to marriage

that you're not supposed

to share with anyone else.

But if we look at Israel's history

and our history,

we see that this gets

violated repeatedly.

And Genesis talks about it.

The lame man took two wives,

Genesis 4.19 says.

Solomon had many wives

who turned his heart

away from the Lord.

Second, it says,

a man shall leave

his father and his mother

and hold fast

to his wife.

It doesn't say

that a man shall hold

on to his husband

or a woman shall hold

on to her wife.

God created marriage

to be intergendered,

not monogendered,

to reflect the diversity

and unity

of the triune God himself.

So that both genders

reflect the wonderful

image of God.

And despite God's intention

for heterosexuality here,

and we find throughout

Israel's history

and ours,

we find homosexuality.

The inhabitants

of Sodom and Gomorrah

condemned Genesis 19

for that practice

from which we get

the word sodomy.

Perhaps you've struggled

in your life

with homosexual orientation

or if you haven't,

you probably know

someone who do.

I also have some dear friends

who have a homosexual

orientation,

but if that's you,

I plead with you

to resist the urge

to justify a lifestyle

based on that orientation,

arguing that you were

born that way.

Because first of all,

your assessment

of that reality

might be incorrect.

There are now

over a half dozen studies

that have looked

at sexual orientation

in identical twins,

monozygotic twins.

And they found

that in these

population registries,

in fact,

these researchers

have pretty conclusively

demonstrated

that genetics plays

little, if any,

role in same-sex orientation.

These are all

recent studies.

If it's really

predominantly nature

and not nurture

that affects

same-sex orientation,

then one of the

identical twins

identifying as homosexual

should be a very,

very reliable predictor

of the other twin

becoming,

identifying as gay

or lesbian.

But the research

has shown that

it's not a reliable predictor.

I have a whole list

of them if you

really want the citations.

And secondly,

and more importantly,

your desire for something

doesn't prove

that you should

indulge that desire.

The fact that a man

or woman has a desire

to have multiple spouses

does not prove

that polygamy

or polyandry

is okay.

God's ideal

for monogamy

remains.

The fact that

a husband or wife

has a desire

to have sexual

relationships

with other men

and other women

does not prove

that adultery

is okay.

God's desire

for marital fidelity

still remains.

Mortifying desire,

the desires

of our hearts

that are contrary

to God's will

for us

is how every

Christian is called

to live every day.

and it is possible

even for those

who struggle

with same-sex attraction

to have fulfilling

intergender marriages.

Sam Andreatis

did his whole dissertation

on interviewing

and doing research

among couples,

one of them

who identifies

with same-sex attraction

but in intergender

relationships.

And he writes

about his findings

in a book

entitled Engendered.

I actually ordered

some copies of it

so you guys can have

it available to you

next week

if you're interested

in that.

And so the first,

monogamy.

Second,

intergenderness.

And third,

durability.

It says,

a man shall hold

fast to his wife.

The word to hold fast

is a language

of covenant.

Marriage is a covenant

between a man

and a woman

and it constitutes

the beginning

of a new family.

That's why it says

the man must leave

his father and his mother

and cling to his wife,

cleave to his wife,

hold fast to his wife.

This doesn't mean

you can't have your parents

live with you.

I mean,

a lot of Jews

did have their parents

live with them.

But it does mean

that your priority

needs to shift.

Your priority focus

is no longer

pleasing your parents

but it's in pleasing

your spouse.

And if you don't get that,

it leaves a lot of strain.

If the man does not

leave his father

and mother's household

and does not change

his priority

to primary care

for his spouse,

it isolates the wife

and leads to great stress

and strain

in the relationship.

And this is a radical

thing to command

in this culture

in particular.

I mean,

for us it's not hard

because in Western culture

we don't really take care

of our parents anyway.

But this is ancient

Near Eastern culture

where taking care

of your parents

is seen as second

only to being loyal

to God himself.

It's one of the highest duties,

filial duty to your parents.

But he says,

leave your father

and your mother

and hold fast to his wife.

That's how intimate

and powerful

that union

is intended to be.

And so if marriage

is a covenant

then it's intended

to be lifelong.

It's supposed to be durable

not temple.

So 1 Corinthians 7, 39

says,

a wife is bound

to her husband

as long as he lives

but if her husband dies

she is free to be married

to whom she wishes

only in the Lord.

Romans 7, 2-3

says,

for a married woman

is bound by law

to her husband

while he lives

but if her husband dies

she is released

from the law of marriage.

Accordingly,

she will be called

an adulteress

if she lives

with another man

while her husband

is alive.

Lifelong durability.

Marriage really

is supposed to be

until death

do us a part.

But we find again

in the history of Israel

in our history

instead of durability

temporality

rampant divorce.

Fourth,

it says

and they shall become

one flesh.

This implies

sexual union

but beyond that

a profound intimacy

and fidelity

faithfulness.

marriage is supposed

to be characterized

by fidelity

and the husband

and wife

are supposed

to guard

their marriage bed

and protect

their one flesh

union

but instead

in Israel's history

and ours

we find infidelity

pornography

and adultery.

The best known

incident of course

is David's adultery

with Bathsheba.

So then to summarize

God's intention

for marriage

is first monogamy

second intergenderness

three durability

and fourth fidelity

and the first husband

and wife

were blissfully

together in all

of these ways

in perfect harmony.

That's why verse 25

says and the man

and his wife

were both naked

and were not ashamed.

That's a picture

of complete trust

and intimacy.

They have nothing

to hide from each other.

They have nothing

to fear in each other

and they are

unreservedly

for each other.

That's the picture

of marriage

that we see here

in Genesis.

Adam's heart

left for joy

to see Eve

give herself

to be his unique

and irreplaceable helper.

No one else

in all of creation

could be his helper.

And likewise

Eve's heart

left with joy

to see Adam

be his head

to take responsibility

for her.

There really is

nothing more beautiful

than this

if you guys

think about it.

I can't begin

to speak of

what it does

to my soul

as a man

to know that

Hannah is

my wife

and my wife

is unreservedly

for me.

I can't do

what I do

as a pastor

without her.

She's not even here.

She's downstairs

serving

the children's ministry.

It motivates me

and it gives me

courage

to think that

Hannah's always

in my corner

rooting for me,

sticking with me

and holding fast

with me in love.

And some of you

might not even know this

but Hannah

has a rare

chronic disease

called Takayasu's

Arteritis

which causes

inflammation

in your arteries

and occludes

your arteries

so she doesn't

have blood flow.

She has very

restricted blood flow

all throughout her body

which means

she can't lift

her arms up

for a while.

She can't walk

upstairs very well

and it also means

that almost

at any given

moment of the day

she's really tired,

more tired

than I'll ever

know how to be.

Yet these past

two weeks

when I've been

unusually busy

due to travels

and weddings

and such,

she has been

my tireless helper

and when I'm

having to address

difficult situations

or relationships

in church

or in meetups

she's thinking

about me,

praying for me

and comforting me

and caring for my soul.

That's the beautiful

picture of marriage.

Hannah is,

I'm incomplete,

inadequate,

incapable

of fulfilling

my call

from God

without her.

That's why

she's the helper

fit for me.

Marriage is a

beautiful reality

and you know

why marriage

is so beautiful?

The ultimate reason

it's because

it points to

an ultimate

even more

beautiful reality.

It's a picture

of something.

Paul quotes

this verse

from Genesis

in Ephesians 5

31-32.

Therefore a man

shall leave

his father and mother

and hold fast

to his wife

and the two

shall become

one flesh.

This mystery

is profound

and I am saying

that it refers

to Christ

and the church.

The self-giving

love of marital

union

points to

the eternal

relationship

of self-giving

love between

Christ and the church.

As the book

of Hosea reveals

it has been

God's intention

all along

since the beginning

of creation

to marry us,

to marry his people,

the church,

to live an eternal

union of life

and love with us,

to envelop us

in the very

eternal triune love.

That's been his

intention all along

to marry us.

Trinitarian love,

harmony,

and unity.

And God wanted

that intention,

that design

to be so plain

and unmistakable

in all of creation

that he created

male and female.

He created marriage

to be a walking

picture of that

union that God

created us for.

That's why humanity

is so obsessed

with sex.

sex is a physical

reality that is

inextricably tied

to that eternal

spiritual reality

of union with God.

That's why G.K.

Chesterton says,

every man who

knocks on the door

of a brothel

is looking for God.

And because marriage

is a picture

of foreshadowing

of the greater

ultimate reality,

there's a remarkable

call here for singles

as well.

for those of you

who are not married.

Jesus teaches

in Matthew 22, 30,

that in the resurrection

they neither marry

nor are given in marriage

but are like angels

in heaven.

There's no marriage

in heaven

because the reality,

the ultimate reality

of union with God

that marriage points to

is consummated.

There's no need

for marriage there.

So then if you are

single currently

and you are called

to celibacy,

chastity,

in your singleness

for the sake

of the kingdom of God,

then you are being

called to skip,

so to speak,

the analogy,

to skip the picture

and to point

to that ultimate reality

here and now.

You devote yourself,

your life,

entirely to being

a picture

of the marriage

of the lamb

described in Revelation 19.

So then,

every time

you make a decision

to make a sacrifice

not to date

a non-Christian

because you know

that in that relationship

you can't fulfill

this image of God,

of that relationship

of reflecting

God's love for us,

you are taking a stand

and representing

that eternal reality

of communion with God.

Every time you refuse

to give in

to licentiousness,

to sexual immorality,

to having serial relationships,

you are standing

up for that ultimate reality

of being a picture

to all those around you

saying,

you know what,

you think that's precious,

you think that's pleasurable,

you think that's great,

but what I have,

my relationship with God

and eternal union

and communion with Him

that it points to

is far better.

That's what you're doing

every time you make a stance

for your chastity

and your singleness.

And if you are not

yet a believer

and you're here

with us today,

you've seen

this picture everywhere.

Yeah,

the pictures are marred

in a lot of ways.

Maybe you haven't had

good examples in your life,

but Christ's love

for you is perfect.

He is the perfect groom.

He lived the perfect life

and He died.

He gave His own life

to redeem you

as His bride.

And He works

even to this day

to sanctify us,

make us fit.

Give your life

to Him today.

That's the most beautiful thing.

that's the best thing

you could ever have

in this life.

So let's pray together.

God, help us.

Meet with us.

Lead us.

Strengthen us

by Your Spirit

so that we may all be

as singles

and married couples

wonderful pictures

of Your great initiative

to bring us in

to eternal

union and communion

with You.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.