“18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
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Trying to ignore sexuality as a church is like trying to ignore those lit sparklers. Everyone can see what’s going on is attention getting, attractive, and energizing. When we press on as if there’s nothing to see, we put our heads in the sand.
Now for the other side of the coin. Some of you might have been a little nervous with sparklers in church. Fire is dangerous. We tend to ignore sexuality for that reason as well—it’s dangerous. We are uncomfortable talking about it because we’ve been burned by it. We are uncomfortable talking about it and so we press on as if our house isn’t on fire and statistics show that our house is certainly on fire and we are being burned.
Some people say that the church talks far too much about sexuality, but ask yourself when was the last sermon you heard dealing at length with this topic? Now ask yourself when was the last time you heard about something related to sexuality in the news—a day, two days? It’s not the church that’s obsessed with it; it’s the wider culture.
This sermon series might be uncomfortable for some people. If it is uncomfortable for you, I ask you to consider the following: first, if we don’t study it, we do a grave disservice to the young people of our congregation and to the parents of growing children. It’s not as if people aren’t talking about these matters outside this room. Second, if we don’t study these topics, we do a disservice to those who are living in shame because of sexual sin; for something to be healed, it has to be brought into the open before God and then covered with the righteousness of Christ as we saw in our study of Genesis 3. Third, if we don’t talk about what’s messy, then we won’t talk about a great deal of life, and if we can’t talk about a great deal of life, then we have to ask ourselves what we are doing here. Fourth, if we don’t talk about these matters in public, people won’t have any idea what to expect in private conversations with a church leader and that leads to believing the worst.
There are other reasons to study these topics, but these will emerge as we move forward. For today, we are just laying the groundwork for marriage and sexuality. To lay the groundwork, we need to go back to the beginning—to Adam and Eve. Here we see that marriage and sexuality have an unchangeable pattern and we ignore this pattern at our own peril. That’s the claim of this sermon: marriage and sexuality have unchangeable pattern which we ignore at our peril.
We will study this in two points. First: marriage is God’s idea. Second: sexuality is God’s idea.
First: marriage is God’s idea. The institution of marriage did not evolve from humanity’s fumbling attempts to form stable intergender relationships. It’s not as if humans were coupling and soon recognized that some sort of name should describe this arrangement.
That’s important to say because the meaning of marriage seems to be up for grabs today. The Obergefell Supreme Court decision in 1995—legalizing gay marriage—simply acknowledged long standing changes in the nation’s views on marriage. Most people in this nation have long believed that marriage is what they make of it and once you buy into that lie, you have no real argument against gay marriage or poly-marriage. Marriage is either a God-created reality with a clear pattern to which we must submit, or it is a relationship we can form however we want; in other words, it must either run the way God says or it can run however we want; there is no room in-between.
This is why we as Christians shouldn’t just focus on homosexuality; we must also study divorce and remarriage. We must study the role of husbands and wives in marriage. We must study what it means to be single and what it means to be widowed; remember, it must either run the way God says or it can run however we want—there is no room in-between.
We see that God has a pattern in mind for human relations in verse 18, ‘the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”’ This is the first mention of anything in Eden that is not good. To this point we’ve read, “and God saw that it was good.” Now we see what was not good—it was not good for the man to be alone.
The man was alone because no one was like him. That’s what the parade of animals is about. Adam examined them and named them but about them we read, “for Adam no suitable helper was found.” There is was one and nothing like the man.
This was why God crafted the woman. She was like the man. She was suitable to the man. They fit each other like interlocking puzzle pieces. She was a helper for him; the word “helper” here does not imply that she is his inferior. As Gordon Wenham puts it, “to help someone doesn’t imply that the helper is stronger than the helped; simply that the latter’s strength is inadequate by itself.” The man’s strength was inadequate in itself. Inadequate for what? Well the man was certainly inadequate to fill the earth and subdue alone, but she was his helper in other ways as well; just ask any sensitive husband She is his partner. She is made in the image of God just like him, but she is different too because there is more to God than is made clear in the man. She completes him. She helps him become more than he is. She is his counterpart. She is his partner. She is his “counter-partner”, to borrow a term from John Walton.
As we will see in future topics, there are ways other than marriage by which God deals with the fact that it is not good for the man to be alone, but marriage—and the family which comes out marriage—is the focus here in Genesis 2. This makes clear that marriage was God’s idea. It’s not something we can recreate because it’s not something we created.
God created marriage. The man did nothing to make it happen; you see that clearly in verse 21, “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man.”
God formed a wife for Adam out of the man’s rib. Matthew Henry gets the payoff of this right saying, “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor 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.” You see the equality here. You see the differences here. You see the relationship here.
God presented this counter-partner to the man; verse 22, “He brought her to the man.” We see this repeated in wedding ceremonies today with fathers walking their daughters down the aisle. God walked Eve down the aisle; “He brought her to the man.” Fathers, what this represents is an awesome responsibility. Ponder that when your daughters are little. You have been given authority by God to raise your children in God’s ways in God’s world because God formed them and God formed you.
The bride walking toward the groom is a moment of joy. It was for Adam. He sang the first song of Scripture; verse 23, ‘The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”’
Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh is covenant language. Throughout the Ancient Near East covenants brought different parties together with the closeness of family. This marriage covenant is the deepest covenant because it actually is family. The two are now one. They are the same, but different. He is man and she is wo-man reflecting he as “ish” and she as “isha” in the Hebrew.
In order for the one to become two, each must leave their parents and cleave to the other. This wasn’t applicable for Adam and Eve; it was a later reflection; verse 24, “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” This would have been particularly striking in ancient Israel because in that culture the highest obligation after honoring God was honoring one’s parents. The idea that the spouse was more central than the parents was radical. It’s also necessary. It was necessary then and it is necessary now. One pastor wrote that four-fifths of marriage difficulties could be resolved if spouses simply learned to prioritize each other the way they grew up and their parents’ expectations.
To cleave, we must leave. God takes this cleaving seriously; He calls it a one-flesh union; the man will “be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” In marriage, God doesn’t simply acknowledge our decision to unify with a spouse. He is the one who creates this unity. This means, as we will see in a later study, that He has the right to decide what can break that unity.
This unity is central because it points to a unity even deeper than marriage; “this is a profound mystery,” writes Paul, “but I am talking about Christ and the church.” The unity of marriage points to the unity of God and His people. There is no marriage in the new creation because the intimacy of marriage now points to the intimacy God and His people then; in the new creation, you have God and so the sign falls away. The vulnerability, the naked openness, the trust, the self-sacrifice which are supposed to be part of marriage now will be perfected in our relationship with God. This is why, in Revelation, the new creation is introduced in terms of a wedding ceremony—“I saw the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven as a bride dressed for her husband.” That’s us being brought to God.
This two becoming one is that important. That means that it shouldn’t surprise you that a culture like ours which is confused about almost every single aspect of marriage is paying a grave cost for ignoring the pattern of marriage. It shouldn’t surprise you that we need a sermon series like this in a culture like this.
We’ve seen that marriage is God’s idea; now we see that the same is true for sexuality. Sexuality is built into us; Genesis 1:27, “God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” Maleness is not incidental to who I am. It isn’t like my having black hair or my being tall; it is essential. You can’t imagine me as a woman and it still be me. I am created as a sexual being with a sex.
We need to acknowledge that because in fallen world there are sorrows that come with it. Before I was married, I would have preferred it if we were all non-sexual. The erotic aspects of sexuality had only brought me pain. I had desires but no proper outlet for these desires. I also felt like an oddity – a single man in a couple’s world. The dating process had brought more rejection and rejecting than acceptance and accepting. I would have been far happier if everyone was just good sexless friends, but I didn’t get to decide how I was created just like you don’t get to decide how you were created. We are created and we learn to submit ourselves to the reality of our created order and the will of God for us in it. That’s life.
God created Adam as a sexual being according to a pattern. He didn’t create nothing for Adam to express this sexuality with. He didn’t create another species for Adam to create this sexuality with. He didn’t create a man for Adam to express his sexuality with. He created the woman. God defines sexuality. We don’t; this is just one reason why the “love is love” campaign is flawed. It acts as if we can define sexuality when there has, in fact, been a pattern given to us.
This pattern for erotic love is seen within marriage; “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” The order matters—being united in marriage comes before the one flesh union. As we will see next week, one flesh union before marriage leads to trouble and one flesh union outside your marriage leads to trouble.
Such sin can lead only to shame, but there is no shame in God’s pattern for marriage; verse 25, “the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” We studied this verse at length in our study of Genesis 3 and saw how it relates to what comes after the fall into sin; this verse also relates to what comes before it. It is hinge verse. It deal with what comes before and what comes after; “the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
There is no reason to be ashamed of physical intimacy in marriage. Erotic union is a gift from God. We don’t want to so fear the perversity of the wider culture that we teach our children to be ashamed of sexuality and their sexuality. We don’t want to be so ashamed of our own sexual sins that we teach our children to be ashamed of their sexuality. We don’t want them to grow up thinking that erotic love is bad, bad, bad, but once you are married it somehow magically becomes good, or at least okay. It is always very good. A whole book of the Bible—Song of Songs—is written about how good it is—“let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine” says the woman. Where that book leads is good; it is just too good for outside of marriage. The vulnerability, the self-exposure, the act of unifying is out of place and unfitting outside of lifelong marriage vows. One flesh behavior is out of place outside a one flesh union.
It’s out of place because you can only truly open yourself up if you know that you are loved and you only know you are loved by proofs of steadfast love, and only the marriage vows are proof enough. Only “till death do us part,” is proof enough for the vulnerability required.
That’s true because erotic love is a parable of Christ and the church. Life is about learning to open ourselves up more and more to him, to be exposed before him, to bond with him; we can only do so because we know that he will never leave us and never forsake us.
The intensity of sexuality is parable of God and His people. That’s why the Bible so often connects idolatry—going after other gods—with adultery—going after other lovers. God is rightly jealous for us in the way a husband is rightly jealous for his wife. “For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge” on the man who touches his wife, as Proverbs puts it.
Sexuality is so intense because God’s jealousy for His people is intense. Intimacy with God is intense. Giving yourself over to God and God alone is intense. We, as mere creatures, ignore that at our own peril. We ignore that as it relates to marriage at our peril. We ignore that as it relates to sexuality at our peril.
God lays this out for our good. He is willing to forgive us when we confess that we have transgressed this pattern. He is willing to train us in the pattern, but He doesn’t want us ignoring the pattern. He doesn’t want us ignoring this spark. Amen.