Sermon Tone Analysis

Genesis 2:18-25

 

! Introduction

            When answering phones for the Billy Graham Telephone ministry on Tuesday, I spoke with one woman whose husband had left her.

He was a lawyer and made a lot of money, but did not support her after he left.

She felt abandoned by him.

I was saddened by the way in which their marriage had broken apart.

I once heard about a man who kept his wife locked in the house.

He did not let anyone befriend her and treated her much as a slave.

It made me angry to realize the abuse that was happening in this situation.

I have heard the stories of marriages in which the husband and wife simply exist together.

There is no relationship, no friendship, no sharing of good times.

He lives his life and she hers, but they have no life together beyond the fact that she cleans the house and he pays the rent.

How sad!

            Today many young people see marriages that break up, that are filled with yelling and screaming or that are lived in a cold separateness and decide that they will just live together and not get married because, in their experience, marriage does not work.

Can we really blame them?

Is that what God had in mind for marriage?

We have been looking at Genesis and have discovered that it deals with some foundational issues.

In these opening chapters of the Bible, God’s original intention for marriage reveals that it should be a beautiful relationship of partners who bless each other in their friendship and who help each other.

This morning, I would like to examine this original intention and think about how God’s intention for marriage can be lived out in our marriages today.

Let us read Genesis 2:18-25.

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I. What The Man Did Not Have 2:18-20

            The discussion about marriage begins with the statement, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

It is rather interesting that this is stated at this point.

Adam was in the garden of Eden, was still without sin and was living in a relationship with God.

In many places in the Bible, we are often directed to God as the one who can meet all our needs.

Psalm 121:1 asks, “where does my help come from?” and answers “My help comes from the Lord.”

If God is our helper, then why do we need another helper?

Yet it was God’s evaluation of the situation that even though Adam was in an ideal place and in a relationship with God, it was “not good.”

God declared that being alone, being the only one of a kind, having no one who is like us to relate to is a very lonely place to be.

We sometimes talk about a dog being “man’s best friend.”

Could the companionship Adam needed be found in the animal creation?

Adam examined each animal and gave it a name, but at the end of the day, the conclusion, given in verse 20, was that “no suitable helper was found.”

In other words, Adam was still alone.

Adam needed a helper who was like him.

The same phrase is used in verse 18 where it says, “I will make a helper suitable for him” and in verse 20 which says, “no suitable helper was found.”

That was what God intended marriage to be a relationship with a companion, someone who would be like him, someone with whom he could share life and work together.

!

II.

What We Do Not Have 2:25, 3:7, 16

            But as we look at marriage today, we see far too many marriages that are not like that.

Why is that?

The conclusion of this passage declares in 2:25 “they were naked and felt no shame.”

This phrase expresses that what God intended actually existed.

It tells us that there was an openness between Adam and Eve - they had nothing to hide.

There was an innocence - they trusted each other.

There was a closeness - they loved each other.

They lived wonderfully as husband and wife - as God intended.

In a few verses, we read the word “naked” again, but this time with a very different response.

When we read Genesis 3:7, we read that they realize that they were naked and they tried to hide the fact from each other and from God.

What changed?

Well, we know that the relationship to God was broken.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the fruit which was forbidden.

Immediately, the blessedness of the marriage relationship was changed.

The openness was gone - they needed to hide.

The intimacy was gone and they had lost their innocence because of sin.

When God confronted them He began to spell out the implications of their sin.

One verse deals with the implications of sin on the marriage relationship.

We read in 3:16, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

What we see, particularly in the phrase, “he will rule over you” is the destruction of the companionship that God intended at first.

Some read these chapters and believe that since Adam was created first and named Eve, he had always had authority over Eve and that “he will rule over you” means that the way in which he exercised that rule had now changed.

Adam, and many husbands since, became an autocrat, a dictator and began to abuse his power.

Others read these chapters and believe that the original intention was that Adam and Eve were created for companionship and that the hierarchy of a husband over his wife came as a result of the fall into sin.

The phrase “he will rule over you” is a consequence of the fall into sin.

Either interpretation leads us inevitably to the conclusion that marriage changed from what God originally intended it to be.

Today we see so clearly how marriages are not what God intends them to be.

Instead we have marriages in which husbands demand sexual favours from their wife and take them by force.

We see marriages in which husbands abuse their wives and beat them.

There are relationships in which wives become demanding and abuse their husbands by becoming cold and uncaring.

The blessing is gone because the wife is bound by a desire for her husband so strong that she will even be willing to live in an abusive relationship and the husband abuses his power over his wife to get what he wants.

Wenham says that the post fall situation is: “perpetual conflict and frustration in relations.”

“To love and to cherish” becomes “to desire and to dominate.”

!

III.

The Relationship God Provided 2:21-24

God did not want Adam to be alone nor is the brokenness we see today what God wanted.

Genesis reveals to us what God’s intention for the marriage relationship has always been.

What was God’s intention?

!! A. He Brought Her To Him

Adam was alone, but God created a helper suitable for him.

All the animals were created out of dust, as was Adam, but the woman was created out of the man.

After God had created Eve, it says, “He brought her to the man.”

You know how at a wedding, there is a formal blessing of the couple by the parents?

Well at the first wedding, it was God himself who introduced them.

It says, “He brought her to the man.”

This is a wonderful statement.

It affirms that marriage is from God.

It assures us that God is the one who has ordained the marriage relationship.

What are the implications of that for our marriages today?

There have been some who have tried to make marriage less spiritual than singleness.

They have looked at the intimacy of marriage as wrong or dirty.

When we read the phrase, “he brought her to the man” we know that this is not true.

God is the one who has given us marriage and we need to accept it as a blessing from Him.

Of course, at the same time, we need to be careful not to think that it is more right or more spiritual to be married.

We sometimes act under the assumption that marriage is the only way to go.

This is not true.

Later in the New Testament we have some things written about the gift of singleness and the blessing that it can be.

But today we are talking about the blessing of marriage and what God has given to us in marriage right at creation.

At weddings, we often use the phrase, “what God has joined together.”

Another implication is that this phrase is supported by this verse.

I won’t comment on marriages in which God is not at the center of the marriage, but for marriages of believers, this concept needs to be taken very seriously.

When a man and a woman come together in the presence of God and their witnesses, they need to understand that it is God who is bringing them together.