God's Design for Marriage
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Introduction:
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
19 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.
20 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.
21 So 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.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, “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.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Pray.
This morning we are going to take a look at the blueprint for marriage that God has given us.
I was listening to a Christian Apologist make the argument that anything we can ever know comes from God. The argument went something like this.
How much information do you suppose we know of all of the information that there is to know? Think about it for a moment. We discover new things all of the time, don’t we? We find out new facts that were always true and new laws that were always at work around us, but we just didn’t know they existed.
With this in mind, how much would you guess we know of all of the things there are to know in the universe? 1%?
That’s the supposed percentage, but then again, how can we know what the sum total of all knowledge is to know what we know or don’t know.
Mind blown yet?
Stay with me.
So, if we only know 1% of what there is to know, is it possible that we could be wrong or that we could learn more? Of course it is!
But here’s the thing. How can we know anything if we don’t know what we don’t know and if what we know might be wrong?
Doesn’t that make you just perk up and smile. In Bubba’s terms so that we can all understand what I’m saying, we cannot know the truth unless someone who knows all there is to know reveals it to us. Otherwise we might think we know what’s true and be wrong.
People used to believe the earth was flat, some still do. People used to believe their were aliens on Mars that were digging trenches. People used to believe that putting leeches on your body and sucking out your blood got rid of the “pi-son.”
We didn’t know what we didn’t know and what we thought we knew was wrong.
Now what does any of this have to do with marriage.
Everything!
We have a culture today that seeks to redefine what marriage is and should look like because they think they have discovered new truth that we didn’t understand or refused to accept in the past.
The arrogance of our culture is that it believes is knows more about what is best for mankind that the Creator of mankind Himself.
So this morning, we are going to go to the architect of marriage and the source of all truth - the only One who can reveal what is really true - and seek to understand what marriage is and why He created it.
1. Why Did God Create Marriage?
1. Why Did God Create Marriage?
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
19 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.
20 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.
Notice what God did here. He declares for the first time that something that He created was not good.
Let that thought sink in for a moment. (pause)
We have had Genesis 1 tell us all about how God created everything on each of the 6 days of creation and at the end of every one of them, the Bible says, “God saw that it was good.”
I’m going to come back to this idea in a minute because we have a hint of how God viewed marriage and what He had made in Genesis 1:31, but we have to get there first. Genesis 1 is an overview of all of creation, and Genesis 2 is a more specific account of what God did to create man. You can see even in the design of Genesis that God didn’t just create man like the rest of creation, but it is more personal and intimate. God made us different.
So back to our text.
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
God here declares that something he made is not good, but God cannot do anything that is not good. The Bible says in Psalm 119:68
68 You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.
And of Jesus, who we know created all things, Luke 7:37
37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
So God cannot make something that is not good and no sin has entered into the world yet.
God must have made things this way on purpose to prove a point!
We see evidence of that from what happens next.
19 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.
20 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.
God gives Adam the job of naming all of the animals and in what would seem like rubbing his nose in things, God brings a pair of animals up to Adam two by two and he notices that of all of the animals that were created there is a matching, complementary pair......except for Adam.
God brings the animals and the text tells us that the animals had a mate and a complement that was fit for them, but none of the animals were a fit helper for Adam. And, Adam did not have another like Him.
Illustration
Do you guys remember the movie Tarzan? Tarzan is raised by a troup of Apes that treat him like their own and he is happy, until he realizes that there is this girl out there that is like He is. He realizes that there is something missing and he longs for her.
That’s exactly what God does with Adam, minus the monkeys raising him and stuff.
Why did God do this? It wasn’t to be cruel to Adam, but to show him that he needed a helper that was fit for him.
2. A Helper Fit for Adam (vv.18, 20-22)
2. A Helper Fit for Adam (vv.18, 20-22)
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
20 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.
21 So 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.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
What God does next speaks volumes on marriage and relationships.
He doesn’t make him a dog, a pickup truck, or a fishing rod.
He doesn’t make him a best friend named Steve. He doesn’t make him a male to complement him at all.
God shows Adam the mismatch. God shows Adam the complementary pairs that He had made in the animal world. Then God shows Adam that he was missing his other half, his mate.
Now let me pause for a moment and give a little aside for a minute. If the culture says that we are animals and we are descended from animals, why is it that what we see in nature is male/female pairs? There aren’t trans-gendered monkeys. To produce life it is required that there be a male/female pair.
I’m going to come back to this next week, but for now just hold that observation in your mind.
So God makes Adam his helper that is truly fitting for him and forms Eve.
Notice that Eve was not made in the same way that Adam was. She was not made from the dirt, though God could have done so. She was made from Adam and from his rib.
This speaks to several things.
The Connectedness of man and woman. We need each other.
God did not take a hair from Adam’s head that she might rule over him.
God did not take a toenail that he might step on her and tread on her.
God took a rib, close to his heart, that she might be of him and for him.
Adam’s response was similar to ole Gomer’s on the Anday Griffith Show.
He looks at her and he says,
Shazaam!
That’s the Hebrew for it, but lets read it.
23 Then the man said, “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.”
It’s interesting that the word woman in Hebrew is Ishah and the word man is Ish.
So God makes Adam “at last” bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. But she is not identical to Adam. She is fit for Adam. There’s a difference that we will talk about next week.
The next thing we need to see is
3. The Nature of the Marriage Covenant (v. 24)
3. The Nature of the Marriage Covenant (v. 24)
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
The word “therefore” in the Bible is always a word that we need to stop and ask the question, “What is the therefore there for?”
“Therefore” points us back to the previous verse. Because woman was made from man and for man, God establishes a new, covenant relationship.
He says for this reason, the reason of the union of the flesh and the companionship of the souls, God created marriage.
Marriage was meant to satisfy a longing for companionship that we have. It was intended to satisfy a sexual longing that we have in our bodies. It was also intended to demonstrate the gospel.
Look closer in your Bible for a moment and notice some grammar marks that will help you understand the text a little more clearly and what is going on.
Do you notice that there are a set of quotation marks that mark off part of verse 23. They begin after the words, “then the man said,” and they indicate what Adam said and then the conclude what Adam says at the end of the verse.
What that means is that verse 24 is not Adam speaking. It is God’s word.
I need to pause for just a minute to let you take in the gravity of what this means.
Do you understand?
Man did not create the marriage covenant. God did.
Government does not exist at this point in time and so it did not recognize or create the marriage covenant. God did.
There are no children to define a family unit, so the family doesn’t determine a marriage. God did.
This is monumental in our understanding of what marriage is and who it belongs to.
To be frank, as Christians, it doesn’t make one can of beans what the government, or culture, or anybody else says marriage is or should be. The only One’s opinion that matters is God’s who created it. He is the only source of real, absolute truth!
Period. End of discussion. It doesn’t matter what we think. God didn’t ask our opinion.
It doesn’t matter if you think love is love. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s harsh or that we should be able to have the same benefits for tax purposes, or whatever else you want to lob at the argument.
Man does not define marriage, God does.
God creates a covenant here and establishes a new familial unit that is higher than any other that exists.
He says again in Gen. 2:24
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
God declares the oneness of the union that they shall become one flesh.
This indicates a union that is complete but growing. Husband and wife are one flesh and that is indicated in the sexual union. They are one union in their family as indicated in that they leave father and mother and become one flesh.
You two are like a piece of plywood. You ever seen a piece of plywood, or composite board? It’s made up of a bunch of individual pieces of wood that are glued together and they form a new unit that is indistinguishable from the original.
Now, you can’t separate those pieces once they are fused together without a big mess. You will destroy the wood.
That’s why Jesus said that what God has joined together let no man separate.
This is also a growing together, or weaving together. “They shall become one flesh.”
This is a union that is above the union you have with mom or dad. The Bible says that a man shall leave his father and mother and join fast to his wife. In the ancient world, a man didn’t leave the family property, he inherited it.
This speaks to the supremacy of the marriage relationship as a new union.
Mom’s he ain’t your baby boy anymore. He doesn’t owe his loyalty to you first, but to his wife (after God of course).
Dad’s she isn’t your little princess anymore. She is his queen.
You have to cut the umbilical cord and the apron strings. They must go out and form a new family that is independent of you.
This doesn’t mean they don’t love you or associate with you or have any special relationship to you. But you have got to push the eagle out of the nest and let him or her fly. Stop helicoptering around and swooping in!
The final thing we need to see this morning is in verse 25,
4. The Final Verdict (v.25)
4. The Final Verdict (v.25)
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
There was no shame in this union. There was not humiliation. This was a perfect union that God has made. Remember what I said about what God had to say about all the days of creation and the things that he had made? He saw that it was good.
Here is what God said about man and woman and what He had made with marriage.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “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.”
29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
God declares only what He created to be very good. Anything else is a sham!
When man tries to redefine marriage it is a sham.
Polygamy. Sham.
Polyamorous. Sham.
Homosexuality. Sham.
Fornication. Sham.
Adultery. Sham.
It’s all a sham except what God made.
Conclusion
Christ and the Church
The Enemy always makes a fraudulent version of the real thing.
He’s the original knockoff and it always breaks and falls apart.