Sermon: Genesis #3 Chapter.  2:18-25

The Roots of the Kingdom: “A match made in Eden”

Today as never before the institution of marriage is under threat. In 2002, the number of divorces granted in the UK was 160,000 for the year.

In 1961 there were 27,000 divorces in Great Britain which had doubled by 1969 to 56,000. It then doubled again by 1972, to 125,000.

 Over the last 10 years the average age at divorce in England and Wales has risen from 39 to 42 years for men and from 36 to 39 years for women, partly reflecting the rise in age at marriage. People are getting married later than ever before.

In 2002 the most frequent fact on which divorce was granted to a woman in England and Wales was the unreasonable behaviour of her husband, while for a man, it was separation for two years with consent.

Divorce is easier than ever before, generally happening more than ever before, and people are putting off marriage till later and later in life. Homosexual unions are more and more common.

The institution of marriage is under threat.

And there is little surprise that people are rejecting marriage as an irrelevance and adopting alternative relationship models instead.

But when we turn to the Bible we notice that the estate of marriage is central to God’s purposes for us and for His covenantal programme, initiated in Eden, undermined by Adam’s disobedience, and finally accomplished in Christ.

Last week we looked at the covenantal pattern present in all of God’s relationships, and we noticed how God’s relationship with Adam was covenantal. We listed some of the rich covenant blessings that God lavished on Adam as his covenant partner. But there is one covenant blessing I reserved for this week. It is the blessing of marriage.

When the Lord God crowned his covenant arrangement with Adam, when he sought a way to sum up the richness of the grace he had lavished on Adam in the garden, He could think of nothing better than to inaugurate the estate of marriage.

Now, some of us here are single. Thus far God has not been pleased to lead us into the marriage bond. And for some of us it may be that God does not plan that marriage should ever be our lot. In order to extend the Kingdom, the Lord does call and equip certain men and women to remain single, that they may be more devoted to the Lord’s work. Such sacrifice should not be overlooked by us or treated as deficient in any way. Singleness is very often a painful gift to those who have it, even if it is a rich gift, greatly benefiting the wider church.

However, for many of us God’s plan is to be married and the teaching of Genesis 2 is absolutely vital if we are to understand what God thinks our marriages are about and what they should look like.

Now there are four things I want us to notice in the narrative before us.

I. God’s Name for Eve (vs. 18, 20)

II. Adam’s Need for Eve (vs. 18-20)

III. God’s Creation of Eve (vs. 21-22)

IV. Adam’s Wedding to Eve (vs.23-25)

But before we look at them, did you see the pattern there? God speaks, vs. 18, Adam names the animals, vs. 19-20; God creates Eve, vs. 21-22; Adam responds in marital joy vs. 23-25; God, Adam, God, Adam. There is a dialogical structure to this whole arrangement. Now, basic to the shape of the covenant God has made with us is this dialogue of Divine initiative followed by human response. The pattern of things here is meant to remind us that marriage is set in the context of the covenant plan of God for all the earth.

We saw last time that the plan of God for Adam to rule over the earth was begun in Eden, but that it was to grow to encompass all the earth through His “going forth and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it” 1:28. He was to have covenant children. Family life was basic to the original covenant plan of God. Marriage was basic to God’s original covenant plan. 

Now, that covenant, we know, was broken by Adam. Nevertheless the goal aimed at in this covenant, worldwide blessing and consecration to God, will ultimately be accomplished through the New Covenant in our Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. If Marriage was central in the original covenant plan, it is still more so in the new covenant in Christ. The command to Adam to ‘Fill the earth and subdue it’, has been transformed by Christ into our  going “into all the earth and making disciples”.

And the missionary reach of the church is extended through the establishment of covenant households.  In a covenant household, at the core of which is a godly marriage, the coming restoration at the last day, of Eden’s long lost blessing, can be glimpsed ahead of time by the world. Marriage remains vital to the fulfilment of God’s covenant programme of redemption.

And that means, first, that marriage should be high on the agenda of every child of the covenant. Are you a Christian? Then it should be a central ambition of your life to help advance the covenant programme of the Lord, by finding a godly spouse and building covenant households that will grow the church.

Secondly, it means that if you are in covenant with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ then the only God honouring context for marriage is the covenant context. What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:14&15)  There is no compatibility between a Christian and a non Christian, between a covenant member and a covenant breaker. “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers”, says Paul.

And it means, thirdly, that it is not a godly thing, to postpone thinking and praying for a godly husband or a wife, in order to pursue a career, or to pursue self advancement.  So many of the Lord’s people today, allow the ungodly society around us to shape their thinking about relationships with the opposite sex. Marriage does not stand at the very heart of their desires and ambitions for Christian service. It’s postponed later and later in life until they have exhausted everything on their own pleasure seeking agenda. They forget that one of the central elements in their calling to build the church and serve the Lord is to find a godly spouse, and build a covenant family.

 We must submit to God’s providence, and He may not bring us to the right person, but that does not mean that we should deliberately push aside from our agenda what God makes central to his own.  

 That said, look with me first at vs. 18 and the name God gives Eve.

God calls the woman he is about to make “a helper suitable to Adam”.

In an age of political correctness, increasingly shaped by a radical feminist agenda, this verse sounds appalling. All women is, is a mere helper!

 And that’s no doubt a perspective that is lent some weight in our minds, by the inadequacy of the English trasnlation to convey all the associations that God’s language here would call to mind for the ancient Hebrews.

When we read verse 18 we tend to have in our minds something like the picture of a small child hovering around their father as he works. ‘What can I do dad? Can I help?’ They are, ‘Daddies little helper’. It’s all so very patronising. And that’s the kind of image this verse conjures in our minds, isn’t it?  ‘A little helper for Adam’. Woman is just an after thought, a mere helper.

But the language God uses here to describe Eve, is language the Bible usually uses to describe God himself.  In Psalm 10:14, for example  God is ‘the helper of the fatherless’. In Psalm 54:4 the psalmist prays, ‘surely God is my help’. When God designs Eve for Adam he designs one who is like Himself in answering perfectly to the need of man.  No mere afterthought, woman is a picture of the Lord who is an ever present help in times of trouble

So she is a helper, and notice that she’s a helper, ‘suitable to him’. Now that’s language only used here in the Old Testament, but it seems to be pointing to complementarity and companionship. Eve is not just designed for child bearing, nor is she designed for helping with Adam’s work merely, but Eve is designed as a companion.

Now we need to keep that truth firmly before us. Recently the scientist Richard Dawkins argued that male promiscuity and female fidelity as general patterns in society can be accounted for by the theory of natural selection. We have a selfish gene, as he put it. Man in order to preserve the genetic blueprint stamped upon his makeup must have as many partners as possible, to have as many children as possible, and so an inherent bias to promiscuity is only natural! Woman on the other hand is genetically equipped for childbearing and nurture and requires stability and fidelity.

Ladies, Prof. Dawkins would reduce you to mere baby factories. That’s the only function he can find for you. While on the other hand he rather conveniently legitimates male promiscuity!

But God disagrees with the esteemed Prof. Dawkins. You are made as companions for man, not slaves, not baby factories, but companions. It is an evil that has exercised great tyranny for many women that they feel their worth and value is tied into their ability to bear children. Prof. Dawkins cannot help us out of that struggle.

God’s word however freely declares our inherent dignity and worth as men and women. Women are companions suitable to man. We fit together. We are made together in Gods’ image. We share a heavenly dignity and the relationship between the sexes is shaped, not by the need for children, nor by man’s need of a co-worker, but by companionship.

That brings us secondly to Adam’s need for Eve in vs.18-20

You will remember that the constant refrain throughout Genesis One after the God created anything was and “God saw that it was good”. Five times God declares that creation as he made it was good. God has made everything, and Adam stands as the pinnacle of creation, and for the first time God makes a shocking judgement, something was “not good”.  It is not good for the man to be alone.

In eternity there had never been anything in God that was not good. In all creation there was no sin, there was nothing that was ‘not good’. The world was un-fallen and unstained by human transgression of the covenant. And yet something is ‘not good’.  The ‘not good’ thing is Adam’s aloneness.

In the assessment of the Lord God of the covenant, Adam was inadequate alone.

Men, there is a fundamental inadequacy God has designed into us. We are deficient alone. We need women.

That’s true in general. How ugly and brutal would society be, and how stunted and imbalanced would the church be, without both men and women? And it’s true especially emotionally and relationally. God has made us, as men, constitutionally lacking without a covenant partner, a wife. Sometimes we are not even aware of the lack.

I read recently of one American Pastor who liked to approach the young single men of his congregation and grasping them by the elbow, ask them earnestly, ‘what rhymes with life?’… ‘I don’t know pastor!’ … ‘Wife! Get one!’ and off he’d walk, no doubt leaving the young men astonished at the eccentricity of the man. But he had a point! He recognised the need of these young men, he could see their deficiency without a helper suitable to them, and he set out to awaken a sense of it in them.

Here, God recognised Adam’s need and he set out to awaken Adam to a sense of that need. Look at verse, 19&20.

Don’t you think that the location of these verses is rather strange? In verse 18 God is talking about making a helper, and in vs. 21 he actually puts Eve together. Vs 18 has set us off in a specific direction, we are expecting God to make a wife for Adam.

Instead what we get is parade time at the zoo!

We find ourselves asking  what does the naming of the animals have to do with Adam’s need of a helper?

Well, we see the answer in the second half of vs. 20, “no suitable helper was found”. God brought all the possibilities to Adam, and paraded them before Him. One Jewish Rabbi pictures the scene with God bringing each animal to Adam for naming with its partner. Couple after couple come to Adam. They all fit each other. None of them fit Adam. For Adam no suitable helper was found. At the end of the procession the Rabbi has Adam crying out, “Everything has its partner but I have no partner!”

God was awakening in Adam a sense of his need. Now Adam felt what God knew, “It is not good for the man to be alone”.

So there is God’s Name for Eve, a helper. Then there is Adam’s need for Eve.

Then look thirdly at God’s creation of Eve in verses 21-22.

Having awakened Adam to the reality of his condition, that he is incomplete without a helper, God takes the initiative. It is important to note here what God does. He puts Adam to sleep. Adam has no say in the whole process. He is totally passive. God ensures that Adam understands that the woman he makes for Adam fits him perfectly by God’s design, not Adam’s selection. “So the lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep”.

And there’s a lesson here for us. God is to be the master builder of marriage partners. Like Adam, we are not to dictate to God our priorities for a partner. We are to rest entirely on His provision. We are to trust Him to create for us a helper suitable, one that fits us and whom we fit. Only the Lord can do that, it cannot be arranged by us. In building covenant households the Lord of the Covenant claims the pre-eminent place.

Then look at how the woman is created. When Adam is asleep God takes one of his ribs and closes the wound up again and we read that the Lord God literally, “built a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man” vs. 22.

There is architectural precision and care involved in the construction of Eve. She is the last of the creatures God makes. Inanimate creation, vegetable life, birds and fish and the great land animals have all been made. Man has been made. Eve is the crowning glory of God’s creation.

Moses wrote the story to come to something of a dénouement, a climax with the creation of Woman. And the word used to describe Eve’s creation speaks to us of the step by step, pin point precision of her construction. She was built. There is care exercised over Eve that is quite unique. Woman is, as Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 11:7 the glory of man. God made her so that Adam would prize her.

Husbands, your wives are precious. They are your glory. They were made with architectural skill and precision by the Divine master builder to be helpers that are suitable to you.

We’ll note Adam’s response to Eve’s creation in a few moments, but let me simply point out that it displays the most basic ingratitude to your Covenant Lord, to receive from his hand so great a prize as he has given you in your wife, and not treat her with the loving kindness that was most perfectly exemplified by our Lord Jesus. He loved His Bride, the Church and gave Himself for her. Jesus would stop at nothing, not even the death of the Cross, to ensure that His bride would be holy and unblemished before God.

We are poor imitators of the Saviour indeed if we will not turn to our own brides and strive, depending on the grace of God, to mirror his self sacrifice that our wives might be found holy and undefiled at His glorious appearing.

Eve was built. And she was built, you notice, from Adam’s rib. Now there have been all kinds of theories about why God built Eve from Adam’s rib, but the best is, I think, offered by Matthew Henry.

He writes, “The woman was made out of the rib of Adam, not out of his head to rule over 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.”

So first there was God’s Naming Eve. Secondly there was Adam’s Need of Eve, and thirdly God’s Creating Eve. And then finally notice, Adam’s Wedding to Eve in vs. 22-25

The Wedding of Adam and Eve begins in the second half of verse 22 where we read that, the Lord God, “brought her to the man”

It is our custom in wedding ceremonies for the bride to be ‘given away’ by her father. Those of us who are married men can well remember those few nervous moments of anticipation as we awaited the bridal procession down the aisle of the church. I rather doubt that any of us spent much time looking at our future father in laws on that occasion.

But can you imagine the bridal procession that met Adam when he awoke from the deep sleep God had sent him? As Adam wipes away the sleep from his eyes, God the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, approaches. What an awesome sight! Here is one occasion when it must have been difficult not to look at the Father of the bride!

 But there is someone with the Lord God now, someone like Adam himself! I’m sure that Adam, like most of us, was quickly absorbed in the beauty of the bride being led through the aisles of the Garden of Eden towards him.

God led Eve to Adam. Just as Adam was passive when God made a wife for him, so here Eve is passive in being led to her husband. Ladies, the Lord God will lead you to your mate. It is your part to rest wholly upon his leading.

We are not to force God’s hand, nor move beyond the provisions of his providence and the express commands of his word. In all our decision making as Christians and in the choice of a life partner especially we are to adopt a posture of total surrender to the guidance of God in scripture and providence.

And when Adam meets the helper suitable to him, he can contain himself no longer. Just as God brought all the animals to Adam, so that Adam might feel his need, so now God brings him Eve to be his helper that he might know how great is the goodness of God to meet his need.

What do you do when you taste something wonderful for the first time, and the pleasure of it takes you by surprise? Don’t you exclaim! Don’t you let out a gasp of delight? Well, Adam got a taste of the abounding mercy of God in providing him a wife, and he bursts into song.

Look at vs. 23. “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman for from man was she taken.”

These two lines are so full of Hebrew poetry, that they are marked out as almost hymnic in character. Adam breathes out his love song with a devotion bordering on the religious.

And he names her. Now you will recall that we said that when God brought the animals to Adam for him to name, his naming was expressive of his status as God’s regent over creation. Adam gets to define the things God has made. There is an authority vested in Adam over all creation that is reflected in this naming.

Now God brings the woman to Adam, and Adam names Eve.  Adam exercises authority over her. There is a role difference that God has instituted between husband and wife from the beginning. Specifically, there is a leadership role for the husband and a helper role for the wife.

In Ephesians 5:22-33 Paul unpacks that  fact in practical terms. The husband is the head of the wife, he says, in the same way that Christ is the head of the Church. That means that, “as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything”

And there are deep challenges here for those of us who are husbands. We are to “love our wives as Christ loved the church…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.” The measure of your loving treatment of your wife is to be Christ’s love to the Church.

Now, Paul explicitly connects all of this to the principle that Moses draws from Adam’s wedding to Eve in Genesis 2:25 “For this reason” Paul says, “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh”. There is a profound union between man and woman in marriage. They become one flesh.

And that fact leads him to point us beyond our earthly marriages to the marriage of Christ and His Bride. “The two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery- but I am talking about Christ and the church” vs.32.

Husbands you are to be as tender and loving to your wives as Christ has been to your own soul. Wives you are to picture the kind of surrender, and be a constant pointer to the kind of submission your husband owes to his saviour, in the way you submit to his lead.

And all of us, we are to think of the ideal marriage of Adam and Eve. There was no disharmony, no harsh words, and no loveless-ness. There was only perfect and profound intimacy between Adam and Eve in Eden.

Today a union and an intimacy that far transcends even that most perfect of marriages is held out to you today in the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants to be wedded to your soul by bringing you into His church. He wants to commune with your heart and shower His love upon you. He wants to take the lead in your life that had been so aimless without Him.

And in order to effect that wonderful union and communion, he must remove every barrier. He must deal with your sin.

And  He has dealt with you sin effectively and permanently at the cross if you will believe in Him. Would you see the evidence of the love that Christ will pour out on you in the marriage union He now offers you? Look at his nail pierced hands, and see the crucified Son of God! When he hung on the cross he was giving his life to take your sin away! He was, in the language of Paul in Ephesians 5, “giving himself up for you to make you holy, cleansing you by the washing with water through the word, to present you to himself as a radiant bride, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

Oh, see all that Christ has done for your soul, and love Him, forsaking all others, knowing that death can never part you! Cling to Him. Turn from your adulterous sin, and run into the embrace of the only lover of your soul by simple faith alone.

As Adam was led by God to see His need of a helper, and as God made Eve to fit Adam, may the Saviour in His love move us to see our need of Christ and fit us for union with Him by giving us the wedding gift of saving faith.

Amen