Genesis 2:18-25

All right, we are going to go into Genesis

this morning, the first book of the

Pentateuch. Genesis chapter 2 verses 18

through 25 and not only that, body kind of

stole some of my thunder as well. So Genesis 2

18 through 25, "God's verses then

the Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man

to be alone. I will make him a

helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the

Lord God formed every beast of

the field and every bird of the sky and

brought them to the man to see what he

would call them. And whatever the man called a

living creature, that was its

name. The man gave names to all the cattle and

to the birds of the sky and

to every beast of the field, but for Adam

there was not found a helper

suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a

deep sleep to fall upon the man and he

slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed

up the flesh at that place. The

Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which

he had taken from the man and

brought her to the man. The man said, 'This is

now bone of my bones and flesh of

my flesh. She shall be called woman because

she was taken out of man. For

this reason a man shall leave his father and

his mother and be joined to his

wife and they shall become one flesh.' And the

man and his wife were both naked

and were not ashamed. Let's pray. Heavenly

Father, we love you. We thank you for

your word. We thank you for the book of

Genesis. We thank you for all that we've

seen this morning. I pray that you continue to

bless us today. May we worship

you Lord and spirit and in truth bless your

message in spite of the messenger

and to our mind and to our hearts. In Christ's

name, amen. Alright so we have

been going through the Old Testament and this

morning we're gonna go all the way

back to the beginning. Back to the very

beginning of the Bible, of the Old

Testament, and even to the beginning of

Genesis. And this is where everything

that we can experience, everything that we can

know in this world had its start

in the creation that God gave. God created

everything that we can know by

the power of his word, the power of his will

in six days. And there was nothing

before this. And we can't even have a

comprehension of what nothing is. All

that we know is something. There was no

material, there was no time, and there was

no energy, nothing for God to take and fashion

something that existed into the

universe that we know of. He created

everything that we know and billion

things that we don't even know about by the

power of his word, his will in an

instant, ex nihilo out of nothing. And before

this there was only God. God

existed in eternity past by himself and for

his own glory and for his own

purposes. He created everything that we know

and he brought everything into

existence. And as he goes through that, if you

go through Genesis 1, he creates

everything and when he looks at it, he said it

was good. God saw that it was

good. Now, it's another thing that we cannot

conceive, brothers and sisters,

is that everything was good. We don't have a

conception for this because

everything that we know of has been mixed with

sin and our own fallenness.

Everything that we experience has the taint of

sin on it. It is covered and is

dim because of sin. But that's not how it was

from the beginning. The author of

Genesis, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit,

goes through the play-by-play of

the first seven days that ever passed. And he

describes the amazing creation that

God had made and that God had brought into

existence. And everything that we

know of came from this one event, this one

week, these first seven days. And

everything that God did in those seven days,

he did in order and by his power.

That's how how God works. Everything is order

ly. But this was also the beginning

of something else. It was the beginning of

Genesis and these first eleven

chapters of Genesis is the very first section.

In these first eleven chapters,

all the major theology, everything we know

that God has revealed in His Bible,

finds its seed and foundation here in these

first eleven chapters of Genesis.

So it's very important as believers who want

to study the Word for us to know

these first eleven chapters. And some of them

can get pretty wild in there, but

all the theology of Scripture starts here in

these first eleven chapters.

As Philip goes through the epistle to the Eph

esians, all the great theology in the

first three chapters and all the application

that Paul is making in the

last three chapters can be the seed of those

theologies. The seed of those

truths can be traced back to Genesis chapters

one through eleven. And I want

you to really grasp that. That is one of my

main things by going through the Old

Testament. It's for you to see that there is

this revelation that God has. And

because it's revealed by a holy and intricate

God, an orderly God, that

there is a progression of this story from

Genesis to Revelation as we've

talked about. Now people say all kinds of

thing about Scripture, all kinds of

thing about the different books in Scripture,

whether the canon, whether

they should be in there or not, they quibble

over who wrote the books. When

they were written, they couldn't have been

written back then because they could

have known all that stuff. They had to write

after it happened because there's

such thing as prophecy. But what they cannot

deny and is historically and

empirically provable that Genesis was written

hundreds of years before the

epistle to the Ephesians. And all those truths

that are expounded and given the

detail of that Paul gave in the first three

chapters, you can find them

inexplicably any other way than the

inspiration by a holy and intelligent

God in those first eleven chapters of Genesis.

And we're going to see that

today as we go through it. So it is important

for us to see these truths,

to study these truths in the first eleven

chapters, and to see not just to know

those things and all about the Nephilim and

all that, but to see about how they

build the foundation that go from Genesis all

the way to Revelation chapter

number 22. And it's absolutely amazing and we

should all be in awe of a holy

God who not only is this intelligent but

shares his intelligence, shares the book

of his revelation to us. So today our passage

is said in Eden.

Eden is the central location of this brand new

universe that God has

created from his words in seven days. And in

this place called Eden, he plants a

garden and he created this creature made in

his image to work in his garden, like

Vaughty said this morning. Genesis two, seven

through eight says, "Then the Lord

God formed a man of dust from the ground and

breathed into his nostrils the

breath of life and man became a living being.

The Lord God planted a garden

toward the east in Eden and there he placed

man, the man whom he had formed.

He created Adam distinctively, separately from

all the other animals.

He created Adam in the same day as the cattle

and the creeping things and the

birds, but it was a separate event. He made

Adam from the dust and then he

personally breathed life into Adam's nostrils.

By the way, the word Adam, the word for the

name Adam comes from the Hebrew word

for dust or dirt or earth. The word is a damah

, that means the ground.

So Adam's very name is a play on words and it

's the same, we have the word

human that has the same root as the word humus

. And if you use humus, you're in

your gardener. Is that how you say it babe?

Humus?

She doesn't know. But it's the same root word

because we come from the dirt.

So it's an acknowledgement of where we come

from. We were created

for a purpose. We were created for a reason

so that we could work God's creation in his

garden and in his world

and to use what God has made as a way to bring

glory to God, to take

what God has given us in the garden and all

the world

and to work it as his imagers for his glory.

Genesis 2.15 says, "Then the Lord

God took the man and put him into the Garden

of Eden

to cultivate it and keep it." That was

Adam's job. This was before the fall, so work

came before the fall and of course it was much

easier before

the weeds and the curse. So we were given

this responsibility as imagers of God outside

before

the fall to work the work of God and his

creation. Just like God

worked in creating, we were to continue this

work in

creation. So Adam was there in this beautiful

garden

with all these animals and with a close and

intimate relationship that we

won't be able to understand until glory

with the God who just created this universe.

And again, another thing that we have no way

to conceptualize,

no framework for understanding what life was

like

before the fall. After the fall, everything

changed,

but try and just try to picture what it might

be

like. So we have two cats at home. Those have

been to my house, know my cats.

We have one fat, large, docile one, who's real

sweet. Her name is

Cosette from Les Miserables and she is really

sweet, nice, but she is

huge. She's like a tank. We never call her Cos

ette, we call her the fat one.

The other one, his name is Starfire and the

reason that

her name is Starfire is because we let Josh

name the cat

when he was watching this cartoon and the

character on the cartoon is named

Starfire. But she wouldn't even know that her

name is

Starfire because we never call her that. We

call her the bad one

because the bad one is mean, like vicious

to everyone except for Josh. She will hide in

the corner

and hiss at you and scratch at you and bite

you.

She just hates with an evil hate, like in her

heart, everyone except for Josh.

So when you're at my house, you have to be

careful. She looks sweet. She's a

beautiful cat, but you cannot pet her. She

will tear your

fingers off and I'm serious. So this was

different for Adam.

He didn't experience this. There were no evil

demon possessed animals like my cat in the

Garden

of Eden. Adam could fall asleep next to a pan

ther

and be just fine. He had no reason to think

that he should be scared

of a panther and we cannot picture that and

just like we cannot picture

the reality of how Adam experienced the Garden

,

he couldn't picture any other way, but that is

the perfection and

complete lack of sin that was in the Garden

that God

created. So God, knowing his plans for the

future,

saw the situation and remember as he created

everything,

the heavens and the earth, he created the seas

, he created the

fish in the sea and the birds and the creeping

things. After he created

everything, he said it was good. But when he

saw

Adam in the Garden by himself in our passage,

he said there's something that's not good.

He saw that it was not good for Adam to be

alone. It was not good that Adam was by

himself. It was not good

for one because God planned to use his imagers

to fill the world, to multiply and fill the

world with

with his image and bring glory to him to

cultivate the world

in a way that brings glory to God and Adam

couldn't do it

by himself. And so we'll see that God does

something about this problem

in this perfect Garden when he creates Eve

for Adam. And what God did in the creation of

man and woman,

reverberates through all of the creation

before

and after the fall. God is a great designer.

Nothing he did

was by accident and we'll see some of that. So

in the best of humanity

we cannot find such geniuses that God was,

that

he displayed in just a couple of verses in the

first book of the Bible.

And in the worst of humanity, we can see that

after the fall

touched every element of human life, every

element of the world

and every element of our existence, that we

need grace

and that we need help. So let's look into this

passage in Genesis 2

and see that God had an original design for

both of the sexes. That's the

focus that I want to go on to today and how he

designed men and how he

designed women. He did it on purpose and for

his own glory.

The first couple of verses, verses 18 through

20, we see the need

for two sexes. Verse 18 says, "Then the Lord

God said,

'It is not good for the man to be alone. I

will make him a helper suitable for him.

Out of the ground the Lord God formed every

beast of the field

and every bird of the sky and brought them to

the man to see

what he would call them and whatever the man

called a living creature

that was his name. The man gave names to all

the cattle

and to the birds of the sky and to every beast

of the field.

But for Adam there was not found a helper

suitable

for him." Why did God make us this way? I mean

, how many times do we ask

questions of him, of things that happen to us

that we

do not understand? And there's a lot of those

things that we just don't have

the bandwidth to comprehend as human beings in

this life.

But as we study, as we grow, as we learn more

about

what God has done and the way that God made

things, the more

we can see his wisdom and then we'll be doing

that for all of eternity.

You just imagine what it would be like when we

get to glorious eternity

in our glorified bodies with no sin and no

stupidness,

with no suffering that comes from being in

those glorified bodies

and being in perfect fellowship with God and

being able to learn

why did you do things this way? Why was this

like that? That'll

be a very, very good day. But he gives us a

glimpse as to why he

created man and woman in our passage today.

The first reason was because it was not good

for man to be alone.

So there's a couple reasons why it wasn't good

for Adam to be alone. One,

that as beings created in the image of God, we

are designed to be social

and live in community, to have someone to talk

to,

to have someone to converse with, that the God

head

had existed for eternity and perfect

fellowship with each

other and perfect community within the God

itself. They

didn't lack. God didn't create us to have

somebody to talk to.

He already had perfect community in the God

head and so we're designed

to have a similar type of community. We're

designed to be

together, to not be solitary people. One of

the worst punishments they have in

our modern prison system is solitary

confinement where they

stick you in a room with no stimulation and no

one to talk to and they just

shove the toast through the door for you and

it drives some of the prisoners

absolutely crazy. Now some of us might think

that it would be a good thing for

us that we would enjoy just living in a cabin

in the woods

by ourselves with no interaction with it, not

being bothered by anyone,

but most of us wouldn't be able to last in

that situation.

Somewhere kind of in the country is nice

though, you know, where you still talk

with people but you're not, you know, in the

middle of it.

But the main reason that God said that it wasn

't good for Adam to be alone,

because it was part of God's plan, as we've

already said, that Adam was to

multiply and be fruitful and fill the earth up

with other

image-bearers of God. Genesis 1.28 said, "God

blessed them

and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and

multiply and fill the earth

and subdue it and rule over the fish of the

sea and over the birds of the sky

and over every living thing that moves on the

earth.'

Adam and Eve were to be the first parents of

the entire human race

so that these these image-bearers of God would

fill the earth

with his image and would subdue it or have

dominion over the earth and take

what God has made and work it and make it

better.

And all the other creatures, they were to have

dominion over all the other

creatures, to rule this universe and in God's

as God's vice regents

over this universe for God's glory, to take

what he's created and work it for

God's glories. That was the reason why it wasn

't good for

Adam to be alone, because he couldn't fulfill

God's command

by himself. He needed a woman. But also, God

says that he needed to

create someone suitable for him because we, as

men and women, complement

each other. The second part of that verse says

verse 18,

of verse 18 says, 'I will make him a helper

suitable for him.'

The woman is to have the role of a helper to

Adam. She is to be

his aid and his support in fulfilling this

command that God gave

Adam and Eve to fill the earth and to have

dominion.

She is to bear the children that will make

mankind fruitful.

And I cannot express how amazing this is. And

what I'm talking about is that

our culture demeans the role of childbearing

and the role of woman as a helper, like it's

some sort of second thing.

Our culture looks at children in the womb

as parasites, as clumps of cells. It's

horrible. And once the children

are born, they look at them like they're hindr

ances

to our real goals in life. This is the work of

Satan. Satan is attacking

this very passage when our culture goes to

that level of stupidity and evil.

This can clearly be seen at a poll that was

recently, you may have heard about

a poll, where they pulled women of different

ages and

different political persuasions and different

races and all that stuff.

And overall, the top 10 goals of women in our

country and in our

culture now, getting married and having babies

is number nine and number 10 on the list of 10

things

for their goals. The top was making money and

finding a fulfilling

career. And when they pulled the men, one of

the top three answers was

getting married and having babies. It's

completely

reversed what the normal thought would be with

the natural

understanding that women generally desire to

have

children, desire to have families. It's

something put in them on purpose

from God for the perpetuation of the species,

not just so we can survive,

but so that we can fulfill the command that he

gave us.

And Satan has attacked that in our culture and

attacked that in our young

women especially, and we need to watch out for

that and speak

against that. The feminists aren't the only

ones

happy with that. Satan smiles when he reads

those statistics. Now, a helper suitable for

him

may sound a little utilitarian, but I chalked

that up to the

in ESB's translation. ESB says fit, a helper

fit for him.

The idea is that she complements him, not just

that

she'll do, she'll be all right, but that she

fits

with him. Where he lacks, she provides and exc

els. And where

she lacks, he provides and excels. And this is

a beautiful picture

of the way that the relationship between

husbands

and wives are supposed to be. Now just imagine

that the world was filled with

only men. What a terrible, scary picture.

Or if it was filled with just women, just an

office filled with women is bad

enough.

And if you work, don't get offended, if you

work at office you know.

Okay, but we're not supposed to have a world

or an office filled with just men

or just women. We're designed to work together

,

to complement one or each other. She is

designed to be suitable

to be fit for him. And we've gained as a human

race, as a blessing

by God, that he gave us men and that he gave

us

women. So God decides to create this

compliment

for Adam, this helper, but he doesn't do it

right away.

You know, he spoke the animals into existence

and they came up

and then he created Adam out of the dust and

he breathed air to his nostrils and

there was Adam. So he could have just said,

okay,

woman, boom, but he didn't do that. Look at

what he did. This is great.

Genesis 219, "Out of the ground, the Lord God

formed

every beast of the field and every bird of the

sky

and brought them to the man to see what he

would call them.

And whatever the man called the living

creature, that was his name.

So God brings all the animals in this parade

before Adam.

You know, they come two by two and he names it

. God is delegating

his work to his image bear. And as they come

before him,

Adam starts to notice something about them. In

verse 20, "The man

gave names to all the cattle and to the birds

of the sky

and every beast of the field, but for Adam

there was not found

a helper suitable for him." A male and a

female lion

walked before him and he says, okay, your

lions.

And a male and a female wolf came before him

and he said, okay, your

wolves. And then a male and a female sparrow

came before him

and he said, your sparrows. And over and over

again, it's male and female,

male and female, male and female, male. There

was no helper found suitable for

him. He realized that he was missing it. So

God

did this on purpose so that Adam could see

what God was about to do.

And this is, this is, the story is, is so good

.

So he sees that there's two of all these

creatures, but there's only one

of him. None of these will do for Adam to

fulfill the commands of God.

And now Adam understands that fact because of

how God

worked this situation out. So now we can see

why God created man and woman to fulfill his

commands

and to give us companionship. And it's so, so

very good. So that's why

there are two sexes. Now let's see how God

created the two

sexes in verses 21 through 22. So the Lord,

God caused a deep sleep

to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he

took one of his ribs

and closed up the flesh at that place. The

Lord, God fashioned into a woman

the rib which he had taken from the man and

brought her

to the man. I want you to remember that all

this is happening on the sixth day.

We think it would take longer. I mean, it

would take an infinite time for us to try

to do any of this, but for God, he just spoke

and the animals were created. He just spoke

and Adam was created out of the

dust and then he breathed. All this stuff

happened.

It's happening in one day. And I just want you

to think about Adam.

This is his one day birthday. He's only been

existed for

under 24 hours and everything is new.

Everything is brand new to him and God is

doing all this. He brought all these

animals. It's all fresh. Genesis 1, 24 says, "

Then God said,

'Let the earth bring forth living creatures

after their kind,

cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the

earth after their kind.' And it was so.

God said it and it happened in an incident. It

didn't

take God along at all." So there was no

intricate planning committee

that God had to call for all this to be able

to work. He spoke it and

instantly all the ecosystems that had to exist

for

animals and man, not just to survive but to

thrive,

were in existence and all working together at

one

instant. I mean, the goodness of our great and

powerful and perfect

God. But we saw earlier that Adam was created

kind of separately. He was created differently

from

the animals and he was created distinctly from

the animals. He was unique because he bore

the image of God especially. He was designed

to represent God

to this universe. And so Satan tries to attack

all these things. If you go through Genesis 1

through 11, you can see

exactly why our culture Satan is attacking.

And Satan

is attacking our understanding of ourselves.

Our culture

says that we're nothing but animals, that we

're no different from the animals.

We're just a higher form or just evolved to

have more

intelligence. How many lives were lost and

property was ruined

in the California fires when they didn't fill

the reservoirs

and they didn't clean the brush like you're

supposed to do as

indominion over God's creation as His image-

bearers

because of some fish that was in the reservoir

that might have been affected

and because of some animals that were in the

forest.

And we should be good stewards and protect the

fish and the animals and not

just throw them away. But human lives are more

important

and they failed to do the very thing that God

has called us to do especially in

roles of leadership and to exercise and subdue

His creation. This is how Satan fights against

the image of God

in our world by attacking these ideas and

understanding that He's given us.

So Adam is created uniquely from the dust and

here we see that Eve

is created from Adam. Verse 21 says, "So the

Lord God caused a deep sleep

to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he

took one of his ribs

and closed up the flesh at that place." God

performs the first anesthesia

and the first surgery in His creation. He

causes

Adam to fall asleep and takes a rib out. There

's all kinds of different little

poems and nice sayings about why it was a rib

and not the head

and not the foot. There's a lot of things you

can apply to why it was a rib

that God used. But the main reason that God

did this

is because now Eve is made from the same stuff

that Adam is made of. Adam was created

distinctly from the animals

but Eve wasn't created distinctly from Adam.

God used material directly from Adam as the

basis for creating

Eve and so they were to fit together. They

were

to work together. Paul uses over and over the

body as an

illustration of how community is supposed to

work.

First Corinthians 12/18 says, "But now God has

placed the members

each one of them in the body just as He

desired.

If they were all one member," let's talk about

a body member,

"where would the body be? But now there are

many members

but one body." And he goes on to say, "If

everybody was an eye, what kind of

how that body functioned?" He's using the body

as an illustration

of how something is supposed to work together.

And so God uses a part of

Adam's body to show us that she is made from

the same thing that He is

and that they were supposed to be one and work

together.

Look at verse 22 with me. "The Lord God

fashioned into a woman

the rib which He had taken from the man and

brought her to the man."

Yahweh fashioned that rib that He took from

Adam

into a woman. This is interesting to me. The

word "fashioned"

is a term that's used for like building, it's

a construction term. It's like for

building a building. It's like God is the

first contractor

as well, the first builder in His world. So

again,

"She is specially and uniquely made, but she

is made from the same stuff

that Adam is made of." They were both unique,

but there was something

in that flesh that was the same for both of

them.

And therefore, they both were created bearing

the image of God. Just like

Genesis 1.27 says, "God created man in His own

image.

In the image of God He created him. Male and

female,

He created them." When our culture tries to

tell us these lies about

God's Word and how it was created by these men

to hold women down,

they're either trying to deceive you or they

're deceived

themselves from the very beginning. I mean,

this is the first two chapters of

Genesis. It's crystal clear that in God's mind

and His

intentions, they were both created distinct

and separately

from rest of creation. So they're both special

and they're both created with

equal standing before God. But it's also clear

they were created for

different roles and different purposes with

different strengths

in His creation, even before the fall. Mark

Arthur has this great quote

about this. It says, "As far as saving grace

goes,

as far as sanctifying grace goes, a woman

comes as deeply into communion with

God as a man. She is made equally in the image

of God,

and that image is equally restored through

faith in Jesus Christ.

She is as much capable of being like Jesus

as any man is capable of it. She is capable of

an eternal reward

like any man would be in the spiritual realm.

There is

no difference. But in the human realm, she

bears a position

under the authority of man. Therefore, she

reflects the glory of man

who reflects the glory of God in looking at

the sovereign responsibility

of man." And this is clear in Scripture and it

's not a bad thing when Paul

describes this in 1 Corinthians 11. It's

described as a good thing as

even Christ submits himself to the authority

in the

Godhead from God the Father. And that is the

illustration that he

uses when women are to submit themselves to

the

authority of men, that men are the crown of

glory for

Christ, and that women are the crown for the

crown of glory for Christ

of men. It's a beautiful picture. We don't

have time to go into that today,

but I do recommend studying that, especially

if you have any questions

about the Bible talking about the equality or

the

worth or the value of men or women. And I know

we were talking

about this this morning that the air we

breathe as a culture

is that we're supposed to be out here making

the handmaid's tail

in our churches here, but that's not what the

Bible

teaches. The Bible elevates women and wherever

the Bible is taught

truthfully, women are elevated, particularly

in the Roman world

where Paul is writing Ephesians and Galatians.

So Satan, again, is attacking

God's word here in Genesis. He is looking at

our first parents and

saying, "Hey, is God really good to have

created you

in this way?" So our stance should be that,

yes,

God is good, and the way that he created us

was on purpose

and with a purpose, and we can see that when

we look at how man was created

and how woman was created, are you a man?

Then praise God that he made you a man and

live like a man for God.

Are you a woman? Then praise God that he made

you a woman

and live like a woman, fulfill that role to

the best of your ability

for the glory of God. He made Adam and he made

Eve

and he made you and each one for a reason.

So the last part of our passage, verses 23

through 25,

we can see God's intentions for the two sexes.

Verse 23, "The man said, 'This is

now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was

taken out of man.

For this reason a man shall leave his father

and his mother

and be joined to his wife and they shall

become one flesh.

And the man and his wife both were both naked

and were not ashamed.

The end of verse 22 says that God brought the

newly

fashioned Eve, the newly constructed woman

that he just made

to Adam." And again, this is everything is

just

blowing Adam's mind right now and he just

realized that he was alone

by how God brought the animals to him. And so

now

Adam sees this woman, this amazing creature

that God had made for him

and he feels his side and he starts to put two

and two together and realize what's happened.

And he breaks out in this first words that are

spoken in the Bible by man

period and it's a love poem for this woman

that God just created

for him. Genesis 23, "The man said, 'This is

now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called

woman

because she was taken out of man.'" And I want

you to see this that the NASB says,

"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my

flesh."

It could be, we might say, at last someone

like me, someone for me,

someone that will work with me, he realized

finally

that he wasn't alone, that he had someone for

his own.

There was someone like him and there is

absolutely

100% a basis for romantic love in Scripture.

And remember, this is before

the fall. They weren't robots before the fall.

Adam just said, "Okay,

you're my wife. Let's go fill the earth with

babies."

No, he was in love with this woman that God

just brought him.

And it's just like the man standing at the

front of the church when he

hears the music and sees his beautiful bride

dressed in white coming

up the aisle, the excitement that he feels

someone

for me. And that the parallel with him naming

the kinds of animals,

he names this new beautiful creature.

He calls her a woman. Verse the end of 23,

"She shall be called woman because she was

taken out of man."

Adam is a poet. He is a wordsmith, even with

the first words

that he says. And he calls her a woman,

which is a play on words from the word man.

And not just in English, but also in Hebrew.

The word for man

is the term ish in Hebrew. And the word for

woman

is ishah. Again, there's all kinds of

different ideas about what these words

may mean and what the roots mean. John Mac

Arthur says ishah means soft.

And there's all kinds of different things that

I found. But what's clear,

although that language may not be clear, what

's clear is Adam

understands that she was made for him and to

be

with him and that they were made of the same

stuff. Man is ish

and woman is ishah. Man is man and woman is

woman. It's the

same. You see the sameness there. They're

different,

but the same. So there's two more verses in

our passage and we're trying to

go through as fast as we can. But they're very

, very important.

But the main point is very clear. Men and

women are complementary for each

other. They're specially designed for one

another.

Our next verse takes this understanding and

creates an institution

from it. Verse 24, "For this reason a man

shall leave his father and his mother

and be joined to his wife, and they shall

become one flesh."

This is the basis for the whole institution of

marriage in the

Bible and outside the Bible. Without God

creating man and a

woman like he did, there would be no marriage.

Those without Scripture for thousands of years

still got married and they all go back to this

point

because of how God has created us. The basis

for

the institution of marriage is God telling us

from

the get-go that sexual relationships were not

only created by God,

but encouraged by him. All this happened

before the fall.

But right here in this verse, he sets the

bounds

for romantic relationships in a man and his

wife

cleaving together by just, as he says, man and

wife. And again,

Satan is attacking the church and our culture

through against this passage. He convinces us

that we're cosmic accidents,

that there's no real purpose and no real

reason why I'm a man

and you're a woman if you're a woman, that we

're all just

happy accidents and mutations that happened

over billions of years, that

we're just animals, so it won't hurt to act

like animals.

But it does hurt and it's obvious, like we

talked today about culture.

The outcome of bad culture is obvious and it

ends up in pain

and suffering. How much pain is created in

this world

because we think that we can run our lives

opposite to the way that God instructs us,

that God calls us to

and thinks that we'll be okay, that he has

nothing to do with how we live our

lives. He created marriage between a man and a

woman as the boundary for oneness. But we have

destroyed every aspect of that in our culture

and it's so

very clear. We approve abominations of

marriages between

men and men and women and women and men and

men and men and men and all kinds of

different things in our our culture now. It is

the norm

for men and women to live together in fornic

ation,

despite not only the clear teaching of

scripture against it,

but the clear data that it usually doesn't end

in happiness and

prosperity. It ends in harm to your own

situation,

but also to the children that are produced. In

America,

the divorce rate is so very high and the pain

that that causes,

as many of us have experienced as ourselves or

in our families,

is so high. And then Satan uses rape

and pornography to attack the imagers of God.

So you can look

at the person that you're looking at and and

not forget

that she is made in the image of God and sin

against her and yourself

in that way. It is absolutely horrible and

absolutely

brings suffering and pain to all that partake

in this.

We have stopped calling pedophiles pedophiles

and called them

minor attracted persons. Now we are saved by

grace and we may have

experienced some of those things in our past

life, like

like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6, "Or do you

not know that the

unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of

God?

Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor

idolaters,

nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexual

s,

nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards,

nor violers,

nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Such were

some of you, but you were washed, but you were

sanctified,

but you were justified in the name of the Lord

Jesus Christ

and in the spirit of our God." All those on

that list that I just gave you that

Satan is attacking. God is calling to them to

repent.

He is commanding them to repent and just like

it was Adam's job

to multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,

it is our job we are called

to evangelize them and to show them and teach

them

the truth from his word. May none of this come

to our families.

May none of these truths, but when it does,

may we bring them the gospel

and speak the truth to them, not be scared

about telling them and influencing

them, but do it out of love for them. We see

Satan attacking us directly through these

aspects, through

many of the verses that we just went through.

Satan

is attacking us. Paul uses this picture of

husband and wife as an image of the

gospel, as an image of Christ and his bride.

It's very,

very important for us to see that. When men

and women are believers and they

rely on God and they grow in this path of

sanctification together, as they cleave to one

another,

it is an extremely beautiful picture of how

Christ loves the church. They build strong

families,

they build strong communities, they build

strong

churches, they raise the next generation of

children

in the fear and admonition of the Lord. They

're faithful

and fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth

for the glory of God, even on this side of the

fall.

Philip is about to eventually get to the end

of Ephesians 5,

where Paul uses this very verse to, he quotes

from Genesis, to explain this

illustration to the Ephesians. It's very

important for us

to understand. There's one more verse in our

passage and we're getting very

close. Verse 25 says, "And the man and his

wife

were both naked and were not ashamed." Now

this seems,

may seem out of place to us. We don't

understand this

about why is this even here. But the first

husband and the first wife

lived openly before each other and they had

zero shame. The only way

that it's possible for that to happen is for

there to be

no sin. They had no shame because they had no

reference for evil at all. They didn't know

anything about sexual sin

or perversion. It never occurred to them that

they should be

ashamed until after they realized what evil

was

after the fall. They didn't have thoughts

themselves that were evil

and so they couldn't imagine anyone else

having an evil thought

as well. And now just the same way that they

can

manage that, on this side, imagine that on

this side of the fall

we can't imagine what it must have been like

to have no shame

whatsoever. To have no worry that anyone would

think any evil thought about you

regardless of the type of sin that it would be

.

So God paints this picture. This is the ideal.

This is what it was

like before sin into the world. This was his

intention

for man and woman to rule together over his

creation

and to be fruitful and multiply and bring

glory to God through their lives.

They're uniquely created lives but even the

sameness

of who they were and what they were. And

ultimately, like we said, this is the

illustration of Christ's love for the church

through

Adam and through Eve. One day, where the bride

of Christ are going to be standing

before him walking that aisle. And just like

Adam

spoke that love poem to his first wife, he's

going to be

happy and excited that it's all done in his

time for the

bride to go to the marriage supper of the lamb

.

All these things that God had written from the

very beginning

have laid the foundations for the truth that

he would write

and add on and build on all through scripture.

It's very, very important for

us to see this. That God is building a story.

All these truths here in Genesis chapter two

affect even us today in 2025, as smart as we

are.

How we're supposed to view ourselves as men

and ourselves as women.

How we're supposed to view the relationship

between men and women.

And how we're supposed to live our lives in

regard to one another.

But all that blows my mind every time I read

Ephesians 5,

that God and his wisdom thousands of years ago

created man and woman and marriage for the

express purpose of

illustrating the gospel and Christ's love for

the church.

And not many of us, well none of us have

experienced that in his

perfection, but some of us have had really bad

experience

that and can't even picture what that might be

like from their own marriages

or in marriages in their families. But we can

always look to Christ when we

or someone we know falls short. He will be the

perfect expression of love.

If your husband doesn't love you like he's

supposed to or he didn't

and you got divorced or whatever, Christ does

and will.

If your wife doesn't love you, Christ does and

will. Look at Revelation 22, 17.

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let

the one who hears say, "Come."

And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the

one who wishes

take the water of life without cost. The

perfection of Eden fell and was tainted.

But all throughout history, God is bringing it

back. And one day we'll have

the waters of life like there were in Eden.

And we'll have that perfection

and understanding that Christ loves his bride

like we are supposed to love our brides. Let's

pray. Heavenly Father,

we love you. We thank you for your word, for

your great mercy on us. We don't

deserve any of this. We don't deserve your

grace. We don't

deserve to be looking forward to the day when

we see you face to face,

when we can understand all these things and

more, and we'll get to praise you for

eternity. We don't understand it. We can't

comprehend it like Adam couldn't

comprehend sin for the fall. Lord, we know it

's true and we praise you

for it. We thank you for it. Thank you for

your son.

Thank you that you made us his bride. And I

pray we'll praise you for that. We'll

think about that this week for your glory and

your honor. In Christ's name, amen.