Open with me to the book of Genesis. We'll continue. We've been going through Genesis 1 through 3. And last time, a couple weeks ago, we looked at the first half of Genesis chapter 2. And so today we'll look at the second half, starting with verse 18. So Genesis chapter 2, verse 18 through the end of the chapter. Hear the word of God. The Lord said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. 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. 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. 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. And he 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, for she was taken out of man. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. The Bible is very clear that marriage is a good thing. And yet it's equally clear that in the struggles of this life, marriage can be a struggle. We find in Proverbs, Proverbs 18, verse 22, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. We also read in Proverbs 21, verse 19, It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman. And I think we can apply it the other way also. And our world knows that. They love to come up with phrases. A couple of the favorites I ran into this week. There are two types of men who don't understand women. Married men and bachelors. And on the other side we have what a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. I'll let you ponder that. So we really need to look at marriage as God made it, marriage as God created it. And as we do that, as we look at our text this morning, we will look at it under three points. Being alone, woman from man, and lastly, naked and unashamed. So, being alone. That's how our text starts here in verse 18. The Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone. And as we think about that, we have to ask, well, in what way was he alone? What way was he alone? For we find in verse 19 and following, God, that there's animals. But God at least makes animals there. And yet, these animals, they don't fill that need. That man can be alone, even with the animals. But maybe even more shocking to us, and maybe we haven't thought of this, but when God says it's not good for man to be alone, that he is alone, he's with God. That God can say this. It sounds impious if God hadn't himself said it. That man was alone even though he was there in the garden with God. And what this shows us is that we as humans, as those created by God, that we were created for fellowship. And fellowship with creatures like us. That we were not to image God and rule individually. But to do it as a community. But as we look at the text, we see something even more in that. That really we were created to do it as a marital unity. Because Adam was alone and God didn't fill that aloneness with a friend, with another guy in the garden. He filled it with the woman, with a helper corresponding to the man. And so when we read that he was alone, that this was the fact that Adam didn't have a wife. That is what was not good. And we'll look a little bit later and flesh out ideas of married and singleness. We'll come back to that. But God here at the beginning can state this, that it's not good that man doesn't have a wife, that he's not married. And so I think we can see here in God's statement that He was showing that mankind's life, that it would be organized around this building block, you could say, of a married couple. A husband and wife joined together in marriage. They would be this building blocks. They would be the building blocks of society. In a sense, we could say they were this smallest unit. of the society that Adam and Eve, that God was calling all of men to build on this world. The smallest unit of society was a married couple. And we can say, well, there's obvious needs for both men and women in order to fulfill God's commands, his commands of being fruitful, being multiplying and filling the earth. We have a pet duck in my house and it's a female duck and it lays eggs and my kids want to hatch an egg. But I tell them without a daddy duck, no matter how long that duck sits on that egg, it won't hatch. And so we know that Adam could not have fulfilled the call of God on his own to go out and fill the world that this was a task that men needed women for. But that's not the extent of it. That isn't how we should view this. It's instead really the whole of this task. That God said it's not good that man is alone in this, that he needs a wife. And this fundamental nature, really, of marriage, it's very much attacked in the world in various ways. And one way that I think we really need to think about is it's actually been attacked from within the church, especially as we know it in Roman Catholicism. As they elevate singleness and celibacy as something somehow more spiritual and desired. And we can see their misguidedness as asceticism, life away from all other people, all other ties is pursued by monks and nuns. As they go out, we could say, to be alone with God. This very thing that God said was not good. There's nothing more holy about being single. It's not a greater good to pursue. And such teaching has had disastrous results, as we can see as we read about in the papers of the forced celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy. The reformers were right as they ran from the monasteries and they liberated the convents. But our society also attacks marriages in others' ways. They demean it. They trivialize it. Marriage is seen as an inhibition. It just holds you down from reaching your full potential, whatever success it is, wealth and fame. Sex in our world, it has been removed from the confines of marriage. It's just another way we as people can amuse ourselves. Living together, that has replaced the solemn vows of marriage. Living together as if they're just roommates for a while. And even when the vows of marriage are taken, they're treated as temporary. Only valid as long as we both shall love. Only valid as long as convenient. Only valid as long as tolerable. And our society bears the scars of this. We know the statistics, the effects on children raised in single-parent families or divorced families, the lack of a father or mother. And it's not only the children, it is the men and women themselves who come away scarred in so many different ways as they go contrary to God's Word. And all of this shows us that this world that we are in, that it is not as it should. It's not as God created it. We know this world, it is the world after the fall. After Adam and Eve sinned, our world is filled with sin. And so we must remind ourselves of that as we think of marriage, as we think of our marriages, that we need to form our conception of marriage. What is good, what is proper, not from the world's definitions, but according to God's Word. And it's also in this context of our present world, this world in sin, that we really need to talk also about singleness. Genesis 2 tells us of God's good creation. Adam and Eve created in perfection and of God's blessed design for marriage. But in this life marred by sin, we see that many are called sometimes to something different. And that's according to God's will and His purposes. Many of God's people go through life, part of it, or maybe all of it, single. And there are various reasons. Maybe they never found somebody. Maybe it was never something that was pursued. Maybe it's the actions done in their youth that have had lifelong consequences. Maybe there's been divorce, been abandonment. Maybe there has been tragedy, the death of a loved one, the death of a spouse. Singleness is a part of this world and it is under God's care and control. And we must emphasize that it's not a sign of God's displeasure, a sign of sin. Instead, he can use it as he uses so many things for his purposes, for his will. We can find it in the biblical text. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah, we read of in 16 verse 2, that God commanded him not to marry because the exile was coming very soon. The destruction was coming. In the New Testament, we read of the Apostle Paul who was not married. And thus we see the freedom he had as he went. And he was this apostle to the Gentiles as he went about on his travels and preached the good news to many people. And we could even mention that Jesus, God incarnate, though we must remember fully human, that he was called to a single life to give up the pleasures and blessings of family for the cross set before him. And so as we talk about marriage more so, we need to remember that, and if you are single, you should know the goodness of marriage, that it is a proper, a good thing to seek, but also the difficulties of marriage in this life. And if you are single, you need to know that it may be that God has called you not to marry. And you need to know that God's love, that it is shown, His love and His grace is shown to both those who are married and single. All of His children, those who are called to serve Him. Serve Him in whatever situation it is that He's called for you. And so we saw that, we reflected on what it means that Adam was alone. And so now we can look at the next section, woman from man. And as we look at verse 18, and God said it's not good for the man to be alone, we can ask another question of it. Did God just realize this? Was he going along creating and then suddenly he looked up and said, no, something isn't quite right here. We can ask the question, why? Why didn't God create men and women right at the same time? And it's for our benefit. It was to teach Adam and to teach us about men and women and proper roles. And the first thing that we can see is in verses 19 through 20. We find out here that humans are different than animals. It may not be that shocking to us, but it is an important teaching. Verses 19 through 20, God forming the animals and bringing into Adam and seeing what he would call them. It is possible that this occurred before God said It's not good that man is alone, or it could be portrayed as coming after. But either way, what it does is it shows us the place of men and the place of animals. We talked last time how there is a commonality between men and animals. We look in verse 7, God formed him from the ground. God formed man from the ground. And what do we find in 19? Again, God forming from the ground the animals. And so there is a way that we share similar traits with the animals. But man is unique in his role. And here it is shown as God brings the animals to man. And man names them, showing his authority over them. And this very much corresponds to what we looked at in Genesis 1. As he's called to subdue and to rule. And his uniqueness is shown too in that all of the animals come and yet there is no helper found there for man. None of these animals could fill that. Man is distinct. And thankfully in our world most would still agree with this, that humans are different from animals. And yet it is becoming more of an issue. Some would accuse us of a form of discrimination, speciesism, that we are elevating one's species, humans, and saying they have more authority, more rights. And that is not to say that we don't care for the world around us. God made us rulers of it, rulers of the animals, and we need to rule rightly. We have to think hard about how we can be good stewards of this world. But we must remember how radically different some approach the world. How they approach the question as they place animals as equals to humans. But the other thing we can see in this is that men and women are different. Again, something that seems obvious and yet is so important. And God created them at different times in order to emphasize that for us. To show us their different roles. In Genesis 1, we were told that God created man in his image, male and female, he created them. Both men and women equally share God's image. But in Genesis 2 here, we now see a distinction. How men and women are to complement each other as they together bear God's image. As they together go about that process of subduing and ruling. And so we must carefully consider what God says when he says he's going to rectify the not good situation of man being alone. Verse 18, it's not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. And so we find out the role of woman. That she was made as a helper corresponding to man. Now we must emphasize it says helper, not servant. The same term helper can be used of God for Israel as he helps them, as he saves them. And so we can't see it as diminutive. She is made a helper. And we see that it's a helper suitable for him. It's corresponding to him. This one who is going to be made is not going to be a photocopy of Adam. But instead it's more like the missing puzzle piece. That when the two came together, then they would form one whole. And men and women are different. That fact is maybe most obvious when we think of our bodies, our physical beings. But it goes beyond that to so many different areas. And we read here that God made us different for a reason. So that we would complement each other in marriage. And as we think of those roles, it's important to note and to remember that God said that woman was made as the helper corresponding to man. And not vice versa. That man was not made as the helper corresponding to woman. And so we see that these differences involve different roles. And thus, as we talk about marriage, we rightly talk about man's headship in marriage. And we can see this also in another way in our account, in the creation of woman. Because why is Eve, why is woman created from man? Why didn't God just form her of the dust again like he did with the first man? Why do we have this account that God puts Adam in this deep sleep, that he takes the rib out, he builds it into the woman and then brings it to man? Why do we have that? Well, we have things that are often said about it. It's often said, woman wasn't created from Adam's head. so as to be above him, nor from his feet to be below him, but from one of his ribs so she would be beside him, from near his heart to be loved by him. And I think there's a certain ring of truth there in that statement, and it certainly makes a great hallmark card, if nothing else. But it's probably not the main point that we should get out of this. And part of the problem is that the word translated as rib is, we're not quite sure, another way it could be translated, and many of your Bibles give it as an alternative translation, that it's just referring to side. And so it's very, it's much less specific. It's a little more generic. But I think the main point that we are supposed to get out of this is that woman was created from man. And this we find in Adam's song. As this woman is brought to him, he celebrates her. This process, this aloneness is now done. We have his song of joy, the first poem we could say, as he celebrates bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh but note especially this last line she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man being from adam's flesh is certainly part of what makes them correspond together men and women join together but it also again teaches this ideal of headship and here we could think of analogy between parents and children. It's not the same as that, but it's similar. Parents are under their, our children are under their parents' authority because they come from them. Similarly, woman was created from man. And man again shows as a sign of his authority as he names the woman God brings to him. And the Apostle Paul, he brings out both of these aspects that we've looked at in his discussion about headship in 1 Corinthians 11, 8-9. He says, For man did not come from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. And so thus we see in this smallest unit of human society, this married couple, that God gave different roles. He made both the man and the woman in his image, but he made them different. Man was to be the head, and the woman was to be the helper corresponding to him. One was not better, one was not worse, one was not more honorable, one was not less honorable. They were equal and yet different. And it was together. It was together as a unity that they were called to go out, fill this world, subdue and rule. To be apart from one another was not good. But as we saw with other instructions in Genesis, these roles of men and women aren't elaborated on a lot. Instead, we're basically given this principle and then we need to apply it to all of our life. And we need wisdom to do that. And we can look elsewhere in the Scriptures and we find places where it is applied for us. And we see this especially in Paul's epistles as he was dealing with the church and the proper roles of men and women in the church. And he shows how man's headship needs to be displayed in the leadership of the church. But there is much more to life. There is much more of life in which we need to be guided by this general rule. And we have difficulty in doing that. We have difficulty in doing it well because of sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, as we'll look at more later, what's the first thing they do? They turn against each other. Many have described it as a veritable divorce. And God, in punishing sin, He speaks of the strife that would continually be between men and women. We see this in verse 16, the latter part. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. There will be this tension because of sin. And thus, we must remember that we really have no perfect examples to model on. That every marriage we see, every marriage we even read about in the Scripture, is affected by sin. Not that if we had the perfect model, we could follow it anyway. And as we think about these roles in marriage, the world doesn't help us out either. That we find distortions in all directions. We see examples where women are oppressed by their husbands, where they're ordered around like servants, where verbal and maybe even physical abuse is tolerated by a culture as a perverted sign of headship. And we also see those who think the very idea of gender roles is anathema. It's discrimination, sexism, a form of oppression. And so marriage as God intended it, it's thrown out. And often with it, motherhood is thrown out and replaced with the pursuit of worldly success and fortune. And thus we must, we must evaluate our culture around us and not just follow it. And we must remember that traditional or conservative culture does not equal biblical culture. That every age displays the effects of sin. That we can't just go back to the way it used to be. We must even examine the way it used to be and see if it is biblical. And the Proverbs are a great place to turn for helpful instruction. Proverbs 31 is one of those great passages that describes a godly woman. Now, it's not the measure of what a woman has to do to be godly. This woman is a superwoman. But it does show us this great breadth of activity that she can undertake as this godly wife. That she can be engaged in as her role corresponding to her husband. As we see in there, her husband who was blessed in the gate because of her. So we need to think about these things carefully. And verse 24 gives us one more instruction. It tells us that all other marriages are really modeled on this first marriage. That as mankind goes out, multiplies, fills the earth. That this process will go on again and again and again. Men and women will come together and they will become one flesh. Really emphasizing that unity, forming this building block of society. And it needs to be noted in this that this new union takes precedence. We read there, for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. The man leaves his father and mother and he cleaves to his wife. This doesn't mean that he stops honoring his father and mother, that he stops being a good son, but it does mean that his closest bond, his closest allegiance, is now properly to be to his wife. We could say that marriage is to be stronger than blood. And this we need to remember. Parents with married children need to remember that. Married couples need to remember that. And I think especially in our day and age, married couples need to remember that even when they have their children. Their presence of children doesn't break this primary bond between the husband and the wife. Their primary allegiance remains to their partner. not to their children. And then we get verse 25. The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Naked and unashamed. This is really our brief glimpse of marriage before sin. This is all we get to see. And to illustrate it, something came to mind. I had a friend who in college took a course on utopian thought. And the utopia is, right, it's a good place, a good place that often shows the faults of the world that we know, the present. And so for this class, they had to come up with their own utopic description. And one of his classmates, her description was a place where everyone had a screen. I don't remember if it was on their head, on their body, where it was. And that screen displayed every thought that they were thinking. When I think of such a place, it's utterly horrifying. I don't want everybody to know that. I know my sinful heart. I know my lust, my hate, my greed, my pride. I don't want my wife to see it, let alone the world to see it. And so when we read about being naked and unashamed, I think it's getting at something similar to that. It had reference to their physical bodies, their being naked physically before each other, but that outward exposure, it was really reflective of their inner being. Adam and Eve, they could have had that screen on them displaying their every thought to one another and yet still stand there unashamed before each other and and so we think of our marriages even though because of sin we can no longer stand naked and unashamed before each other we can still strive after this intimacy We can strive after it in our marriages. But there's only one way we can do it. And that is through the power of the Gospel. When the good news of Jesus Christ is informing all of our actions, all that we do. When we read the biblical text, we see that marriage, it's commonly used to speak about God's relationship with His people. He is the husband and we his people are his bride. And it also speaks about how good of a wife we are. How a wife a sinful people makes. As his wife continually runs away from him, commits adultery, goes about and does all sorts of abominable things. But God did something amazing, didn't he? He sent His own Son to save us. To pay for the sin that we committed through His death. To earn for us the glories of heaven. And thus in the New Testament, we read of the picture of Jesus as the husband. And the bride, His church. And the image of how much He loved His bride. That He gave Himself for her. and that He now washes her so that she is clean, that she is this beautiful bride before Him. And if we repent and believe in Jesus, we read that we're united with Him. As the husband and wife we read of here, so are we united with Jesus and He is cleansing us so that one day we stand perfect before Him on the last day. And based on this, the Apostle Paul gives us very simple, yet very helpful, very hard instruction in Ephesians 5. He instructs wives to submit and respect their husbands as to the Lord. And he tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. This is how man as head and wife as helper are to be carried out in this time after the fall. In marriages that are entered into by two sinful people. And we must notice what Paul doesn't say. Paul doesn't tell the husbands to make sure their wives submit, to only love them if they do. And he doesn't tell the wives to make sure their husbands love them and only submit if they do. No, that's not what he says. He doesn't tell them to change their spouse, to change their spouse's action. But he calls them to look to their own actions, their responsibilities. And he calls them to do it in light of the gospel. If you have been forgiven in Christ, you are called to forgive. If you have been loved in Christ, you are called upon to love. And it's only in this way that we can seek to have the intimacy called for in marriage. Marriage in this sinful world, between two sinful people, it is not easy. It requires constant care, and thus it's often compared to a garden. And not only do pleasant things grow in a garden, but also thorns and thistles. But we must remember, it's never too late. It's never too late to forgive. It's never too late to ask for forgiveness. It's never too late to love again. And it's never too late to be loved again. And in all of this, we must know God. He sees us. He sees even our thoughts as if they were on that screen. And yet, knowing all that, He loved us. And He sent His only Son to die to save us. And so we must turn to Him for mercy each and every day. We must repent and believe in His free salvation. And when we do, may that gospel of Jesus Christ transform all of your relationships. May we love each other because he first loved us. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we know our sin. We know our misery. We know the good things of your law. And we plead for forgiveness and we plead for the working of your Spirit. As we go out this week and we're tempted to anger, as we're tempted to selfishness, as we're tempted to all these things that we so easily are, may our mind return to your love and your forgiveness. And may that be the reason that we don't seek what we think we need, what we think we ought to have, but to love unselfishly as you have loved us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.