I’m going to put a picture up on the screen behind me. This is Trea and I, 24 years ago—now, I

don’t know why I look like I have just come out of a concentration camp being that skinny. Trea

is probably 21 or 22 here, and I’m 22. This is our engagement photo; taken probably 6 months

before we were married. So 24 years ago....it’s interesting, I look back on it now, and I don’t

think either one of us had really any idea of what we were entering into marriage being the

enormous thing that it is...

We were in love, fueled by hormones and blissfully unaware that marriage would challenge and

change us in profound ways. And what I’ve found over the years is that most people enter into

marriage without the foggiest idea of what they’re doing, other than they’ve watched “Father of

the Bride” a dozen times, or Hallmark’s, ‘When Calls the Heart.’ And because of this they’re

unwittingly setting their marriage up for frustration and in some cases failure....

It would be better to consult the designer of marriage, God himself, as He tells us in His word

quite a bit about marriage. I don’t know if you know this, but the Bible begins with a marriage

and then at the end, in Revelation, it ends with a marriage—the wedding supper of the Lamb.

And the language of marriage is one of the ways the Lord communicates His love for His

people—and therefore we would be wise if we want to understand marriage, and more

importantly to thrive within our marriages, to consider what the Bible teaches about marriage....

Genesis 2 is foundational to our understanding.where we’re going to be this morning. We’ve

been studying the book of Genesis the last 3 weeks, and remember chapter 1 begins with this

panoramic view of the Creation account, where the Lord by the power of His word, speaks and

creation comes to life and we hear this repeated refrain—after the Lord creates he says, “it is

good” and then on the sixth day when He was done creating we read, “God saw everything that

he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

Last week, as we looked at the first part of chapter 2, remember that the author Moses, zooms

in on the creation of man and his place in Eden. This morning we’ll look at the creation of

woman. Before we look at the text, let me say this, the fact that there’s a creation account of the

first woman elevates women, because as Bruce Waltke points out in his commentary on

Genesis. “The ancient Near Eastern creation texts have no account of the formation of woman.”

But you have one here that the Bible rather than demeaning women elevates them.

The biblical account devotes one verse to the creation of man and six to woman and her

appearance on the scene of history brings creation to completion. Tthe creation account

elevates womanhood just by making mention of her formation, and then radically elevates her

by how she is spoken of within the text.

So in Genesis 2 we’re going to pick up the story in verse 18 and what we’ll do is we’ll read the

passage and I’ll point out a couple of things as we go, and then we’ll look at the Pattern of

Marriage, the Priority of Marriage, the Promise of Marriage, and then the Purpose of Marriage...

Genesis 2:18-25

Verse 18: Now that “It is not good for the man to be alone” should hit you like a ‘thunderbolt.”

up to this point, if you’ve read Genesis 1, at the close of each day of Creation, it reads, “God

saw all that He had made and it was good” and so what a shock it is for us to read at this point,

“It is not good” and what’s not good?

That man is alone—remember chapter 2 is zooming in on the creation of Man and Woman and

life in the Garden, and so God looks at man, alone with no one “like himself” to partner with him

in worship or work. No one else who bears the divine image of God as he does. He’s not alone

before God, but he’s alone in the sense that there’s no one like himself, he was lacking

someone who was his peer, someone who he can partner with, share life with and create life

with....

The man needs a helper suitable for him.” And yet the Lord doesn’t immediately create this

helper...why not? Because while God saw the problem; the man didn’t yet, and so the Lord

brought before Adam all the animals for him to name them...and this naming of the animals

entailed far more than just slapping a label of them; it required the man to consider each animal

carefully, so that its name was appropriate to its nature, and it’s out of this exercise that it began

to dawn on the man that there was no creature in the garden that shared his nature.

He began to discover only his solitude in the world, and we can only imagine the intense longing

that welled up within the man for companionship for another creature on his level....

Adam is looking at all these animals and he’s thinking, “there’s nothing like me here, there’s

nobody to share my life with, or to create life with...and so we read in the second part of verse

20 that “For Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”

Read Verses 21-22: Nobody captures this better than Matthew Henry who said, “Eve was not

made out of Adam’s head to rule over him, nor 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

loved.” Again, the Bible doesn’t denigrate women, but elevates them, and speaks of men and

women as equals in personhood and worth...and note that the Lord brings the woman to Adam,

like a Father brings the bride down the aisle to be married...the Lord does that here...

And remember, before falling asleep, Adam has been naming the animals, and probably talking

to them as well, just like how if your only companion is an animal, you end up talking to them,

whether it’s a dog, cat, horse, cow, whatever...so Adam has been engaged in naming animals,

“oh yes, that’s a Moose” and then he falls into a deep sleep, and the Lord creates woman, and

Adam wakes up and approaching him is this beautiful woman—and he’s gotta be thinking,

“Bullwinkle, over there, no longer interests me.”

But he was enraptured by her—and began to sing over her—look at verse 23 j.

Read Verse 23: This is actually poetry in Hebrew; it’s literally,

“At last” and Adam sings over Eve—it always reminds me of the song “At Last” by Etta James.

“At Last, My Love Has Come Along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song...” I have no

idea if Mack Gordon, the man who wrote the song, had any theology, but it fits...

And so we read verse 24, read verses 24-25: At the end of chapters 1 and 2, we get a picture of

what marriage was created to be. And this section is foundational to our understanding of

marriage. This is the deep well from which all biblical teaching on the covenant of marriage

flows....so what do we see?

The Pattern of Marriage

From this text, we see the divine origins of marriage. Just like everything else thus far in

Genesis, all of it is from God. Look at all the God-initiated verbs—verse 18, “The Lord God

said.” Verse 19, “The Lord God formed.” Verse 21, “The LORD God caused” and verse 22, “The

LORD God made...”

God takes the initiative to shape man, woman, and their relationship... Marriage is God’s idea,

and therefore we don’t have a right to tinker with it.

Marriage is to be marked by several traits that we see here in the text...first, it’s to be marked by

relationality. God has always existed in a loving relationship, and He created us in His image,

and the image demanded plurality. Since God is love, and has made us in his own likeness, he

has given us a capacity to love and be loved. He intends us to live in community, not in solitude

And the closest relationship in this age is the one of marriage---so marriage is marked by

relationality. But it’s also marked by exclusivity: In verse 24, Moses as narrator insists,

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife.” Now notice that “a

man” is in the singular, indicating that marriage is an exclusive union between two individuals.

The great John Stott, in his book, “Issues facing Christians Today”, writes, “This Scripture

defines the marriage God instituted in terms of heterosexual monogamy. It is the union of one

man with one woman, which must be publicly acknowledged (the leaving of parents),

permanently sealed (he will “cleave to his wife”) and physically consummated (“one flesh”). And

Scripture envisages no other kind of marriage or sexual intercourse, for God provided no

alternative.”

So it's to be marked by exclusivity—and someone is thinking, “what about the cases of

polygamy in the Bible? David the man after God’s own heart had 8 wives.” What’s up with that?

Well, you have to remember the difference between descriptive and prescriptive---descriptive is

describing something that happened; so the Bible will tell you the sad truth about the reality of

sin in the lives of some of God’s people, but note the Bible is not condoning or promoting

polygamy because every time it’s described, we’re told about devastating results of it...

prescriptive is telling the reader how it ought to function and this is prescriptive and it’s telling us,

first, marriage is marked by relationality—we’re created as social beings—second, marriage is

marked by exclusivity.

It’s also to be marked by permanency: The man shall cleave to his wife—the exact sense is

“and sticks to his wife.” And Jesus in Matthew 19 affirms this by saying, “What God has joined

together, let man not separate.” So marriage should be marked by permanency—

It should also be marked by Intimacy: We’re told that they’re to become one flesh and the man

and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed—so there was of course, physical

intimacy in sexual intercourse, but emotional intimacy—a life and a love of openness and

trust...of being fully known and fully loved at the same time---humanity was made for that and

we crave it so deep intimacy

But marriage is to be marked publicly. Marriage is not a private matter, and the Bible doesn’t

speak about “being married in God’s eyes only.” In Biblical times, the marriage feast assured

that the marriage was a public event! Marriage calls for a public covenant before God, the

church, the family and the state...so it’s to be marked by being recognized publicly.....

So the marriage relationship should be marked by relationality, exclusivity, permanency, intimacy

and celebrated publicly. I wonder if there’s another relationship that’s to be marked by those 5

realities? Maybe, our relationship to the Lord and maybe, just maybe that tells us something

about the ultimate purpose of marriage.

So the Pattern of Marriage as God designed it is beautiful and when your marriage is marked by

these 5 realities, you have the makings for a healthy marriage. How do you pursue those

realities?

The Priority of Marriage

Look again at verse 24, read: The word “leave” means to loosen or relinquish—it means both

husband and wife are meant to relinquish the highest position of commitment and devotion

previously given to their parents in order to give that position rightfully to their spouse.

Now that doesn’t mean that husbands and wives should cut off communication with their

parents. It doesn’t mean or prohibit a couple from physically moving in with one set of parents

for a while (Trea and I had to do that for a season after we purchased our property) and it

doesn’t presume that we can easily wipe away our past and start utterly anew with our spouses.

But leaving does mean starting a whole new relationship in which the core loyalty is not to

parents’ priorities, traditions, thinking or influence but to an entirely new family that must set its

own course, form and purpose...

After our relationship with the Lord, our spouse needs to be our highest priority If you allow

anything or anyone, no matter how good or important, to take the time and energy that rightfully

belong to your spouse, you are violating God’s design for marriage.

What are some of the things that can at times come between your spouse?

For many it’s their career—they give their time, energy and creativity first and foremost to their

career and what ends up happening? They sacrifice their family on the altar of their career—it’s

the American version of idolatry—

Another area we’re tempted to put before our spouses is our kids— if your children come before

your spouse, if you love your children more than your spouse you break God’s design for

marriage and listen, when you break God’s design, it ends up breaking you.

Now, obviously, our children are more important than just about everything in our lives.

However, they are not as important as your marriage to your spouse. In fact, the parents’

relationship with the Lord and the intimate, fulfilling relationship between husband and wife are

what make the correct foundation for loving and training children.

So, when we sacrifice our marriage for the sake of children, we’re actually doing them a

disservice.And when your children leave the house, what kind of marriage will you be left with

after they're gone? Cold and distant or intimate and fulfilling? The most important thing parents

can do for their children is to love one another well and meet each other’s needs.

Practically every study shows children who live in the security of a loving home and see a model

of marital harmony have a much higher percentage of being stable adults and better able to

have open and honest relationships with a person of the opposite sex....

So if your children come before your spouse, you are doing your children no favors—the very

best thing you can do for them is prioritize your spouse in marriage and model for them what a

healthy marriage looks like...

But maybe the most important issue, the one that Moses here talks about and Paul echoes in

Ephesians 5 is that husband and wife are to leave their father and mother and cleave to their

spouse. Now Moses isn’t just talking about physical separation; he’s talking about psychological

separation, and emotional separation—a shift of allegiance from your family of origin, to your

new family—as husband and wife. What needs to happen is husbands and wives need to slow

down and sit down and talk about how you’re going to set a course for your new life together

and make each other your top priority, outside of Christ, and if that doesn’t happen, all sorts of

enmeshment will, which will put unbelievable strain on the new marriage.

If you’re married right now and your spouse isn’t your top priority, outside of your relationship

with the Lord, you’re working against God’s good design, which will lead to friction and

frustration. The good news is, it’s not too late to chart a new course and start prioritizing each

other, and you'll start to see a fractured marriage start to function properly under God’s good

design.

So we’ve seen the pattern of marriage, the priority of marriage, and we see the:

The Promise of Marriage

God sees Adam’s aloneness as not good and creates out of Adam a “helper fit for him” and that

term, helper, is the Hebrew word ‘ezer’, and ‘ezer is used 21 times in the Old Testament, 16

times in reference to God as our helper, and other times its refers to military reinforcements

without which a battle would be lost to “help” someone then it to make up what is lacking with

your strength, and this is the word that’s used to describe women, a strong helper.

The woman would be a corresponding counterpart and she would supply what was lacking in

him and when she’s brought to him, he sees her as one who corresponds to him, but with some

very agreeable differences!

The promise of marriage is that your spouse is God’s choice instrument to make up for where

you’re lacking in order to strengthen you, stretch you and cause you to grow into maturity and

as you come under God’s good design for marriage, you’ll have an intimate ally, who you’re able

to partner together, under God’s Word, engaged in God’s work which is to push back the chaos

and cultivate life.

Marriage is to provide this deep and lasting intimacy; to partner together to share life and

cultivate life. Well, if this is the promise of marriage, why don’t we always experience it in this

way?

The answer the Bible presents in chapter 3 is that sin has marred it deeply, the first sin occurred

in the context of marriage and its brought devasting consequences to marriage---

If you think love and marriage should always be easy, you underestimate the influence of sin on

human life and marriage. When two sinners come together, they do not become less selfish or

less flawed, and this explains why love doesn’t come naturally, and why any healthy marriage is

the result of effort and time, a good marriage won’t come any more naturally than a good pianist,

a good pianist, almost always is the result of effort and time, and the same is true of marriage.

So if you think marriage is going to be easy, you underestimate the influence of sin on human

life and marriage. Which means if you want to have a healthy, strong and lasting marriage, you

need to deal with your sin and how it’s affecting your marriage, and your spouse will need to do

the same, and not shy away from it or seek to minimize it, but to deal openly and honestly with

it.

However, if you think marriage is an outdated institution and many Americans do. In 2010

Pew Research reported that nearly 40 percent of Americans believed that marriage is becoming

obsolete.”

And many young people are skeptical of the whole idea of marriage and what you’re doing is

undervaluing the divine origins of marriage and the presence of the image of God in both

husband and wife and yes marriage is hard, there are times when it is incredibly painful; it is

universally understood to be both wonderful and painful at the same time, this is what Socrates

the 5 th century BC Athenian philosopher said, “By all means marry. If you get a good wife,

you’ll become happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher...”

So yes, it’s hard, it's painful at times and yet there’s no relationship between human beings that

is greater or more important than marriage. Marriage is, next to our relationship with God, the

most profound relationship there is.

We dare not ignore the Biblical teaching on it. So one of the very first things you see as you

open the Bible is marriage and throughout the Bible one of the main metaphors God uses to

describe His relationship with us is that of a marriage relationship. Over and over again in the

prophets, God’s people are likened to a bride, while He is seen as the divine and faithful

husband as He enters into a covenant with them, but the relationship is jilted as over seduced

by another and their one-flesh relationship is torn asunder, but God will not give up, He will

have His Bride.

In Revelation 19, John has a vision where God, after He has judged the great harlot, establishes

His kingdom and He will be permanently joined to His bride---and we read these words,

“Hallelujah, for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the

glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”

The Bible begins with marriage and it ends with marriage---first the marriage of Adam and Eve,

and now the wedding of the Lamb with His bride—so the bookends of the Bible, from Creation

to Consummation speak of the grandeur of marriage...and that brings us to.....

The Purpose of Marriage

What does Christ’s marriage to us, His bride, teach us about our marriage?

Geoffrey Bromiley in his book “God and Marriage” states, “As God made man in His own

image, so He made earthly marriage in the image of His own eternal marriage with His people.”

Your marriage is meant to point beyond itself, it points to God’s covenant love through

Christ—this is the purpose of marriage. How can my marriage and how can your marriage

reveal God’s love in Christ? Only if both husband and wife focus and prioritize the most

important relationship in the marriage– and that isn’t your spouse—it’s with the Lord Jesus

Christ, the great lover of our souls....

Listen to C.S. Lewis in a letter he wrote that speaks of prioritizing our relationship with Christ

above our spouse. He writes, “To love you as I should (speaking of his spouse), I must worship

God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my

earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense

of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my

earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but

increased.”

The most important relationship in your marriage isn’t with your spouse, it’s with Jesus, and

when you’re in union with Him, and you have shared life with Him, His character transforms your

character, and you’ll then be able to put your spouse and their needs above your own, because

this is what Jesus has done for you. You’ll be able to love your spouse with all of their flaws and

imperfections, because this is how Jesus has loved you...and you’ll be able to serve your

spouse in far reaching ways, and you won’t see it as beneath you, or demeaning, because

Jesus humbled Himself and became a servant, and it’s His service to you that brought you into

deep union with Him....you see if you build your life upon Jesus, you’ll have a deep reservoir

from which you can love, and serve your spouse. And if your spouse builds their life upon

Jesus, they’ll be able to do the same for you, and together you’ll have the deep resources

needed for your marriage to flourish, and your marriage will reveal to the world the eternal

marriage. Amen.