Sermon: Marriage Made In Heaven (Genesis 2:18-25)

Marriage Made In Heaven: 

Genesis 2:18-25

Today is going to be a little different. Normally I am not interested in preaching sermons in light of current events. Normally, my focus is to preach Christ and Him crucified. Today is different. I firmly believe that we must have the theological ammunition to stand firm in what we have learned so that we’re not tossed around by every form of doctrine.

First, my goal is to look to God’s Word to further cement our beliefs. I want to make it abundantly clear what God’s Word tells us concerning real marriage. I say real marriage because God Himself instituted this divine mandate, He set the parameters, He made the rules. In order for a union to be called marriage it must abide by God’s rules regarding it. Something that does not, such as same sex unions cannot rightfully be called a marriage and those involved are not husbands or wives.

Second, I want to explain a few of the arguments that proponents of same-sex marriage use to try to convince us that they are enlightened and we are the ones who need to move into modern times.

Third, I pray we can see together what is at stake when we cave in due to modern opinions.

Let’s jump right in to the passage for today…

Oh, Father give us ears to hear and hearts to understand and boldness to stand firm in these evil days.

Text

Genesis 2:18–25 (ESV)

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said,

       “This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

       she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Primary Truth Taught        

Marriage is the sacred union between one man and one woman and anything else is perverted and an abomination before God.

Human Need  

One great need we have is to persevere in what God teaches us rather than listening to what is popular in our current setting. Regardless what people decide is right we must be committed to what God says is right.

1. Only a Woman is “Fit” for a Man

 

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

There are a few things we must understand in order to fully see what this passage is telling us.

Human beings are the pinnacle of the creation narrative. God created the universe by the Word of His mouth a My wife said I wanted a hobby – so I got myself a new RC plane, the Quanum Nova. I have been loving it so far, and my wife enjoys that I go out more. nd declared it all to be good. But humanity is set on top being created and then God breathed into man the breath of life, not only bringing Adam and Eve to life physically but adding a spirit to them.

So, Adam looked around among the created order and nothing could be found on his level.

So far in the creation narrative God has declared everything to either be good or very good but here it is recorded that man being alone is not good.

God is going to make a helper for Adam. This is already the plan. The reason the narrative is written the way it is, is to show the reader that Adam also knew that he needed a helper fit or suitable for him.

Here in this passage we read that the woman God is to create is to be someone who is man’s companion, partner, helper and the one Adam was looking for but could not find. The woman would give to the man everything he needed and he would give her everything she needed. They were fit, suitable, or made for each other. The narrative also indicates that together the man and woman are a union that makes each stronger than they could be separate. The union between man and woman is the final act of creation. It is the design of God for a man and a woman to be united in marriage in order for this perfect design to be seen in the world.

2. The Creation of Adam’s Helper Completes God’s Creative Acts

²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said,

       “This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

       she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

Creation of Eve and bringing her to Adam in the first marriage ceremony is the epic act of God in creation. The union between Adam and Eve, one flesh, being taken from Adam’s flesh and given back to him is the pinnacle of all creation.

Notice the difference in tone of the narrative…
Before, Adam looks at all creation and the closest things he can find are the animals he’s to name. They live and breathe and run like he does but still they are not suitable to be a helper fit for him. The narrative is sad and gloomy at this point. Then when he wakes up and God presents Eve to him, notice how his whole life has changed…he starts singing and realizes at last she is what he has been looking for.

God created a woman for the man.

We must also see here that God did not consult the man but rather it was in God’s divine plan to make for man a suitable helper, one who would complete God’s creative acts. When Adam sees her, he realizes that she is perfect for him.

 

3. Only a Man and His Wife Can Be One Flesh

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Based on all the stuff God has done in creating a woman specifically tailor-made for Adam and based on the fact that she is suitable and together they are the pinnacle of the created order, both made in God’s image, both coming together to be made one flesh again and their one-flesh union really being a picture of the unity in diversity we see in the Trinity, God is very pleased. He very plainly commands men and women to be married as husband and wife. Together, a husband and wife can bring God glory as they complete the picture of what God desired when He fashioned the first woman and presented her to Adam.

The narrative shows God’s stamp of approval over this particular union and no others. In fact, other unions are called abominations before God. The reason is that they go against God’s creative order. He has designed a man and a woman to be married not a man with a man or a woman with a woman. There is no pinnacle of creation, no glory to God when sinners go against what God has created and in their lustful rebellion form a union with the same-sex.

Here’s what God says about it…
Leviticus 18:19–23 (ESV)

¹⁹ “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. ²⁰ And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor’s wife and so make yourself unclean with her. ²¹ You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. ²² You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. ²³ And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.

4. Arguments for Same-Sex Marriage

1. Only Exploitive Homosexual Acts are Condemned in the Bible

In other words, what they say is that the Bible does not condemn these acts when there is mutual consent. I want you to see that is Scripture twisting at the highest level. There is absolutely no way one can keep things in context and reach that conclusion. Paul is condemning ALL same-sex acts and unions whether it is men with men or women with women regardless of mutual consent.

Romans 1:24–32 (ESV)

²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; ²⁷ and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

The ancients also knew about mutual, non-exploitative same-sex relationships. In Romans 1, Paul describes homosexuality as men burning with passion “for one another” (v. 27). That is mutuality. Such a term could not represent rape, nor prostitution, nor pederasty (man/boy relationships). Paul could have used terms in Romans 1 that specifically designated those practices, but he did not. He categorically condemns all sexual relations between people of the same sex, both men and women.

Timothy Keller makes this point…

I urge readers to familiarize themselves with this research. A good place to start is Loader’s Sexuality in the New Testament (Westminster John Knox, 2010) or his much larger The New Testament on Sexuality (Eerdmans, 2012). Loader is the most prominent expert on ancient and biblical views of sexuality, having written five large and two small volumes in his lifetime. It’s worth noting that Loader himself doesn’t personally see anything wrong with homosexual relationships; he just—rightly and definitively—proves that you can’t get the Bible itself to give them any support. 

What the author of these two books is getting at is that one can engage in whatever acts he or she chooses but you cannot use proper biblical interpretation and use the Bible to support your sin.

1. Homosexuality Is In the Same Category as Race

They argue that people are born with Homosexual orientation or tendencies and therefore, since God made the homosexual that way, he or she is simply acting on who they really are. In other words just like God makes people white, black, red or yellow, He also make them Straight or Gay.

Keller comments,
Homosexual relationships make so much more sense to people today than in previous times because they’ve absorbed late-modern Western culture’s narratives about the human life. Our society presses its members to believe “you have to be yourself,” that sexual desires are crucial to personal identity, that any curbing of strong sexual desires leads to psychological damage, and that individuals should be free to live as they alone see fit.

 

Furthermore, there is never been any proof of these claims. They are simply man’s way of blaming God for sin, much like Adam did when he reminded God that it was God who gave the woman to Adam to start with…God this woman, you gave me…

If homosexuality is the way people are born and if they’re born that way and cannot do anything about it then, in their view, they are not to be held accountable. Notice with me what Paul says about it, and also notice the categories of sin here.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 (ESV)

⁹ Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

People are not born that way. Being gay is not the way God makes anybody but rather it is a choice people make. The only thing we’re born with is a sin nature and that sin nature can tempt us and seek to take us down many different roads toward sin but we are responsible for our own actions.

How does Paul conclude this section in 1 Corinthians?

¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

He was writing to those within the Corinthian Church telling them that some of them used to steal, cheat, and worship idols, swindle, and practice homosexuality but they don’t anymore because they got saved and Jesus is cleaning them up. So, the person practicing homosexuality is sinning not living out who they really are.

1. Much of the Bible is Outdated
   They often claim they continue to hold to a high view of biblical authority, and that they believe the Bible is completely true, but that they don’t think it teaches all same-sex relations are wrong. Some argue that while the Levitical code forbids homosexuality (Lev. 18:22), it also forbids eating shellfish (Lev. 11:9–12). Yet, they often say, Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong—so why can’t we change our minds on homosexuality? Here they are rejecting the New Testament understanding that the ceremonial laws of Moses around the sacrificial system and ritual purity were fulfilled in Christ and are no longer binding, but that the moral law of the Old Testament is still in force.Hebrews 10:16, for example, tells us the Holy Spirit writes “God’s laws” on Christians’ hearts (so they are obviously still in force), even though that same book of the Bible tells us some of those Mosaic laws—the ceremonial—are no longer binding on us. This view has been accepted by all branches of the church since New Testament times.
   They refuse to accept this ancient distinction between the ceremonial and moral law, they’re doing much more than simply giving us an alternative interpretation of the Old Testament—they are radically revising what biblical authority means. When they say “Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong,” and then applies this to homosexuality (though assuming thatLeviticus 19:18—the Golden Rule—is still in force), they are assuming that Christians themselves, not the Bible, have the right to decide which parts of the Bible are essentially now out of date. That decisively shifts the ultimate authority to define right and wrong onto the individual Christian and away from the biblical text.
   The traditional view is this: Yes, there are things in the Bible Christians no longer have to follow, but if the Scripture is our final authority, only the Bible itself can tell us what those things are. The prohibitions against homosexuality are re-stated in the New Testament (Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6; 1 Timothy 1) but Jesus himself (Mark 7:14-22), as well as the rest of the New Testament tells us the clean laws and ceremonial code is no longer in force.

 

5. What’s At Stake?

The creation of men and women and their union in marriage is the pinnacle of God’s creative acts. Paul interprets this act of God and explains to us that it is actually also a prophetic act. It points to the pinnacle of recreation.

In the marriage of a man and a woman there is pictured the future marriage of Christ with his church. As there are to be headship and submission in human marriages there is to be headship and submission in our relationship to Jesus Christ.
This biblical truth of marriage is destroyed in a same-sex union.
Ephesians 5:22–33 (ESV)
²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Satan is attacking marriage because in marriage God’s most amazing act of creation is displayed. He is attacking marriage because it is a picture of salvation and the church’s submission to her husband Jesus Christ.

We must stand firm in our view that what the Bible teaches is God’s will for men and women. Marriage is sacred and regardless what the scotus decides, real marriage is very clearly taught in the Bible as one man and one woman for life. Anything else fails to show Christ’s relationship to the church.

That is why we here at GCC will uphold God’s view for His glory and our good.

Sources Used-

THE BIBLE AND SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS: A REVIEW ARTICLE By Tim Keller senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Manhattan, New York

Genesis Commentary by Victor Hamilton