“Foundations of Marriage:
What Can I Hope to Gain Out of This Relationship?”
Genesis 2:18-25
This message was preached on January 27, 2013 in the pulpit of Harvey Baptist Church.
Chuck Swindoll shares this story, he says, "Several years ago I was speaking at Moody Bible Institute. A lady wrote me a note saying, 'I did not worry about getting married. I did leave my future to God's will, but every night I hung a pair of men’s pants on the bed and knelt down and I prayed this prayer: Father in Heaven, hear my prayer and grant, if you will. I have hung a pair of trousers here. Please fill them with a man.'" Isn't that a great letter? A great prayer! Well, not long after that, as a matter of fact, the very next week, Chuck got back to the church he pastored in Fullerton, California at the time, and he said, "the story really didn't fit my sermon, I just ran it in because it was such a great letter. The father and the older son of a family I knew were in the church, but the mother was home with a sick daughter that day. When I read the woman's note I watched this father and his son. The father just cracked up laughing but the boy was rather serious. Interestingly, several weeks later I got a letter from the mother who had not been in that service. She wrote, 'Dear Chuck, I'm wondering if I have something to worry about. I noticed that our son, when he goes to bed at night has this bikini hanging over the foot of his bed'." And that really does not have much to do with the sermon this morning but I thought that it was such a good story that I had to cram it in there. It does help us introduce the subject of this sermon series on marriage. I've entitled today’s message "Foundations of Marriage: What Can I Hope to Gain Out of This Relationship?" Not everyone in the room is married, I understand that, and not everyone in the room is going to be married and I understand that. Marriage strictly is a foundational part of our society. It is important that we look at marriage through the divine understanding that God gives us through His word. It is important that we hold up high the ideal of God's standard for marriage, and it is important that we play by the rules when we get married. It is also important we understand what God intends for a marriage to be like and its important that we strive for living that out. So we start this morning in Genesis 2 and we look at marriage by divine design, the foundations of marriage, Genesis 2. I will lay this out for you as we look at Genesis 2:18-25. I am going to lay it out for you in 3 different ways. There are 3 aspects that I see here most clearly. The first one is assistance, the second one is intimacy, and the third is oneness. So when we look at marriage and what I can hope to gain if I live out marriage according to God's plan, we can expect to gain assistance, I can gain intimacy, and I can gain oneness. So let's look at Genesis 2:18, "And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.’ Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman. And He brought her to the man and Adam 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.’ Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” So first of all, we think about assistance and when we notice assistance in the text we think about marriage and the assistance that comes to us through marriage. We are speaking of the functional benefit. So you know God has created all the world, "In the beginning", Genesis 1:1, and then you see God creating the skies, you see God creating the land, you see God creating the oceans and the waters, and then you see God creating animals to crawl upon the land. You see God creating birds to fly in the air. You see God creating fish to swim in the sea and what you see in Genesis 1 is God creating all that is. He is the great uncaused cause that has caused all the universe and existence to come into being. So, God makes a declaration. Do you remember what the declaration is? When God looks out upon His creation He says, "It is very good." So God has declared the light to be good. He has declared the sun, moon and stars to be good and you see that throughout the creation account. You see God declaring these things to be good and now, you get to man. Adam is there. Adam had been created. God looks down upon the aloneness of Adam and says for the first time, "It is not good". This good is not a distinction between what is morally good or morally evil at this point. This is the kind of good that speaks to functionality. So when God looks at all the creation He has made, He declares it to be good in the sense of functional, but this is pre-Fall, sin has not entered the world yet. But when God looks at Adam, he looks at Adam and says it is not good; it is not properly functional for Adam to be alone. Now some people might think that God is like a sculptor, that He is forming and fashioning this creation, this sculpture of Adam and then, as an artist would, he would stand back and look at his sculpture and say, "You know I could do a little improving here or there. I could shake this up a little bit here and there." That's not what God is doing. God is not responding because God does not change. God is immutable. God is unchanging. What God is doing here is making a declaration. The declaration is this: it is not good and it is not functional for you to live life all alone. You need help. You need assistance. And one of the relationships, if not the primary relationship, I guess we should say, in the foundation of our society, so that you won't be alone, is the gift of marriage. But now, that's not just marriage. I know that there are some people that God gives the gift of singleness. I have friends, we have people in this church that God has given them the gift of singleness and there is nothing wrong with that. The apostle Paul was single. Jesus was never married. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but there is something wrong with you being alone. You know the difference? You can come to church every Sunday and still be alone. If you emotionally separate yourself from other people, you are placing yourself in a very dangerous situation of being alone. The point is this; God has given us marriage so that we may have assistance, so that we may have help, so that we may have companionship. But God also has given us relationships in the life of the church and in the body of Christ through which we can also have companionship and friendship. So we need to hold up high this idea of marriage because it is in the marital relationship, here in Genesis 2, that God looks down upon Adam and says it is not good for him to be alone, he needs a helper. He needs a partner. He needs a co-laborer. He needs a companion. He needs assistance. This is the functional benefit. I can tell you, my life would be an absolute wreck if it were not for my wife. (That's right). Thanks! I mean I have been trying to get "Amen’s" all morning, finally I say something really self-deprecating, and Amen! Everybody's into that. (Laughter) It's absolutely true! It's the truth. And I can tell you that marriage has provided (and I may not get lunch when I get home) for me some of the most frustrating moments in my life. And the wife said, "amen". (Laughter) But marriage has provided for me the most wonderful, encouraging, strengthening and joyous moments in life as well. I'm very thankful for that. Now, I have to warn you, there are going to be times throughout this sermon where you are going to be thinking 'wow, that's really hard to live'. Well, I would ask for just a little bit of sympathy. How much harder do you think it is to live when you are also the guy who is up here preaching it? So I have to not only teach it and preach it according to what God says but then also, my wife is 'okay then Mr. Preacher Man, Mr. Marriage Expert'. We really need to strive for consistency here, and we really need to pray for one another. We are speaking here of the functional benefit. Can you imagine what life was like in the garden before the fall? There was a life of worship. There was no corruption. There was nothing standing in the way. It is a life of pure worship to God. It is a life of delight and pleasure. It is a life in the Garden of Eden, ruling and reigning our all the creatures and creation. It is a life of peace. It is a life of joyful work. They tended to the garden, but not by the sweat of their brow and not by the pain of their back. It was joyful to work. It was joyful to take care of what God had given them and God declared it to be very good, and they are fulfilled in God. As they are fulfilled in God they are serving one another. This is really what I want to focus in on when I talk about assistance and the functional benefits of marriage. I am talking about service. I am talking about serving one another. So God looks at Adam and says, "Its not good for Adam to be alone.” He needs a helper that is comparable to him. He needs someone who will assist him. He needs a co-laborer. He needs a companion. He needs somebody who will serve him and somebody he can serve. There is this great benefit in service, in servant hood. Oh, but sometimes marriage gets a little bit dull and dry and we grow insensitive and we grow slack in our efforts of service. One writer said this, "Marriage begins warm and intimate, but over time it can become cold and businesslike. Consider the seven ages of the marriage cold." So here are seven ways. In the first year of marriage the husband says, "Sugar, I am worried about my little baby girl. You've got a bad sniffle and I want to be you in the hospital for a complete checkup. I know the food is lousy but I have arranged for the food to be sent up from Rosini's. It is all arranged." He is taking care of his woman. Second year: "Listen honey, I don't like the sound of that cough. I have called Dr. Miller and he is going to rush right over. Now will you go to bed, like a good little girl, just for me? Please?" Third year: "Maybe you better lie down honey, nothing like a little rest if you're feeling bad. I'll bring you something to eat. Have we got any soup in the house?" Then year number four: "Look dear, be sensible. After you have fed the kids and washed the dishes you better hit the sack." Only the people who are married get this. Fifth year: "Why don't you take a couple of aspirin?" Year six: "If you would just gargle or something instead of sitting around here barking like seal." Year number seven, he says to his wife, "For heaven's sake, will you stop sneezing? What are you trying to do? Give me pneumonia?" The people in the first service thought that was funnier than you did. But I think it very well illustrates what happens in marriages so many times. We start off strong, like when you meet somebody and you do not show them that you are a lazy slob and insensitive. When you first meet somebody you put your best foot forward. You want to look nice. You want to be charming. You want to charm them. You want to make the feel special and feel good about themselves. Then what happens is that you go through the courting stage or dating, whatever you want to call it, and then you're still excited and emotions are running high and all these things are happening. Then you get married and pretty soon after you get married reality sets in. People get lazy in their relationships. They get lazy in their service for one another. I think that the story about the seven year cold illustrates what happens so many times. When we first start off, we are glad to serve and glad to be of assistance. We are glad to look to one another, to help one another and to benefit each other. But something happens along the way and we get away from God's plan for marriage. And men check out emotionally and women become bitter and resentful and, before you know it people are just cohabiting instead of being married. Now I have to go home and live this and I am doing the best I can to not only preach it but to live it. I can't do this without God's strength. Because the truth of it is, there are times when I am just tired and I don't really feel like being a servant. There are times in my life that I am exhausted, either emotionally or physically. There are times in my marriage when I don’t feel like doing certain things. There are times when I come home and it is seven or eight o'clock at night and I have been going since 6 or 7 in the morning and I have been taking on everybody else's problems and dealing with all my deadlines and going through all the things that I need to do, and I get home and I just want to sit down in my chair for a little while. Which I get to do plenty of times, I am not shorted on that. Their are times when, emotionally, Leanne wants to tell me about something that she has been through that day, and men, if you're honest, your first response is "would she please be quiet and leave me alone? I just want to rest. I am emotionally exhausted." You need to stop right there and realize that God gave you to her to be her assistant and no matter if you're tired or not, get over yourself, get over your tiredness, and be a servant. Serve her. Sometimes you are physically exhausted and my wife might say, "Could you go in there and get the kids bath water going?" Sometimes I’m just like, "No, I don’t want to'. I meant that is what I think. Wrong answer by the way in case you're a total moron and didn't know that. Write it down. That's not the right answer. The right answer is to realize that just as God declared that it was not good for Adam to be alone, God has also declared to me that it is not good for me to be alone. He has also declared to my wife that it is not good for her to be alone. So what God has done in His magnificent plan is put one man and one woman together so that they may serve each other and mutually assist each other and as they are serving each other, they are so filled up with the joy of the Lord that the marriage works and is joyful. Part of our problem is that we have just gotten lazy. We would rather watch television than listen to our spouse. Tell you right now, you get rid of the television, you get rid of that junk that you are paying $50 a month to pumped into your living room and you will have an outright revival in your house. I can tell you from personal experience. I can tell you a couple of other people in the church have done the same thing and they have experienced it. My marriage is stronger, my marriage is much stronger since I have quit letting all that trash be pumped into my living room and taking my attention. You know what actually happens now as a family? There are times that we actually just look at each other and enjoy one another! It is nice. It is good. So think about assistance, think about service and what is going to happen when one spouse is serving the other and the other spouse is serving this other. Then what happens, is the man is serving the wife, the wife is serving the husband and they are so busy serving each other that they have died to self-preferences. They have died to selfish thoughts. They have crucified those things and they are caught up in serving one another for the glory of God, and for the benefit of each other. It’s good stuff. The second thing I want to point out to you in the text is intimacy. What I mean by intimacy is the affectionate trustworthiness. So when we think of assistance we think of the functional benefit, both emotionally and physically. Also, when we think about intimacy we are thinking about the affectionate trustworthiness. What I mean to include is that there is confidence and there is enjoyment. There is to be confidence in a marital relationship and there is to be enjoyment in the marital relationship. There are 4 things I want to point out to you in the text. In verse 18, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helper comparable to him.’ Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.” Now I want to point out here, it’s not God sitting back saying, “Okay, I need some names for these animals. So let’s see what kind of names Adam will come up with. So I am just going to run them all through the cattle shoot and see what Adam comes up with”. That’s not what is happening here. What is happening here is God at work in Adam’s life. God is creating all of these creatures; he gives Adam the privilege and responsibility of naming all of these creatures and, in all of this process…well let me explain this. As one walks by Adam says, “There is a hairy, creepy-crawly thing”. Another one walks by and he says, “There is another creepy-crawly thing with four legs. There is another creepy-crawly thing with six legs. There is a feathery thing with feet and wings”…and you get the idea. Through all the naming of these animals, God is doing something. Do you see what it is? He is showing Adam that he is alone. He is showing Adam that he needs a helper. He is showing Adam that he needs more than what exists just in the animal kingdom. So God is bringing about this gracious presentation and you see that it is a divine presentation, for in verse 21, “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man”. It is a divine presentation. It is as though God is leading her down the aisle for this great initial wedding ceremony. God creates her out of the side of man and God presents her to the man. You see here, that God is very gracious and He is building a relationship upon which there will be affectionate trustworthiness. After Adam names all of the creatures, he names this, he names that, he names this, and then he names that. And after all of the naming of the creatures, you need to catch what Adam does here in verse 23. Now God presents Eve to Adam and after naming this, this, this, and this, now, in verse 23 Adam says, “Now, this!” There is an emphasis here in the original language to say that Adam has named all of the creatures but now there is this most beautiful, most wonderful of everything that has been created and now, THIS! Yes! Thank you Lord, now this! Do you pretty well get what I am trying to say? Some of you don’t. We will talk later. I don’t know what else to say, other than it is a very exciting moment for Adam. He’s excited about this beautiful woman God has placed in front of him. It is the closest relationship of them all. You see it even reflected in the terminology that is used. There is man and there is woman. So this is the closest relationship they will experience. You even see that in the Hebrew, it is the words ish and isha. It is a very honorable relationship. I think this is very important. I think it has been left out. This has been left out for the lives and marriages of many. Do you know what the divorce rate is now in our country? Over 50%. That means 1 in 2 and I am not much of a mathematician. Every other marriage is ending in divorce. Something is wrong. We need help. We need to fix it. I think that one of the places that it starts is by recognizing that marriage is to be an honorable thing. You see there that they are naked and they are not ashamed. They don’t become ashamed of this until after the fall. Then sin comes in. Then there is guilt. Then they are looking to hide with leaves and all these terrible things are going on but before the Fall there is no guilt. It is an honorable thing to be together and they are enjoying that and what I see is this: Among this honorable relationship there is confidence and there is enjoyment. That should still be very much a part of marriage. There should be an affectionate trustworthiness. Do you know how trust is gained? It’s built. Trust is built. Trust is gained by showing trustworthiness. So in a marriage, you need to be working together in such a way, this is where point number 2 builds off of point number 1, that you’re so busy serving one another through the service to one another you build up this affectionate trustworthiness, this confidence and this enjoyment in the relationship, so as you serve one another you grow in intimacy for one another. It’s such a beautiful thing. It’s a wonderful thing. What happened? Why did this change? Because I promise you, everybody in the room can testify that that has not been the overall experience of marriage. Right? There are some other things involved that are not so happy. Why? Why did that come about? Why do we struggle the way we do? You read about it in Genesis 3. It’s all because of sin. It’s all because of the Fall. You might rightly say that it is all because of the rebellion. At the heart of the Fall, at the heart of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God, is this: they sought for their desires to be fulfilled somewhere other than God. The lesson there is this: you should not seek desire, you should not seek to fulfill your desire, you should not seek pleasure anywhere outside of your relationship with God and the relationship He has given you to fulfill that pleasure. If you do, you will see Genesis 3 in your life and I can summarize it with this: all Hell breaks loose, literally. I see it all the time. So we need to get back to service, co-laboring, helping and then, therefore, growing this affectionate trustworthiness. It takes time. Our marriage was absolutely crazy for the first couple of years. We didn’t know what to do. We were learning and it was really difficult in so many ways. I’ve thrown a…well, anyway, that doesn’t matter. I will just let you keep…I didn’t throw anything at her but I did throw a cell phone out the window one time…going about 60 miles an hour. You know, back in the day, the bag phones? Because I was so frustrated. I was an idiot…literally. I was an absolute ignorant fool regarding marriage. Then God grew us and matured us. We still have our moments and you know, marriage is difficult but it’s great. It is good. It is because God has taught us how to do it. I will never forget, one time I was invited to preach at this little country church in St. Joe, Texas. Does anyone know where St. Joe is? Not five of you. There is a little Dairy Queen in St. Joe, a couple of little churches. It’s just a small community but it’s a nice little place. A friend of mine pastored a little country church out in St. Joe. He asked if I would come and preach for him one time when he was out of town and I said I would love to. I went over there to this little run-down building. Since then they have built a new building. I will never forget, their were about 18 people there that morning, which was fine with me. I was just glad that anyone would listen to me preach. Right before I got up to preach they announced there was this older couple that was going to do the special music for that morning. Now after we had already sung from the hymnal without any kind of instrumentation, not because they were church of Christ or a capella only, but because there was nobody to play the piano and nobody to play a guitar. I did a little humming but I don’t think that helped much. So anyway, we were sitting there and this old couple starts strolling down and she is in a wheelchair and he is pushing her in this wheelchair and I thought, “Well this ought to be interesting. They are going to sing this special music”. I think this is great but who knows what it is going to be like. So they turn around, and of course there was no accompaniment, there was no instrumentation, they didn’t have a hymnbook, they didn’t have anything. I think he made up the song as he went. I just don’t know. But he looked down at his wife and he looked at us and he said, “We have been married over seventy years and the Lord has sure been good to us. Right now our bodies are falling apart and in our early years we sure had some tough times”. He looked down and he was just weeping. Everybody in the room was weeping at that point. He looked down at his wife in that wheelchair and he took her hand and he held it like this and he patted her on the hand and said, “Darling, I just want you to know I love you”. And she said, “I love you too”. They sang together, what was one of the most beautiful love songs I have heard in my life. I don’t remember the words and I don’t know what they said but I will never forget that moment, because in that moment I was seeing two people who had built confidence and enjoyment. They had built affectionate trustworthiness in a relationship, in marriage. They knew true intimacy. That’s what God has for us. That’s what God gives us in marriage if we would ever just like to get it! If we will just be willing to put forth the effort to gain it, God has provided all of this for us! So I’ll just say a little point of application here, men compliment your wives. Tell them how much you love them. Tell them how beautiful they are. Tell them how much you cherish them. Don’t just tell them, show them! I doubt there is a woman in the room who would reject that. There are some men that I just want to grab them by the shirt and shake them and say, “What is wrong with you?!” Men, encourage your wives. Women, encourage your husbands. Tell your husbands how much they are appreciated. Tell them how proud of them you are. You don’t have to tell them they smell good just tell them that you love them. Then I will also say this as another point of application, because this is where I have noticed infidelity always seems to start. Don’t you dare look for that affirmation in someone else. Husbands, don’t let…nobody is going to be complimenting my wife. As I say this, I know I have work to do in this area. So I’m just going to be honest with you here, I am going to tell you right now that I am going to work hard so that I’m so busy complimenting my wife and telling her how much I love her and how beautiful she is that it doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say because it isn’t anything compared to what I’m saying! There is no excuse for this kind of thing. We should not be allowing this kind of thing. Treat each other with love and respect and mutual admiration. Be each other’s companion. Be each other’s helper. Be each other’s co-laborer. Build each other up and build the affectionate trustworthiness, the confidence, and the enjoyment that goes with the kind of marriage that God created yours to be. One last thing, oneness. Oneness. I know that may not sound like the most scintillating point of a sermon but it is so extremely important. It is such a major theme here in these verses. As a matter of fact, I would say oneness is the foundational essence of marriage. Oneness is the foundational essence of marriage and it is in oneness that fullness is found. It is in oneness that satisfaction is experienced. Your love is there. Many times, God says, “the two become one”. He brought her in verse 22; “He brought the woman to the man”. In verse 23 you see Adam says, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she is taken out of man.” As he declares that with great excitement, you see in verse 24, now Moses offers his commentary on this. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” The union is consummated. God has presented Eve to Adam. They have become one physically, spiritually and emotionally. They are united and it is such a good thing that in verse 25 they are both naked: “The man and his wife, and were not ashamed”. Now you see here that God takes Eve out of the rib of Adam. Isn’t that an interesting place? Why does he take Eve out of the side? He created the woman out of the side of man. It’s not intended here to only refer to the rib bone as the rib bone, the flesh, out of the side of man. I think Matthew Henry gets it right when he says this, “God created woman out of the side of man. Not out of the foot that she may be trampled under foot by him, and not of the head that she may rule over him. But out of the side, that the two may walk together side-by-side helping one another.” You see in this oneness, God made her, that is to say that God built her, and then they become one. They are joined together. They become one flesh. They experience fullness in the community of the two becoming one. I need to point out a few other things as we pass through these verses. You will notice the commentator, Moses. So the story of Adam and Eve had been passed on by oral tradition for all of these years. Then Moses, writing from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, records this story in Genesis and then he offers this commentary in verses 24 and 25, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” One very important aspect of marriage is understanding very simple mathematics. The two become one, not three and not five. You get married; you’re a big boy now. When you get married you’re a big girl now. You don’t go run to mommy and daddy every time something goes wrong. And mommy and daddy need to help you understand that. This is not Richmond’s commentary, it is Moses’. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Now in our marriage, that’s one thing that I can say that is so good about my wife. I don’t think there is anyone, I guess I know this, or at least I think I know this. There is not anyone outside of me that my wife has ever spoken badly to about me. Does that make sense? Has anybody in this church, I’m serious; I’m honestly asking this. Has anyone in this church ever heard my wife say anything bad about me? Have you? I want to know and I want to know right now. I already know the answer to the question. You know what is amazing? I have never heard her say anything bad about you either. You know what is even more amazing? My mother-in-law does not hear my wife talk badly about me. She just doesn’t do that because she knows Genesis 2:24 is important. If we are going to have oneness in the marriage then it needs to be us! Not everybody else! Oneness…1+1=2, not 3, not 5.
So we have Assistance, Intimacy, and Oneness. These are the foundations of marriage, and this is what you can expect to gain from a marriage built upon these principles revealed in God's word.
