Sermon Notes + Quotes:
Transcript:
We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel and it’s my joy and privilege to be leading us through the first of 66 books in the Bible. This book is called Genesis, which means “beginnings”, and we have had a great time last three weeks in chapter one and it is all about the beginner of the beginning. God is the subject of literally every verb in chapter one and now, we’re about to enter into chapter two, but before we do, I want to step back just a few verses and make a comment or two about what some have come to call the Cultural Mandate. As God creates humanity, He does so for a purpose and instructs them in what they are to do. Let me put it up on the screen for you,
“Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image, in the image of God, He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
Genesis 1:26-28
So the cultural mandate, as it’s called, is really God’s command for human beings to multiply and fill the earth, to exercise their sort of vice regency over the earth or dominion over the earth, to subdue it, to cultivate it, to develop its potential, if you will. God creates and calls all humans as those who were made in His image to fill the earth with other humans by creating the male and female with the capacity to procreate like that and to accomplish God’s purposes.
God sends the humans out into the world to work it and we will see that part of that is to create culture as we study through chapter two a little bit more, but sometimes I do have to say as a Bible teacher and as a pastor, sometimes I wonder if too many of us who call ourselves Bible-believing Christians have lost sight of this cultural mandate in favor of other aspects of scripture that we seek to focus on or seem to focus on. I think what we miss of course, is that there’s more to belonging to God and more to being God’s vice regents, if you will, then merely becoming Christians. As a matter of fact, Nancy Pearcey has said it this way in her book, Total Truth,
“Our calling is not just to ‘go to heaven’ but also to cultivate the earth, not just to ‘save souls’, but also to serve God through our work. For God himself is engaged not only in the work of salvation but also in the work of preserving and developing His creation. When we obey the Cultural Mandate, we participate in the work of God himself.”
–Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth
So I really like that. I noticed that a little bit as I was listening down to the sermon last week that I’d forgotten to mention that. I just wanted to start off with that. This is so important when you’re asking these very big questions that we all ask and I think more than ever, people are asking is, is there a God? Who is God, if there is a God and what does it mean to be a human person and
is there any meaning and purpose and significance to the life of a human person?
These are really important questions and when we’re often faced and sort of, like a pandemic like we are, we’re sort of pressed a little bit, we start to think about the big questions and the place… wherever it is you go to for the answers. This is a really important decision to make.
Where shall we go for the answers to those big questions? Because there are myriad places you could go and some of them will lead you to despair, some of them will lead you to selfishness, some of them will lead you to anger and frustration. I seek to persuade you that we study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel because it leads us to the architect of it all. The God who created us and made us to be in relationship with him and to be in relationship with one another and to experience love, to experience His glory in a beautiful way and this is what gives us meaning and purpose in a really powerful way.
So without any further ado, let me get into chapter two here. We’ll pick up right with the…right at the end of the sixth Day of Creation and I’m just going to read the first three verses and I’ll make a few comments and then, I’m going to read up to verse 17, make a few comments and then, we’ll finish the chapter. So three little bits, we’re breaking it chapter two into three bits, right? So it begins this way, “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts,” and the hosts would be everything that populates the heavens and the earth, everything in the physical universe, basically. Everything from fish to stars, to planets, to people. “And by the seventh day, God completed his work, which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”
“Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it, He rested from all His work, which God had created and made.” So a couple things to note there. First of all, God rested and God worked are mentioned three times here, and so God has finished what he intended to do. This is the big picture, and it’s not just that God just ran out of steam, ran out of gas. I mean good grief, it is a lot when you think about it to create all of that. No, that’s not it at all. God, He ceased creating and He began…as we noticed at the end of each day, He appreciated, took time to enjoy. He said, “It is good” multiple times. Then, after that, sixth day He said it was very good, and so you can see there’s kind of this climactic really great and wonderful enjoyment of His work.
So God then rested or ceased from His labors or from his creating and He finished, it’s just because He finished and was able to take delight in His work, and I love that. I love that about God. That then starts to inform, doesn’t it, our own work ethic, our own attitude toward our jobs, that we shouldn’t just be going in and punching that timecard, just trying to earn our little hourly rate, whatever it is. No, we should go in there and enjoy it for the glory of God and for the good of our fellow man and even for the good of our own souls, the flourishing of our own souls. This idea that God rested like this is also the foundational passage, if you will, for the ancient Jewish work week that ends with a Sabbath day. The first time we hear about Sabbath will be, not until Exodus 16.
It’s not even mentioned here, but it becomes a foundational pattern, if you will, as the ancient Jews receive the law from God. God says, “Look, the way to really enjoy your life is you can labor these six days, but then you need to rest one day or stop your work and make sure you’ve got time for worship and for giving thanks, for appreciating what you have and for worshiping God as well. Jesus put it this way, when He was clarifying his view of the Sabbath to the Jews of His time in Mark 2:27-28, He said,
“Jesus said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Mark 2:27-28
And that’s a huge claim by the way, for a first century Jewish man, for a Jewish man of any time to say, to make the claim that He’s the Lord of the Sabbath.”
That’s just huge. So when people say Jesus was just a nice example or Jesus was just one among many, no, no, no, that’s a bold claim that He’s making there along with all the other bold claims that Jesus makes. If you read Jesus and what the eyewitness and ear witness accounts of Jesus have to offer us in the four gospels, there is just no getting away from the fact that this is a truly unique human being, the most unique human being that ever lived. Well, the whole idea of Sabbath observance of course was to provide rest from labor and opportunity for worship. I think we have a desperate need for that same kind of rhythm even in our own modern day and time. We’re so focused on work that often we forget to rest. We’re so in pursuit of temporal things that we forget to take time away from the devices that keep us busy and connected or researching. Or seeing who’s got the latest thought on this or that or who’s got the latest outrage on this or that. We’ve got to get back to the place where we fall in with the Lord’s idea of this Sabbath rhythm, this Sabbath rest. My wife, Kim Thomas, is our Curate here at The Village Chapel, and she’s quite a writer as well, has five books published. In one of her books, it’s called Even God Rested, she says this,
“We have willingly looted the vaults of good sense and sacred integrity with our over-busy lives and have starved ourselves of revelation.”
–Kim Thomas, Even God Rested
And brothers and sisters, it need not be so. Don’t starve yourself of revelation. Don’t sacrifice a flourishing soul and sort of watch it just dry up and burn out because you just want to be busy all the time and see who’s liked or followed you or whatever that is.
Find time to rest. God just took the time to do that. He wasn’t out of gas. We’re different than He is though, we run out of gas. We need time for the rest, but we also need time to appreciate the goodness of work and to appreciate how we’ve taken up the cultural mandate and begun to create things and to do things that are for God’s glory, for the good of our neighbors and for the good of the world that we live in. So all that God reveals to us here in Genesis reminds us that God has designed us in his image, part of which includes taking time away from daily work, to focus our attention on eternal realities that will provide the true rest for our souls in Christ. As a matter of fact, Jesus even called us to that Himself. In Matthew 11:28 through 30,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Well, that’s awesome and I’m so grateful for the first three verses of chapter two. Let’s see what verses four through 17 hold for us here. “This is the account”…it begins like that. “This is the account”, and by the way, that phrase there, “This is the account,” might say in your English translation, it might say “This is the generation,” or the whole idea is because it shows up 12 times in the Book of Genesis, even in the Begats, “These are the generations of,” and then they’ll list all these names that are very difficult to pronounce, and I know that some of you’re looking forward to me struggling with all of that.
“This is the account” is like introducing a new thought or a new section, a new pericope, if you will, in the scripture here. So verse four, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.”
Now, it’s real important to notice one other little linguistic shift there. This is the first time in verse four that we hear or that we read rather, this couplet, “Lord God,” and in your English Bible it probably has Lord in all capital letters. So what we have here is we have the personal name of God because all capital letters is a translation of Yahweh or Jehovah, as you may be more familiar with that, but Yahweh, God’s personal name, which He reveals to Moses in the Book of Exodus. As we think that Moses is likely the author of this, you can see where Moses might have used that.
He now is beginning to say the personal name of God in addition to Elohim, God, which has translated God throughout most of our English Bibles. If there’s a capital L and small letters O-R-D, that’s typically a translation for Adonai, another title of God, but Yahweh is His personal name, God is His title, and here we have both in verse four and that will repeat as we go through this. You’ll see that as well. “This is the account of the heavens of the earth when they were created in the day that Yahweh, God, Yahweh, Elohim, made earth and heaven.” And by the way, I love this too. Chapter two is like you put…if your camera was on the wide angle lens in chapter one, chapter two becomes more of a zoom lens. So you’re getting close, close, closer and you get even closer revelation of who God is.
So don’t fall asleep, don’t lose that. He’s not just Elohim, He’s Yahweh, Elohim, He’s God who has revealed Himself personally to us as well. Verse five, “No shrub of the field was yet in the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprouted for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground.” So again, it’s a closer look at what we’ve already been told in chapter one that God created everything and that was even spelled out a little bit, but from a distance. Now, we’re getting closer in and we’re sort of getting another look, but a closer look with a little bit more detail. So there was no man to cultivate the ground, verse six, “But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.”
So no rain yet, but this mist that would sort of sprout up. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the grocery store, when the misting machine goes on in the produce department, but man, you got to be careful. Don’t keep your basket so close because as that thing pops, or if you’re walking down the street and somebody’s irrigation system goes off in their lawn, well, there’s some kind of misting system that God had created in, before it had begun to rain and we’ll read about rain when we get to Noah, but for now, it’s this mist. I love this detail that we’re getting. Again, the zoom lens is on and we’re getting a little closer. Verse seven, “And then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.”
Some of your translations will say a ‘soul’. Yeah, and I love the beauty of that word as well, because I think we forget … when we drift away from God, when we drift away from going to the word for answers to these questions, what does it mean to be a human person? Does life have any meaning? Are we created beings? Is this a created universe or is it just the random chance co-location of atoms and chemicals, but where did they come from? When you play out all of those big questions you see, the further away from God you get, the further away from soul you
get and the closer you get to self and the self replaces the soul. Don’t let that happen to you. Pray, God, that doesn’t happen to us. Thank you for a soul Lord, and thank you for breathing life into us.
Verse eight, “Then the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed.” I love this. This is the very the first mention of landscaping that we have in terms of God doing something like this. He plants a garden specifically, and so there’s this landscaping that’s happening. Those of you in the landscaping business or those of you that have folk that come and tend to your yard or whatever, look it, it’s actually right here in the Bible. God loves gardens, He loves gardening and He loves food, and I love all of that. Why? Because it gives such amazing dignity and value to people who are engaged in those kinds of industries and work. If that’s you, take joy, god loves gardens, all right? So He planted this garden and then, He placed the man there. Verse nine, “And out of the ground, the Lord God caused to grow every tree that’s pleasing to the sight and good for food.” Again, He loves food and I love food too!
“The tree of life also in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” We’ll read more about those in chapter three. “Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there, it divided and became four rivers.” Look at this very specific live body detail. We’re going to get the names of these four rivers even, okay? Two of which we’ve heard of, two of which we have not, but look at this specific detail that continues here. All of this is pre-flood, and so you got to understand this is anti-diluvian and this is before a lot of topographical changes might have happened as a result of the flood, but “the name of the first river is Pishon. It flows around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold.”
Look at that live body detail and that’s awesome, and “the gold of that land is good.” I don’t know what it would go per troy ounce right now, but probably for quite a bit. “The bdellium,” which is like best I can tell from my research anyway, I looked that up, it’s some kind of aromatic resin or whatever, but this is the detail we’re getting about this area. There was bdellium and then there was Onyx stone there as well. The verse 13, “And the name of the second river is Gihon. It flows around the whole land of Cush.” Now, there’s a couple different Cush’s mentioned in the Bible. One seems to be down near Ethiopia, it would be down there. The other, I think this is probably the other one, but we’re not certain. Again, this is pretty old material we’re reading here, right?
Verse 14, “And the name of the third river is Tigris. It flows east of Assyria and the fourth river is Euphrates.” So again, four rivers, only the last two are known, but they are marking some of the boundaries of what will eventually become land that is promised to Abraham. Then verse 15, “The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.” So here again, we have the sort of a reiteration of the cultural mandate, that is that God is inviting us to join him in cultivating what He’s created, and this is really beautiful. So we have purpose, we have productivity, creativity, responsibility, all of those things, really wonderful that God has done that. “So the Lord God took the man, put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.”
By the way, here’s work before we get to the fall. So work is not a result of the fall and therefore God’s mad at us and makes us work. No, we get the dignity and the opportunity to be responsible and creative and to be working and producing. We get that before the fall, before sin enters the world, that’s really awesome. Verse 16, “The Lord God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden, you may eat freely.” Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? Yeah. Again, if you really like to eat, “But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.” Here’s the first choice that shows up, that’s a moral choice. We’re about to hear about some more choices, but this is that first choice where God says all of this. Look at the vast number of trees from which you can pull fruit and eat.
Lots of foliage. This is like the best salad bar in the world, but there’s this one thing you don’t want to eat, because when you eat that, it isn’t going to work out well, okay? God just now has made the opportunity for a moral choice and given it to the humans. Then, the Lord God said, “That in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” So He’s got that, He’s even giving them fair warning about what the consequences might be if they were to go against God’s word. We’ll read it, a little bit more about what happens in that whole opportunity for a moral choice and opportunity for making a good choice to obey God or to disobey God. We’ll read about that next week. What do we see here in verses four through 17? Again, not a second different version of creation, but I would call this a commentary on what we read in chapter one.
It’s got additional information, so it’s an elaboration concerning what took place, especially on the sixth day because there’s a heavy emphasis here in verses four through 17 on what God does in the context of placing the humans in their setting or especially, the male human, Adam as he’s going to be called later, and we’re about to read about the creation of Eve, but this is at least positioning Adam into the garden and commissioning him to be engaged in work. I love all of this. Again, I love what it does to me and my own sort of understanding of what it means to be a human person. I hope it’s doing it for you as well. Again, who is God? Who are we? These are giant big questions, but they really matter, especially in our own day when there’s so much confusion about what it means to be a human person.
I love the way Pastor Eugene Peterson says this in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places,
“The Latin words, hummus, soil/earth and homo …”
(these are Latin words like as in homo sapien, which could be translated)
“…human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word “humble”. This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust – dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being…”
Watch what he says here. This is amazing.
“…If we cultivate a lively sense of our origin and nurture a sense of continuity with it, who knows, we may also acquire humility.”
–Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
You got to love that. Yeah, that’s a great benefit of understanding who we are, that we are part of creation, that we have a creator that he created us, that He used the common dust and then, because of who He is, He breathed life into us and then He breathed life … every human person created in his image, and that just changes the way we see everyone.
No matter where they’re from, no matter what tribe, tongue, no matter what nation, no matter what color their skin, no matter who they are, no matter what they believe, they have the image
of God imprinted into them. Now, listen, I know I’m a sinner. I know I’ve made bad choices and the image of God has been distorted in me, much like we said last week, a carnival mirror distorts the image of those who stand in front of it. Genesis is so helpful to us, to push reset so we can be reminded of who God is, who we are, why God created us, what our purpose in life is here on this planet, what our role is in God’s economy. These are all big questions that He’s begun to reveal the answers to in this book that we call Genesis. He does this because He wants our souls to flourish, you see.
He really wants us to know what it means to have a significant dignified life. So He doesn’t leave us in the dark. He doesn’t just create the earth and drop-kick it over the back fence of the universe and say, “Have a good time. I hope you guys make it.” No, He speaks to us through His word and through his word, we gain His wisdom about His ways and His will for our lives. So that’s so good for us and as Peterson said, “Will keep us humble in a good way.” Michael Horton is another theologian I really like to read once in a while. He said,
“God is not a supporting actor in our life movie. We exist for His purposes, not the other way around.”
–Michael Horton
And that’s a good thing that will keep us humble as well. So thank both Peterson and Horton for those two quotes.
Now, back to verse 18, we’re going to finish this chapter up here. “Then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper, suitable for him.” Now, by the way, this is the very first time anything has been said to be not good, over and over and over again, seven times, God says when he created something and it was good and it was good and it was good. Here in verse 18, the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So God is not at this point going, “Oh, I didn’t create the right kind of thing.” No, it’s like a painting that isn’t finished yet. See, I know this because I live with a painter, right back there’s one of them but I live with a painter and I see her go through this process, layering things and changing things and thinning things out and shaping the images that are on there. It’s this amazing process before a painting is actually finished.
So God is who we saw in chapter one, is seeking to create a being in His image. A species in His image creates male and female in His image, and together they bear the image of God. So when we’re looking with this zoom lens in chapter two, we’re looking really, really close. What we’re seeing is that Adam or Adam rather the male part of the male and female combo, the male part is alone and God says it’s not good for him to be alone. “Then,” he says, “I will make him a helper suitable for him and out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called a living creature that was its name.”
Now, I haven’t got a clue how Adam kept track of all of this. I haven’t got a clue how he came up with the names. All right, I’ll call that one elephant. I’ll call that a tiger. I’m going to call that over there a dog and then, that’ll be a cat. That’s an aardvark over there. That’s a weasel over there. I mean, really, is he got a little post-it note thing and he’s sticking, because I mean you…I forget names. I mean, I forget names of people all the time, but how do you keep track of all of this? The task he’s given is really awesome though, to name things and again, partnering with God and what God is doing in God’s world. I love this. The man gave names, Adam did, to all of the
cattle, all the birds of the sky and every beast of the field, verse 20 says, “But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him.”
I could see Adam going through all the creatures and just going, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, there’s a bird over there that’s an eagle. That’s a beautiful majestic looking bird, but it really doesn’t, couldn’t be a partner to me. There’s a fish. No, that couldn’t be for me either. Chimpanzee. No, no, no, no. Not going to do. No, that’s not going to do for me.” Then, watch what happens. This is awesome, there wasn’t one found suitable. So verse 21, “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then, God, took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.” Notice he didn’t take it from his head, didn’t take it from his feet, but he closed up the flesh, took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh at that place, and the Lord God …” this is awesome fashion.
First time used, “Fashioned into a woman, the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man,” and this is awesome. “And the man said…” and this is just amazing. “This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man,” but I got to tell you something about this. You got to know about the literary style that’s employed here. This is the first poetic couplet we have in the Bible. So this is awesome. When the Lord sees that the man is not … it’s not good for him to be alone, the Lord says, “Well, let’s do this.” And He takes a rib and creates a woman, fashions it, brings it, and here’s what happens. The Lord brings poetry into his life. This is the first time that Adam has actually responded back and said something to God.
What Adam is basically saying is what you say, but 10 times whatever we say. Whenever we see something that just completely blows us away and delights us, okay? If I could just get into this a little bit with a little bit more drama, what I would say is the way that this ought to be interpreted, and a lot of scholars are actually doing it this way, they’re saying…what Adam basically said is, “At last. At last. Yeah.” So this is how Adam responds when God presents the woman to him. You can imagine that, right? Yeah. How beautiful, how wonderful. This is when the corresponds to me. This is one that I…this could be my partner for life. Then, verse 24 and 25, we’ll close up here. “For this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
That closes up chapter two, and it’s just beautiful. I love what this teaches us here, not only about the creation of women and the dignity, and the beauty of women, but also of the relationship that God has designed here.
So let me talk about point number three here, which is humanity within the sacred biblical covenant union. This is all wrapped up in verses 18 to 25. Again, first time, verse 18, first time we see that something is not good, it’s not good for us to be alone. By the way, not only do I relate because my wife is a painter, but I relate because when I’m alone, when she’s gone and she’s going to visit family or something like that, I just don’t do well. I mean, I really don’t. I get disoriented about what time of day it is or what day it is. I’m helpless in the kitchen completely.
So I eat a lot of Chick-fil-A, which actually that’s not too bad. Sometimes I don’t want to go to Chick-fil-A, I don’t want to sit in a line or whatever it is. So I eat bowls and bowls of cereal, sometimes I throw some fruit on it, but I mean bowls and bowls of cereal. Why? Because it’s there, it’s easy. Milk, cereal bowl, boom, done, okay? If I get really desperate, I’ll eat a protein bar or something like that, but my diet is not very good, and it’s not good for me to be alone in that regard. It’s not that I’m just waiting for her to cook. Sometimes I do the cooking when she’s here. It’s just that when you have somebody else to do all of this with, whether it’s a roommate or a spouse or whatever, it just is different.
My wardrobe matchups are horrible when I’m alone, and this might be getting a little bit weird for some maybe, I wander around a bit listless, I got to be honest. Sometimes, I just need a hug. Okay. Go ahead, collective “Aww” Aw, I hear you. I hear you. Yeah, yeah. I think the point that is meant to be taken here, at least part of it, is that we are created in the image of God and we are created to be relational. Even beyond that, there’s more being said here, but I want to at least get that 60,000 foot view there, because whether you’re married or single, it doesn’t matter. You need other people in your life. Guess what? They need you in their life as well. Yeah, I think that is really important for us to know here, especially again, when we’re asking the big questions, does my life have any meaning? Does anybody really care? Am I ever going to know what it means to love somebody?
There’s so many people out there waiting to be loved. There’s so many people waiting to be loved. Let us not reduce love to just one particular expression of love, okay? It’s so much more. So whether you’re you’re married or single, we all know this, we’re just not meant to be alone. It’s true. We’ve experienced this over the last year, especially as the gathered people of God has been difficult, but the Lord has been working in spite of all of what’s going on in the world. The Lord’s been working even, yes, even through the internet and through our wonderful staff that have been able to put together these online worship services so that we can be together and that we can sing together, and the stories of families that are singing out loud in their living rooms together is just awesome.
I love hearing about that and roommates standing up and when the song comes on, all that sort of thing, or standing for the call of worship, whatever, like we do when we are gathered. I love to hear those stories, keep those stories coming our way, but because our culture has gotten so self-focused, as I said earlier, the further you get away from God’s original creation design on all of these things, the more you end up focusing on self and the less and less your soul flourishes because you weren’t designed to just turn in on self and be absorbed with the self. So this passage is also not only about companionship and friendship, but also about what the culture for centuries has called marriage, and it’s sort of the foundational passage for that as well.
Because our culture has shifted from a mimetic posture to a poetic posture, that is because we no longer see things as given to us as gifts, but we want to just take them. That is we no longer see ourselves as creatures who have a Creator, who has designed things a certain way and as has offered them to us as a gift a certain way. Now, we want to take the reins ourselves, much
like the the impudent child that is just constantly wanting me do it, me do it, me do it, I do it.
That’s the way we are in so much of life. Now, we’re doing that same kind of thing with what it means to be a human person or what it means to be in a most intimate kind of a relationship. So I want to talk about that just for a second if you’d permit me. Here’s God’s design for a sacred biblical covenant union. It includes at least this exclusive relationship. The way it’s described here is that in verse 24, “A man shall leave his father and his mother.”
So there’s a leaving one scenario and headed, focused in another direction. So leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife, and that cleaving is a permanent cleaving. Okay? So this is why we say when we do sacred biblical covenant unions, that this is for life, you see? That provides such a great sense of security and freedom and the opportunity to build trust, it doesn’t mean it’s always preserved, it doesn’t mean we get it right. As we all know, the marriage or the divorce rate is higher than it ought to be, but here is this model. Here is this design that God has made with a potential for procreation as a biological reality and a divinely designed norm. I know that exceptions exist in terms of whether you have both parents. I grew up in a single parent home. My father died when I was one.
I will tell you, I long to have known my biological father. I really wish I could have known, I wish I could have been shaped and molded and informed by him, and it’s by the grace of God though that I had a single mom who loved Jesus and loved me and my other brothers and has done such a great job to this day. So we see here, there is … in this relationship, there is an exclusive relationship. There’s a permanent sense to it. They cleave to one another. There’s a complementarity there. There’s a unity within a diversity, male and female with a potential for procreation, but there’s also that last verse, which I know may sound a little awkward in some of your households with the kids and all that sort of thing. Man and wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. What’s being said here is there’s a freedom of self forgetfulness in this relationship.
A freedom of self forgetfulness. Why? Because their love was perfect. It hasn’t been stained by sin at this point. It’s just a beautiful thing, and it speaks of the dignity and the equality of the male and the female together and that they were both made in the image of God, and that they are created beings brought together to share in the work that God has for them together. So they’re together and they’re fully together all the time and just unashamed to be together and to be seen for who they are. That’s a beautiful thing. That really is a treasure and a wonderful thing to be fully known and fully loved. This is, I think the desire of everyone’s heart, I think I can say that unequivocally, that every one of us has been sort of wired that way.
We long to be known and yet, at the same time, we’re kind of afraid because we’re fully known, we’re afraid we won’t be loved. Yet, here comes God saying, “I know you fully. I made you. I created you. I know you fully and I love you completely.” And in the personal work of Jesus, he’s expressed that so beautifully to each and every one of us, right? Well, what of the woman, what is to be said? I mean, there’s so much there. It is quite exciting. The old Puritan Matthew Henry said this,
“The woman was not made out of his head to top him, not 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.”
–Matthew Henry
I appreciate that so much, and I love … see that goes all the
way back to 17th century Puritan writings there, and this is the kind of stuff we need to get our hearts readjusted and see one another as created in the image of God. See one another as able to love and be loved.
Derek Kidner in his commentary on Genesis says,
“Stand here …”
and this is his kind of summary of chapter two. He’s kind of saying, “What if God said something just kind of like this as a summary statement, what would it be?” And Derek Kidner does a great job, as if God would say to us:
“Stand here, on this earth and in this present…”
(he means present moment)
“…to get the meaning of the whole. See this world as My gift and charge to you, with the sun, moon, and stars as its lamps and time keepers, and its creatures under your care. See the present age as the time to which My creative work was moving, and the unconscious aeons before it as ‘but a few days,’ like the years which Jacob gave for Rachel.”
–Derek Kidner, Genesis
That’s so good. We’ll get to the story of Jacob and Rachel in the coming months, coming weeks.
You’ll maybe get that quote a little bit more, but the whole idea is that you see yourself as being given this gift by God, of being a part of His creation, and your role in it is there. It’s right here, Genesis one and two. So I encourage you, read it, read it again. We are not, you are not some kind of cosmic accident. Your life has meaning and purpose, and it’s God who gave it to you, and it’s God who gave you the meaning and purpose as well. He described that, you were fearfully and wonderfully made as the psalmist would later say. God rested and God blessed it, His creation. We learned that the very first part of chapter two. We get to live in it and flourish in it by his design. We all need to live in it together for the praise and the glory of God.
(Edited for Reading)
