Sermon Tone Analysis

"The LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’

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.

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.

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.

And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

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.’

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

[1]

There are two very practical and very human views of the creation of man and woman.

One is the man’s view; the other is the woman’s view.

Are you ready?

The woman’s view of creation is first.

Woman’s view says that God made the man, looked at him, and then He said, “I can do better than that.”

So, He made the woman.

The man’s view states that God made the beasts and man, and then He rested.

After a while, God created woman.

Neither beast nor man has rested since.

Frankly, I relate jokes such as these with a degree of trepidation, because marriage is held in increasingly low esteem today; and even telling a joke can possibly be used to disparage commitment of a man to a woman and of a woman to a man.

There are a great number of jokes illustrating the war between the sexes.

I wonder if the humour directed at marriage actually masks a deep dissatisfaction, a gnawing resentment we moderns feel at the imposition of what we construe as a hopelessly outmoded institution.

If there is dissatisfaction with marriage, it likely arises out of ignorance of God’s design.

Marriage is not the invention of government; candidly, though one could possibly make a case for government intervention to regulate marriage, it is difficult to imagine that government has a role in defining marriage.

God performed the first wedding—He created the woman for the man and God brought her to the man.

Her purpose was to ensure that man was complete.

God’s assessment of the situation confronting the man He had just created should disturb every careful student of the Word.

God said, “It is not good.”

Coming after the repeated affirmation of goodness following each step of creation, such a negative assessment should startle the reader.

The reader has become used to benedictions at each stage of God’s work, and now there is pronounced a malediction—relatively speaking.

Light was pronounced “good” [GENESIS 1:4].

The earth, the seas and the land were all declared to be “good” by God [GENESIS 1:10].

Vegetation, which lends verdant hues to our world, was pronounced “good” [GENESIS 1:12].

The lights in the heavens—the sun, the moon and the stars—were affirmed as “good” [GENESIS 1:18].

Fish and fowl were confirmed as “good” when God reviewed His work through the fifth day [GENESIS 1:21].

Likewise, the animals, which would populate the land, were seen by God to be “good” [GENESIS 1:25].

In the final analysis the whole of Creation, working as God planned, was pronounced “very good” [GENESIS 1:31].

However, one aspect of God’s Creation brought a negative assessment, and that was man’s lack of one to make him complete—mankind was incomplete.

Out of God’s judgement concerning man’s incompleteness comes the one who is to be Adam’s wife and companion.

You will note that the passage continues with this pronouncement: “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.

And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” [GENESIS 2:21, 22].

Underscore in your mind that woman was made from man.

She was made for man.

She was given to man—the greatest of God’s gifts at the Creation.

We will learn that man named her.

COMPLEMENTARIAN, NOT EGALITARIAN — Despite what Pentagon officials contend, woman is not man’s equal.

However, it must be stated that neither is man woman’s equal.

The sexes are complementary—they strengthen one another and make each other complete through ensuring that the other is complete, all that the Creator intended.

Thus, the biblical position for the roles of male and female, husband and wife, is assuredly complementarian and not egalitarian.

This becomes evident when reviewing the biblical account of the creation of the woman.

Let’s refresh our memories so that none of us are left wondering how this all came about.

“The LORD God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air.

He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found” [GENESIS 2:19, 20 NET BIBLE].

Older translations have God recognising that for Adam there was no “help meet” for him.

In time, the two words merged in the popular mind to compose a new word, “helpmeet.”

There is no such word as “helpmeet” in the Bible.

Adam was bereft of a “help meet,” which is an older way of saying in the English tongue that for Adam where was no “helper fitted to” or “suited for” him.

After God stated His determination to make a helper suited to the man, the picture presented is as if God and the man stood side-by-side as the Creator caused the animals to pass before them.

As each passed, Adam named that particular animal.

From Aardvark to Zebra, the animals passed before him and Adam gave names to each one.

The naming was likely based upon the nature of the animal and their relationship to man.

The work of naming the animals as they paraded past was no arbitrary assignment of names; rather, it was a thoughtful statement of the nature of each animal.

The fact that we have dictionaries is evidence that Adam’s labour was definitive for mankind.

The words we employ reflect our understanding of the nature of all creation; and Adam began this work.

This need to assign a name on the basis of character is the essence of man’s unique nature expressed through the work God assigned in naming the animals.

Adam studied and categorised each animal.

As part of his study, Adam was to see if there was to be found within all God’s creation any creature complementary to him.

Man can enjoy the presence of a dog.

Man and dog can spend hours together and man can enjoy the companionship of that dog.

The dog can be taught to play games, providing for greater enjoyment still.

Nevertheless, the fellowship must be on the level of the dog because a dog can communicate only on a dog’s level.

If Adam was to have a companion, either it would be on the level of that which was decidedly inferior or God would be compelled to intervene.

There was to be found among all the creatures that God had made no other creature which was specially created by the hand of God and which bore the image of God.

What a blow to those blind individuals who insist upon the evolution of man!

That there are similarities between man and some of the animals is evident.

No one would question such similarities.

All animals breathe air and share in common basic metabolic features.

All animals move, interact with other animals and react to common stimuli.

The point of verses nineteen and twenty, however, is that the dissimilarities were even greater than were the similarities.

Although similar in some respects, none of the animals was like Adam.

Henry Morris, commenting on this particular passage, perceptively states: “It is abundantly clear and certain that he had not recently evolved from them!

If the latter were true, and his body were still essentially an ape’s body (or the body of whatever ‘hominid’ form may have been his immediate progenitor), it seems strange that he could have found nothing in common with either parents or siblings.

On this point, as on many others, the notion of human evolution confronts and contradicts the plain statements of Scripture.”

[2] Adam was unique in intelligence and in spirituality; there was no creature corresponding to him, nor was there one that could be said to make him complete.

Adam was no evolutionist.

We can say definitively that Adam was prepared for Eve; now, Eve was to be prepared for Adam.

God was prepared to make Eve as Adam’s ideal complement in this world.

The point is necessary, in part because the war of the sexes rages.

As a young man, when the feminist movement was just beginning, some women endeavoured to assert their independence of man.

At that time, they thought it was funny to say, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

To be certain, no woman needs a man; however, it is important to note that woman was made from man to ensure that man is complete.

Consequently, marriage permits a woman to fulfil her God-ordained role.

Children delight to pose riddles and we adults are equally delighted to listen to children’s recitation of riddles, in no small measure because their joy in stumping us is so delightful.

A child’s riddle asks the question, “What is most like half of the moon?” Adults will guess, “Half of an orange?” “No.” “Half of a basketball?” “No.” “Half of an Edam cheese?” “No!”

The obvious delight at the adult’s inability to correctly guess the answer is apparent in their reaction.