Sermon Tone Analysis

Genesis 2:18‑25

A Perfect Plan for a Perfect Marriage

 

The Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

So out of the ground the Lord God 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]

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here are two very practical and 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 that God made the man and looked at him; 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.

Then God created woman.

Neither beast nor man has rested since.

I suppose there are more jokes illustrating the war between the sexes, more humour about the marriage relationship, than about any other aspect of life.

I enjoy a good joke as much as anyone, but I wonder if the humour directed at marriage doesn’t mask a deep dissatisfaction, a sense of gnawing resentment at the imposition of what we construe to be a hopelessly outmoded institution.

Without question, marriage is under attack in our day, not least because professed Christians are ignorant of God’s will.

Marriage is obviously held in increasingly low esteem today.

It is not unusual for people in their thirties and forties to have been in multiple relationships, some formally recognised through wedding ceremonies and some more casual.

The youth of our nation are sexually experienced at increasingly earlier ages.

The event has become so commonplace that we are no longer shocked at twelve-year-old girls having babies.

One recent news article states that one in five middle school students have engaged in sex.[2]

The expectation that a bride—or that a groom—will be a virgin on their wedding night is increasingly remote.

Despite our contention that the Bible is authoritative for faith and practise, the statistics for Christians is not that much better than for outsiders.

We are forced to define marriage, as though it was some esoteric concept defying logic.

In fact when we compel our legislators to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman we are actually ridiculing the institution.

Nevertheless, I */am/* compelled to define marriage because of the insistence by social and judicial activists that it is proper—and even desirable that men can *marry* men and women can *marry* women.

The rise of the modern feminist movement exposed a battle between the sexes.

It is not merely that contemporary social currents have threatened the institution of marriage, but rather that such social foment finds its roots in human discontent and in the struggle for supremacy between the sexes.

Nowhere is this struggle more evident than in the marriage relationship.

Unfortunately, men have sometimes abused their responsibility as husbands.

If history provides any gauge, societies sometimes seemed to conspire to ensure that women are treated as chattel.

As a result, whether consciously or unconsciously, men did treat women as inferior and acted as though the opinions of their wives and daughters were of no value.

Men do seem to have assumed too frequently that they had the right to act like boars when it came to gender relations.

I am not saying that all men at all times adopted such attitudes, but it is apparent that such attitudes were often tolerated.

However, women, likewise, sometimes considered themselves superior to men and chafed under what seemed at times to be an unjust domination.

The whole of contemporary feminism has evolved until it is less an affirmation of women’s equality then it is an assault against males.

For the moment, the pendulum has swung to an extreme and the most oppressed group in western society is white males.

Before the law, males have few rights, and if the males happen to be of European descent they are considered guilty without need of a trial.

In a rush to prove our tolerance, even churches have embraced attitudes that condemn maleness and exalt femaleness.

Not only the nation, but entire denominations, have been feminised, with the result that characteristics that once defined manliness are ridiculed and censured.

As result of such social changes, marriage, also, is vulnerable to assault by increasingly radical groups who would redefine what God instituted.

In order to remind ourselves of the good gift of marriage that God gave to mankind, consider the first marriage.

Recall the events described in those early hours of the creation before man received a helper fit for him.

The account is provided in our text as God makes a woman.

Marriage According to God’s Plan — The key to understanding God’s ideal is found in the term /helper fit/ in *verses eighteen* and *twenty*.

The corollary to this thought is found in *verse twenty-four* when God declared that they shall become one flesh.

Bound up in the concept of a /helper fit/ and the concept of /one flesh/ is the key to God’s perfect plan for marriage.

Focus on these two thoughts as we explore the mind of God.

Helper fit [from the Hebrew *ēzer kenegdô*] seems to imply that the weight of responsibility to satisfy the man rested on the woman, as though she must be deemed suitable in his estimate.

The Hebrew, however, conveys no such thought.

The man actually had no say in accepting the woman, though he did speak his mind; the woman was created to make the man complete.

The term /helper fit /might more accurately be translated *a helper who is like him*.[3]

The emphasis lies in the thought of complementarity.

Children delight to pose riddles and we adults are 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*?

We adults will guess, *Half of an orange*?

*No*.

*Half of a basketball*?

*No*.

*Half of an Edam cheese*?  *No*!

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

You will mention everything round and orange coloured that you can think of until at last you say, *I give up*.

*What is most like half of the moon*?

The answer gaily comes back, *The other half of the moon*!

That is correct.

The thing most like half of the moon is the other half of the moon.

Just so, *what is most like a man*?

We answer, *a woman*.

*What is most like a woman*?

And the answer is, *a man*.

Men and women are different, but they are more alike than anything else in all creation.

Long live the differences, as the French say.

Long live the similarity, for the purpose of the sexes is to complement one another.

Among the animals there was not found /a suitable helper /for Adam, so God made a /suitable helper /for Adam, one which was adequate to his needs and who was also complementary.

The strength of this verb is seen in an example from Nehemiah’s account of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

Listen to *Nehemiah 12:8, 9*.

First Nehemiah names the Levites in charge of the songs of thanksgiving: /The Levites: Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel, Sherebiah, Judah, and Mattaniah, who with his brothers, was in charge of the songs of thanksgiving/.

Then he makes the notation that /Bakbukiah and Unni and their brothers stood opposite them in the service/.

Bakbukiah and Unni were associates of the Levites, complementing them in their service through supplementing their work.

A similar demonstration of the concept of complementarity is revealed in *Nehemiah 12:24*: the leaders of the Levites were Hashabiah, Sherebiah, Jeshua son of Kadmiel, and their colleagues, who stood opposite them to offer praise and thanks, one contingent corresponding to the other.[4]

The verb speaks of complementarity, and not of egalitarianism.

Contemporary theologians and social scientists seek equality in all things, but the Bible presents the concept of complementation, of mutual strengthening by the partners of the marriage.

We would suppose from the foregoing that marriage was meant to strengthen the partners, the man and the woman united in that bond.

Neither is necessarily weak alone, but together they are complementary, lending their strengths to each other that together they are stronger than they could be apart.

This would appear to be the meaning of the wise man’s statement that though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken [*Ecclesiastes 4:12*].

Ideally, marriage is to strengthen either party.

Ideally, man is to receive woman as God’s gift to complement him.

Likewise, woman is responsible to see that her role is in no small measure to lend her strength to her husband.