And It Was Good Part 2
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Genesis 2
Genesis 2
MI: God’s design for relationships was good.
Me: Wired for relationships
I find myself to be a pretty extroverted person.
I love being with people.
They energize me.
We: Questions for Extraverts vs introverts:
Now I know not everyone falls into this camp some of us would rather be alone and people are exhausting.
I understand that— I may not get it but I understand that.
And you may not know if you are or if you are not and I thought it would be fun to just ask you a couple of question about this:
2. Being around people makes me feel...
Like I'm alive!
Inspired. I feed off of others' energy but there are times when I'd rather be alone.
A bit exhausted. Being around others can be draining.
3. When given a choice between working as part of a team or working as a group, I would prefer to...
Work with as many people as possible.
Work as part of a small group.
Work by myself.
4. What's your idea of the perfect date?
A live concert in Central Park.
Dinner and a Broadway show.
Netflix and a cup of hot coco
5. During parties or social gatherings, I tend to...
Talk to as many people as I can. I've been called a social butterfly.
Spend time with a few people that I know. It's about quality not quantity.
Keep to myself. You can find me by the punch bowl.
6. When I'm dealing with a personal problem, I prefer to...
Talk about it with others and enlist their help.
Call my closest friend and discuss on the phone.
Solve it on my own. I tend to be more private.
7. On the topic of public speaking...
I enjoy it. All eyes on me!
It's not my strongest suit but I'll do it if I have to.
I get super nervous. I'd rather write 5 research papers first.
8. People describe you as thoughtful, reserved, and soft-spoken.
Never, I am a very talkative person.
Sometimes, but I can also be quite talkative with my inner circle.
All the time, I am a very quiet and mellow person.
9. I enjoy meeting new people.
Yes, I can make a friend at the super market.
Sometimes, but I have to be in the right mood.
It's very hard to meet new people.
10. How to do you prefer to communicate?
In person. Tell me to my face.
Call me first then we'll meet up if you need to elaborate.
Can't you just text or email me? Who calls people these days?
I hope you found those fun and here’s the deal— no matter where you line up— every one likes to have people in their lives.
Why— Because we are relational people.
Two weeks we talked about creation and how God created everything good.
If you can recall we heard this phrase over and over again.
It was good, and it was good and it was good, and it was very good.
Meaning that God created good.
What he made and what he designed was all good.
Nothing was out of place.
It was perfect.
and Chapter one ends with the creation on man which God calls very good.
and as we open up and look at chapter two we read about God resting.
But then it jumps back a bit.
It almost focuses on day 6.
That day God created man.
It is like Moses, the author— is peeling back the curtain on what happened on day 6.
And we see man and women created.
And chapter 2 ends with the idea that marriage is foundational to God’s design, much like creation as well.
As in God’s design for relationships was good.
And God’s design for relationships came down to this action of leaving mom and dad and two people male and female coming together to become one.
I am not here to put marriage on a pedestal tonight.
As in marriage is some idol that needs to be chased.
But I want us to look at the story of creation and the story of when God created man and woman and see what the original design was.
Something I am not going to cover tonight is singleness.
As in those who maybe haven’t found a spouse yet.
Nor Am I going to discredit singleness, Paul has so much to say about this in the New Testament and we will cover this at snowblast as well.—
But we currently live in a world where marriage is being dismiss and viewed poorly.
I don’t think we should shy away from God’s truth because it may not be inclusive.
Because at the beginning of creation we can see God’s design for relationships and it was good.
As we begin we cannot over look the desire to be relational.
God: God provided for man a partner.
As we open up to Genesis 2 let’s read and then we will break this down.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
So right away we are hit with the Lord saying “It is not good for man to be alone.— I will make a helper fit for him.”
Recall everything was good up to this point.
Day one light- It was Good
Day four- Animals- It was good.
But now we get into this conversation that God is having, most likely to Himself— as in the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit.
And he says its not good.
Out of the perfect creation and how everything has come to be— we are now faced with something not food.
And this does not mean that God’s creation is not good— nor that even man is not good— but this is an issue with man being alone.
There was a problem if you will.
Man was currently alone.
I think there are times where God knows the solution as he is all knowing.
He knew what he was going to do.
But before he did— he gave Adam a job.
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.
Adam names all the animals.
And you may be asking for what purpose— The purpose was to find a helper.
But there was none.
We all know people would have like 12 cats and they say that they are enough for them— but this shows us that animals are not suitable partners for us.
I mean Adam had lions, and bears and elephants that he could have rode around.
I mean the t-rex Adam could have rode on that.
But those animals were not suitable partners for Adam.
God knew this— but I get the sense that God did this— so Adam would never wonder if there was something else for him out there.
Maybe God did this to show Adam that no current piece of creation will be a partner for you— Only what I can give you will be enough.
And here’s the deal— Only God knows what is best for you.
There may be things that are good for you but God knows what is best for you.
I mean Adam had all the animals he could have wanted— but nothing satisfied him.
Everything left him empty.
Think about the things we do that may not be hurtful but are they satisfying?
Sports, video games, school, church— none of those are bad things— we may even say those are good things but when it takes our attention off what God has for us, we tend to settle for less.
So here is what God does:
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.”
In order to do this— God places Adam into a deep sleep.
And he takes out a rib from Adam in order to create women.
God creates a women to a be a suitor for Adam.
He creates Adam’s opposite.
I think it is important to understand what God did not create in this moment.
God did not create another dude for Adam to bro out with.
What man needed was not more bro time.
Man needed a partner.
And He did not create another man for Adam to have sex with— because that would defeat the purpose of multiplying as that is impossible.
This needs to be said here.
While I understand that there are those who are single who do not have a spouse— they may be missing out on the marriage piece but community with one another will still trump anything else this world has to offer.
But at the beginning it was God who gave man, woman.
To be HIs partner.
I love this part of the passage because up to this point in Genesis.
Since the beginning of the world.
We have only had the Lord speaking.
But now As God give Adam the woman he states, at last!
Like this is it.
This is my partner.
This is one that is suitable for me.
This is one of my own kind.
Flesh of my flesh/ bone of my bone.
I have often wondered why a rib— and Matthew Henry is an old theologian who said this:
The New Bible Commentary 2:4–3:24 The Garden of Eden
Matthew Henry commented on God’s choice of a rib to create Eve, ‘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 beloved.’ Perhaps this reads a little too much into the rib, but it expresses well the biblical ideal of marriage.
It is possible that this looks too much into the rib being taken and we may not know why God took the rib and not some other part of Adam—
but we must understand that there is some significance as to why it was a rib.
And I like Henry’s comment.
For far to long— men have tried to rule over woman— and woman have tried to rule over their man.
And from the rib there is this equal side of things that shows that woman was a suitable partner for Adam.
And we understand that there is still an order as a husband is still over his Wife— because we see Adam name the new creation woman.
He calls he woman and later would call her Eve.
It shows that there is some sort of order to God’s creation.
But this is not to be done in a domineering way but is done with unity, protection and love in mind.
This was the design.
And with this in mind look at what is said after this.
And then we hit the last verses which says:
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.
This is a model for marriage.
It involves two things
A leaving, and an uniting,
As Moses is writing, he is saying— this is why a man needs to leave his household.
Marriage involves a new pledge.
One that requires all of you and all of your spouse.
You become each others family.
Your obligation are not to mom and dad anymore— they are to your spouse.
And when the passage says to leave it means to leave cut out the family and cling to your spouse.
This is common language when it comes to dealing with a covenant.
Which is what marriage is.
In marriage not only do you leave but you also unite.
While you may leave your family— this does not mean that you are independent.
No.
This means that you just become dependent on each other.
You are responsible for one another.
The two become one flesh.
This was the design for the relationship between man and woman.
And become everything was perfect and right— that last verse we will get more into next week— but it is important that we understand that we were intended to be naked together.
Strange of course it is to us.
But to Adam and Eve they knew nothing different.
They were naked and not ashamed.
This is chapter two of Genesis.
It shows the intention of relationships was good.
It was set.
You had God and Man and Man and woman.
United.
Everything was good.
You:
Here is why we are talking about this.
Marriage is something that does not get as much attention as it should.
But as we read chapter 2 of Genesis we see that this is foundational.
I hope that we can all see this.
That marriage set up the building block of relationships.
God wired us to want communion with one another.
Not only that— but there was desire by Adam to found a partner.
One that he could be fruitful with and multiply.
And there was nothing for Him, But God had a plan and He made a way.
I know we may not all come from homes where marriage is seen as good.
Some of us have been hurt by this, some of us feel the hurt of broken marriages and we some of us hear the words spoken negatively about marriage.
But it was intended for God.
And it can be good.
Marriage is awesome.
I love being married to Brittni.
There is something foundational that gets to the heart of creation, that we cannot minimize.
I’m not saying that everyone here needs to go get married tomorrow.
NO!
That would be horrible— because you’re not ready for that.
But someday I hope that is your future.
But mostly tonight I want us to wrestle with God creation and his design for relationships.
You see God did all of this to create a world that was good.
It was meant to be good forever and ever.
But something changed.
And next week we are going to see this beautiful world that was created become broken.
And the relationship between man and woman comes contentious.
And we will see the relationship between man and God become fractured.
Us:
What I want us to leave here with today and what I want us to carry into snowblast is this view of marriage as a great thing.
Something that God set up at the beginning of the world for good.
Just because we may have a bad taste of marriage— our experiences do not trump God’s intent.
And marriage was so foundational to creation that we cannot overlook this.
It was why woman was give to man— for the purpose of marriage.
One partner for life that was the intention.
And I know that some of us come from broken homes and some of us have step-parents.
I am not discrediting those things— All I want is to show you what God wanted in the very beginning.
Man and woman forever.
United together.
Unashamed and dependent on each other.
My question for you tonight— is how do you view marriage?
What are your thoughts on marriage?
Is this something you want to do?
What have been some positive marriages that you have witnesses in your life?
Everything in Eden is good right now, come back next week to see how things changed and how sin ruined it all.
Let’s pray.
This series is designed as a primer for Snowblast.
We are going to get into chapter three next week and then at snowblast we are going to go deeper in our discussions to talk about dating, singleness, marriage, security, and what makes our heart beat.
If you haven’t signed up for snowblast yet!
DO IT!
If you are thinking— Zach, I can’t afford this trip— That is nonsense— you just haven’t talked to me yet.
We have ways to get you on this trip!
Just come and talk with me!
Alright head to breakout and know that you are loved.
