Genesis 2:4-25 - The Ordering Institution of Marriage

Introduction

I did some research last week, and the statistics vary, but everyone seems to agree that marriage (as an institution) is not doing well in America.

Since the 1970s and 80s, marriage rates have been on a steady decline (I’ve noted before that, in 1969, Ronald Reagan’s “No Fault Divorce” law in California was likely the first political domino that initiated a detrimental cascade effect on the definition and value of marriage in America). That 40-plus-year declining trend reversed slightly in 2022, but the rate is still less than half of what it was 50 years ago. This means (simply put) fewer adults are getting married.

One of every three adults in America have never been married.

Only about half of the adults in America are married now.

And those who do marry these days tend to be quite a bit older.

The median age of first-time married couples is 30 for men and 28 for women.

Instead of marriage, many adults are opting for a single life with multiple partners that come and go. But the majority still want something like marriage, so they cohabitate (they live together) – sometimes hoping for marriage (usually the girl), and sometimes trying to avoid marriage altogether (usually the boy).

Three in five adults (ages 18-44) have lived with an unmarried partner.

Today, about half of the adult population in America believes that cohabitation is an intentional step toward engagement and marriage.

In other words, they plan to live together to try out the relationship before making any commitments.

And in 2021, three in four marriages were preceded by cohabitation.

It is reasonable to ask a sociological question here: “Is the decline of marriage (as an institution) good or bad for a society?”

This sort of question (as pure sociology) is one we could answer by more statistical analysis. “During this time of marital decline, how is everyone doing?”

Are adults generally living more stable and fulfilling lives?

Are children generally growing up with more emotional, mental, physical, and social wellness?

How are some of our other societal institutions doing (like government, or our education or economic systems)?

Are they improving in this changing environment?

In other words, how is the instability of the American family contributing to the well-being or to the detriment of adults, children, and society as a whole?

I think any honest observer has to say that American society is not well. It is increasingly unstable and chaotic and fractured.

If we move away from subjective measurements and turn to concrete teaching and instruction from the Bible, we can answer the question – “Is the decline of marriage (as an institution) good or bad for a society?” – with even more certainty.

No, the decline of marriage is not good for any society. In fact, marriage is the basic or fundamental institution of society. It is the normal passage from childhood to adulthood. And marriage is the shaping environment for proper masculine and feminine expression. So, any decline in marriage as an institution is going to lead to all sorts of disaster in the society at large.

I’m not saying that improved marriage statistics will solve all of the problems we are facing in our flailing and untethered culture, but I am saying that any society that intends to survive must attend to, must honor, must uphold the dignity and value of marriage. Indeed, this is the way God has designed it.

Today we are continuing our topical series on the Well-Ordered Life.

So far (on the first Sunday of each month this year), we’ve focused on God’s intention for people to live a life of wisdom (and not of folly). We’ve noted that the beginning of the well-ordered life is conversion (when sinners turn from disorder and disobedience and unbelief toward order and obedience and belief – in Christ and in His word). And we’ve also considered various ways that believers (i.e., Christians) ought to order their lives around personal disciplines, which conform us more and more to the sort of people God has intended us to be.

There’s a sense in which all that we’ve talked about so far is primarily aimed at the individual – I must commit myself to a life of wisdom, I must hear and believe the gospel (i.e., turn away from sin, and trust and follow Jesus), and I must make a strong and intentional effort to align myself with the way God has instructed me to live.

Today, we are turning from our focus on the individual and toward a focus on an ordered life in relationship with others. We cannot live (at least not very well and not for very long) as isolated individuals. Therefore, we must not think of a well-ordered life in the way many social media influencers, sales commercials, and on-screen dramas try to sell us – as self-indulgent and autonomous independence.

As a matter of fact, our lives are designed (by God) to progress through various experiences with others that create and form the growth (toward maturity, wisdom, and order) in which we are intended to participate.

Friends, we live in God’s world, and we are God’s created things; therefore, we are going to do well only insofar as we live according to God’s design for us. And one of the main ways God has intended boys and girls to grow up into manhood and womanhood is marriage… one of the main ways God has intended societies to flourish is by building and maintaining strong and orderly marriages.

Whether we are young and just beginning our run along life’s path, or if we are nearer to the finish line, we all have a stake in striving for the improvement of marriage as an institution – in our own lives and in the lives of others around us.

Let’s begin by looking at God’s creation of marriage, and let’s consider together what good implications there is for all who live according to God’s instructions and design.

Will you stand with me as I read our main passage for today – Genesis 2:4-25?

Scripture Reading

Genesis 2:4–25 (ESV)

4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

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

19 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. 20 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.

21 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. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

23 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.”

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

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

Main Idea:

Marriage, as God established it, is the fundamental institution of society, the normal passage from childhood to adulthood, and the shaping environment for proper masculine and feminine expression.

Sermon

1. The Fundamental Institution

At first glance, Genesis 2 (especially v18-25) sure does look like a traditional Christian wedding ceremony.

God Himself “brings” the wife-to-be to the groom (v22).

This seems like a giving away of the bride.

The bride is received by the groom with words of affirmation (v23).

The bride takes her name from the groom (v23).

God Himself pronounces the bride and groom as having become “one” where once there were “two” (v24).

God informs the reader that the newly married couple were utterly exposed to each other (i.e., naked), and neither was “ashamed” (v25).

And God uses this single ceremony to establish a “leaving” and “cleaving” (KJV) for all future generations (v24).

And we can know that this passage was certainly intended to be a sort of wedding ceremony because of the references to it elsewhere in the Bible.

Some OT scholars asked Jesus (during His earthy ministry) if divorce was allowable or legal (according to God’s law), and Jesus pointed to Genesis 2 in order to ground His answer. He said, “from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’” (Mk. 10:6-9).

We can see at least a couple of things in Jesus’s reasoning:

Jesus thinks Genesis 2 lays a foundation for the institution of marriage.

And Jesus believes that Genesis 2 is still prescriptive and binding on how marriage is to be defined and practiced.

More evidence could be provided here, but clearly, the Bible claims that God instituted marriage in Genesis 2! And since that’s true, we are right to ask: “What does Genesis 2 tell us about God’s definition and intention for marriage?” Let me point out two things.

First, we can see that God is the sovereign, ruler, and presiding judge over it.

God initiates the first marriage. God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (v18).

God orders marriage as He intends. The man and the woman are the same in substance – Adam says, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (v23). But the man and the woman are distinct in their positional order – Adam says, “she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (v23)

God commissions marriage as the basic or fundamental institution of all future generations and societies. God says (in v24), “a man shall leave his father and his mother” (i.e., his existing family unit) “and [he shall] hold fast [or “cleave”] to his wife” (i.e., a man and his wife will form a new family unit).

Friends, this is why historic Christian weddings have very often been conducted or officiated by a pastor or minister – representing God’s authority over it.

A man and woman do initiate their own particular marriage in our culture (they decide to marry), but they are not the initiators of the institution itself. If a couple decides to marry, they are placing themselves within an institution that transcends their own union. Marriage (as a thing) is bigger than their marriage.

Second, we see that God creates an orderly and complementary relationship.

The man is taking responsibility for the care and leadership of the woman (v22-23). This is a passing of responsibility (including love, care, protection, provision, leadership, and more) from one party to another… and this is where we get the practice of the father giving away the bride.

So too, the woman is created and “brought” to the man as a “helper” or “helpmate” who is “fit” or “suitable” for him (v18, 22). This is why traditional marriage vows include distinct promises for the bride and groom.

He (the groom) promises to “take thee… to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us depart…” And she (the bride) promises all the same things, but she additionally promises to “cherish and to obey, till death us depart…”

Furthermore (in Gen. 2), the man names the woman, not the other way around (v23). The man names her “Woman” here (v23), and he names her “Eve” later on (Gen. 3:20).

This is why (traditionally) the wife takes the last name of her husband – not because she is lesser than him, but because she is coming under his leadership, his love, and his responsibility… the two are forming a new family unit, and it is to be ordered under the leadership of a new head.

Friends, Genesis 2 (and the many references and allusions to this episode throughout the Bible) gives us a prescription for marriage and for the ceremony that establishes it. Here, we learn what marriage is – an orderly and committed union of a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation and stable societal advancement.

Marriage is how one family becomes multiple families – a boy and a girl leave their previous status (as children) behind, and they become a husband and wife, forming a new distinct family unit.

Marriage is how multiple families order themselves in broader society – this man is responsible to love and to lead and to provide for and to protect this woman (not every woman), and this woman is responsible to love and to respect and to submit to this man (not every man).

There may be all sorts of responsibilities that we might pick up in the world around us, but this (brothers and sisters) is our fundamental priority. We are to honor our own marriage. We are to take up the responsibilities of husbanding and wifing in our own families. And we would do well to urge others around us to do the same.

It is a broken society indeed, wherein vulnerable women are the playthings of cunning men, wherein capable men bear responsibility for all needy women, wherein many men and women largely remain disconnected as individuals, as consumers, as political voters, as a rabble to be placated… rather than families to be respected and encouraged – the very basis of civil stability and progress.

Friends, we can strive for better.

If you’re married, then let’s re-commit ourselves to form and foster the sort of marriage that God has designed. Let’s remember the vows we’ve made, and let’s make good on them (as best as we are able). We can tell our spouse that we know what God has instructed for marriage, and we can make it clear that we intend to do our part to be the husband or the wife God has called us to be.

If you’re young and not yet married, then commit yourself to being the sort of man or woman who is preparing for marriage. Be the kind of man a wife can learn to depend on. Be the kind of woman who is eager to help a husband. Look to those around you who are doing this well, and aim to be like them.

So much more could be said about what marriage is (as God has established it), but let’s now turn our attention to the way in which marriage itself contributes to our progress toward a well-ordered life – as a rite of passage into adulthood and as an environment in which manhood and womanhood are shaped for the better.

2. A Rite of Passage

Boys become men, and girls become women, when they commit themselves to marriage, and they begin to act on that commitment… and when singles commit themselves to follow the good example of those do get married.

It is now common in our culture for young people to be encouraged to become adults by way of vocation or career or by way of financial stability or by some other marker of personal accomplishment. Marriage (and family) is something you do after you’ve already created the sort of life you want to invite someone else into.

This pattern and expectation (it seems to me) tends to instill a sense of wrong-headed ambition in some young people and a sense of confused demoralization in others. Young people who prioritize career and wealth aren’t particularly interested in the constraints and responsibilities of a family by the time they get a taste of worldly success. And many young people (especially young men) are aimlessly wasting their time because they don’t see a clear path forward toward becoming the sort of man who can provide for a wife and kids at 25 years old in our economy.

I bet if you ask most of the married couples in here today what their career and bank accounts looked like when they first got married, you’d discover that a bunch of us had little idea about how we were going to make it.

For my own part, when Cassie and I first got married, we lived on $1,500 a month. And when she got pregnant with Micah (to our great surprise), we were all the more strapped for cash. But we worked it out, and God provided for us.

And it was the experiences of married life and parenting that God used to grow us up. Truth be told, we are still experiencing that today – growing in maturity (in manhood and womanhood) as we experience the ups and downs of married life, as we feel the growing weight of adult responsibilities, and as we grieve our failures and thank God for our successes.

So many younger people seem to look at stable and thriving older people and think, “I want what you’ve got!” But they don’t realize that the older people around them – those who have stable marriages and good resources – they got what they have by taking risks and by prioritizing marriage and family (not career or finances).

Now, I’m not arguing for careless decisions about our vocation and resources. I think we should prioritize honest work, frugal spending, and wise investments of our time and money. And we should not think that any decent young woman will want to marry a young man who is not at least a little ambitious to work and provide.

However, the biblical and traditional pattern of maturity does not set marriage off to the side as a tangential or subsequent feature of adulthood – as though a young person is to become mature in order to get married. No, the biblical and traditional path (dare I say the normal way) that boys become men and girls become women is by getting married and starting their own families (regardless of what career or wealth they might have) – this is (in a sense) the very doorway and path toward maturity.

I’m not saying that singles cannot be adults, but I am saying that marriage is the norm… and we ought not shy away from boldly stating the rule just because there are some exceptions. Let me point out some biblical examples.

Right here in our main passage, the pattern is established – “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). A boy and a girl become a man and a woman (in marriage), and they strike out to create something new together. And we see this pattern repeated several times at the beginning of the biblical storyline. Boy becomes patriarch of a new family; and girl becomes wife of new patriarch.

Abraham left his uncle’s household with his wife (Sarah) before he had any land or established stability (Gen. 11:31). It was with Sarah that Abraham built a new life with “all [the] possessions” they could “gather” (Gen. 12:5).

When it came time for Isaac (Abraham’s son) to break out on his own (leaving the provision of his father’s household), Abraham sent his servant to “take a wife for my son Isaac” (Gen. 24:4). It was with Rebekah that Isaac began a new life, carrying forward the pattern Abraham had set before him.

Then Isaac (following his father’s pattern) did the same with his own son, Jacob. Now, Jacob’s start into manhood was complicated by the shenanigans of Laban (the father of the bride Jacob wanted for his own), but the same general pattern remained – Jacob was under the provision and authority of another man until he took his own wife (Rachel) and struck out to build a new life with her.

Fast-forward about 500 years, and we see the same pattern with Moses. Many of you know the story. Moses was born to a Hebrew mother, but he was adopted and raised in the household of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Then (as an adult) Moses fled Egypt (after having killed an Egyptian guard for abusing a Hebrew slave), and he came under the provision and authority of Ruel (or Jethro) for a while (Ex. 2:11-22). It was only after Moses took a wife (Zipporah) that he began to build a new life and household with her.

Outside of the Bible, pointing to our typical experience today, it’s not 30- and 40-something-singles who are usually the ones living well, entering stable marriages, and contributing to the well-being of our society. Sure, some of them are making decent money, and a lot of them are posting their best selfies on social media… but what legacy are they leaving behind? How are they investing in the most meaningful aspects of life under the sun (family, community, discipling the next generation)?

In my experience, the young men and women who are living well, who are maturing in manhood and womanhood, who are contributing to the well-being and advancement of American society are 20- and 30-something married couples.

Of course, these aren’t always the wealthiest people (in many cases they live quite small). And they don’t avoid difficult seasons of marriage (I don’t know any marriage that does). But 20 and 30 years from now, it’s going to be (largely) those married couples and the families they build that will display the most stability and maturity and good biblical order… and even now they are contributing to such things for the rest of us.

Brothers and sisters, if you’re a young (or youngish) married couple, and you’re feeling like you’re barely making it, then please hang in there! We need you! We need you to keep on growing and to keep on prioritizing the fundamental institution of any society – marriage and family. God is growing you (as men and women) through the very challenges you are facing as husband and wife.

In the Minter house, we have our share of messes, but we don’t especially like to clean up those that can be avoided. However, Cass and I know that our sons will never learn to pour their own milk or make their own snack if we don’t let them try to do it themselves… whatever messes may come.

I think there’s a similar dynamic at play in the way a lot of older Christian parents think about their kids getting out there and making a life of their own. Many of us tend to want our kids to have all the structures in place before they walk out there and stand on their own two feet.

But (as I see the biblical pattern, and as I understand the traditional practice) it is precisely the experience of establishing and building a God-honoring marriage that transforms boys to men and girls to women – the risky and difficult path is the very means by which God has designed our progress toward maturity.

So many young people in our society don’t know what to do with themselves, and they are being told from every direction that what they need is independence and risk-avoidance. But the biblical path toward the well-ordered life travels right through the hills and valleys of responsibility and commitment.

If you’re young and single, I think you ought to get married sooner than later. If you’re young and married, I think you ought to begin raising children sooner than later. You’ll be surprised by just how much God uses these experiences to form you into the men and women God has intended you to be… and you’ll be able to feel the sense of contentment and joy that comes when we (as God’s created things) live as we were designed to do.

3. A Shaping Environment

Everything I’ve said so far was largely uncontroversial in our culture until about 15-20 years ago. Many Americans did not live up to what they believed was right, but most agreed that marriage is an institution to be valued and defined basically as I’ve described it today. Remember that it was the Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 – a law that defined marriage between one man and one woman. Many young people also admitted that it was their ambition to get married and to have children… even though they didn’t always do that so well.

I am aware that what I’m saying this morning is completely out of step with our current culture today, but this does not hinder me in the least. I will simply point to those folks who are living in keeping with what I’m saying and compare them with the folks who hate what I am saying. Anyone can see that traditional biblical marriage and the ambition of young people to opt into this institution is far better than any alternative lifestyle.

But this last point of my sermon today is even more controversial today. Our culture has largely embraced the idea that gender is distinct from biological sex (even though there is a little evidence of pushback on at least some of the implications of this idea). And our culture generally loathes the notion that men and women are actually designed by God for distinct roles (i.e., they are each better suited for different ambitions and activities).

And yet, I am still unhindered by this opposition. In fact, I am all the more provoked to boldness in what I am about to say. It is my conviction that Christian living is becoming (and will become) more interesting and more appealing to non-Christians who are beginning to realize that the pagan and superficial and irrational ideologies of our present society simply do not work.

Men and women are not the same, and the environment in which this is most evident is marriage and family. Part of my argument today is that masculinity and femininity are formed or shaped in the environment of a biblically ordered marriage.

How does a girl normally learn what womanhood is supposed to look like? Isn’t she supposed to watch her mother (and other good mothers around her)? Isn’t she supposed to observe how good mothers speak to their husbands, how good mothers nurture their children, and how good mothers employ their God-given and God-designed femininity to build a marriage and a family?

And how does a boy normally learn what manhood is supposed to look like? Isn’t he supposed to watch his father (and other good fathers around him)? Isn’t he supposed to observe how good fathers lead their wives, how good fathers discipline their children, and how good fathers employ their God-given and God-designed masculinity to build a marriage and a family?

Both men and women can work all sorts of jobs out in the world. Both men and women can perform many tasks with basically the same amount of energy and thoughtfulness. But only a woman can be a wife, and only a man can be a husband. Only a woman can be a mother, and only a man can be a father.

Now, I’m not saying that single men and single women cannot grow in biblical masculinity or femininity. Marriage is not a requirement in our lives – no one is necessarily sinning if they don’t get married, and no one is precluded from adulthood who never marries.

But single adults ought to be the exception to the rule. And even those single adults must look to married men and women around them in order to understand and to live in keeping with what God has intended distinctly for men and for women.

Manhood and womanhood are not displayed primarily in the caricatures we see in our culture today. The best women are not sensual icons or independent heroines. And the measure of womanhood is not how well she can speak and think and act like a man. Gloria Steinem and Irina Dunn were both wrong when they popularized the saying, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” And the feminist movements over the last century have led to the disillusionment and pain of women everywhere.

So too, the best men are not barbarians or feminists. The Andrew Tate’s of the world and those feminized men who make it their public goal to place masculine responsibilities on the narrow shoulders of women are absolutely wrong. The measure of manhood is not being “Wild at Heart” or prolonging the impulses of boyhood – like Peter Pan, living in Never Never Land, where imagination and childish games are the highest form of enjoyment.

Consider the teaching we see in Titus 2. The Apostle Paul says, “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:2-6).

Note the emphasis here on self-control, and how the distinct responsibilities of men and women seem to be connected with family life. This is no coincidence.

In his forward to a book called “The Masculine Mandate,” the Tyler, TX, native Jerry Bridges wrote, “the humble working man, toiling faithfully at his job, nurturing and shepherding his wife, and seeking to bring up his children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, conforms to God's picture of a real man. He may indeed be a hunter and fisherman, he may be capable of building his own house, or he may even be a John Wayne hero type. But those abilities and character traits are at best secondary to the basic roles of diligent worker and faithful and caring husband and father.”

Something similar might be said of womanhood. The humble and industrious woman, toiling faithfully as a wife and mother, respecting and honoring her husband, and seeking to raise her children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, conforms to God’s picture of a real woman. She may indeed be an accomplished intellectual or socialite, she may be capable of running a company, or she may even be a heroine of some sort. But those abilities and character traits are at best secondary to the basic roles of diligent mother and faithful and caring wife.

Conclusion

Friends, it is my argument today that marriage (and family, if God should so bless a couple with children) is the environment where masculinity and femininity is shaped for the better. I’m arguing that marriage is actually the normal and God-intended training ground where boys become men and girls become women. I’m arguing that God established marriage as the fundamental institution of society – it’s the necessary relationship upon which all other male-female interaction in the world should be built.

When we prioritize marriage (over worldly ambitions), we are better able to see just how much men and women complement each other, how much we need each other, and how much we depend upon each other to be distinctly male or female.

When we prioritize marriage (the orderly and structured relationship for which God created us as male and female), we become the men and women God intends us to be. Boys are forged into men, and girls are transformed into women.

If we want to live a well-ordered life, a life of wisdom, a life of Christ-likeness, a life of growing maturity, in the way that God has instructed and designed us to live, then we must honor marriage, most of us should get married, most of us should have children, and we should embrace our distinct masculinity and femininity… striving to be conformed to the biblical prescription for us as unique Christian men and women.

May God help us.