I Do

Everybody wants to find “the one.” It's no secret in this culture that the pursuit of romance will find its way into your life eventually. It all begins when you realize that you’re alone.

Maybe it was that romantic comedy that came on while you were walking through a room and you stopped for a second to watch an on-screen romance begin. Or maybe it was when your friends started dating and then spammed your Instagram feed with pictures of holding hands.

At some point in our lives, we all come to this unsettling conclusion: I’m alone, and maybe there’s someone out there for me. Which brings up this question: Is there anything wrong with feeling that way? Should you feel wrong for wanting to have someone in your life?

Let's go back to the beginning of mankind, in Genesis before sin entered the picture. In , God creates Adam, and God makes this really profound statement about Adam’s well-being:

— Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." (ESV)

Genesis 2:18 ESV

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 God is already acknowledging that this creation is incomplete. Man is alone, and it's not good!

I want you to really understand the impact behind this. So far, all of creation is perfect. Everything that God has done, He’s reflected back and said, “This is good.” Yet this is the one point in all of creation where God pauses and announces, “This is not good.”

I don’t think the Creator of the universe forgot to add an ingredient to the creation cake. I think God is announcing to the reader, “I created something beautiful, and I want you to see its purpose.” This is a spiritual stop sign in the creation story, where God is making us pause to see something that we tend to glaze over. It is not good that we’re alone. God purposely wired this ache in our hearts that makes us wonder if there is something more. It's good for us to realize that it's not good to be alone. Why? Because God wants you to desire what He’s created for you.

God doesn’t really announce this to Adam, though. He doesn’t give Adam a mission to go find "the one." Instead, He gives Adam this task of observing creation and naming the animals. God brings every animal to Adam, and Adam names them one at a time. Just imagine this: God the Father marches a lion and its lioness up to Adam, then a peacock and its mate, and so on and so on. Then Adam starts to feel this ache in his heart…

— 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.

Genesis 2:20 ESV

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.

Genesis 2:20 ESV

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 has come to fully understand that there is something that’s missing. He’s alone and it's not good. He feels the feeling that you and me have experienced countless times. It's that feeling that keeps you up at night wondering if you’ll ever meet the right person. It's that hunger that makes you scan the faces of strangers searching for that person who might make you feel complete. And then God decides to unveil the finale of all creation. He makes the woman … God puts Adam in a deep sleep, takes out his rib, and He crafts this woman. When God walks Eve in front of Adam, this is his response:

— "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."

Genesis 2:23 ESV

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.”

Can you see the excitement in Adam’s exclamation? She is what was missing! This is what I’ve been wanting all along.

I don’t know about you, but I get jealous when I read this story of Adam and Eve. Adam’s wife was created just for him. Me and you, however, have to go on this weird search to try to find the one. Adam fell asleep, and God created the perfect spouse out of his rib. We go on a series of awkward dates and roll the dice on love. I am so jealous of Adam’s situation.

If you’ve felt like something is missing in your life, then you know about the pursuit. The pursuit is this mad dash, where we chase after love. It's this ongoing quest where we seek after the one who we feel will complete us. I think we can all recognize the pursuit in some shape or form. Unfortunately, our culture has recognized it as well, and the media has made a fortune on it.

Magazines tell women how to look more attractive to make their dream guys fall in love with them.

Guys are fed pornographic lies that women are objects to be used.

Romantic movies let us know that if we could just find the right “one,” then everything will be alright, and we’ll live happily ever after.

Shows like The Bachelor and Bachelorette have turned the pursuit into a game, where a house full of potentials compete for your love. And when one person finally wins that person’s attention, they are forced to ignore the fact that they just shared that person’s heart with 20 other people in the course of a couple of months.

We can feel the pursuit’s full effects when we actually start dating someone. It's like our brains turn to mush, and slowly we start changing little pieces of who we are to make that person like us more. We try new things, we get out of our comfort zone, and we enter into this euphoric sense of love as we chase after acceptance and belonging.

But then something happens in the pursuit. The honeymoon stage dies and we start seeing more flaws in the person we’re dating. The cute little things they do start to annoy you, you become more tired than energized, and you start to notice that this person doesn’t seem to complete you anymore. The chase becomes a staggering walk and the pursuit ends. And then you find a new person to pursue, and you lather-rinse-repeat the whole process. Instead of pursuing the “one” we end up pursuing the many, in hopes that we’ll eventually find the “one.” It's no wonder that so many married couples have a long list of people they dated before they found the one.

But what if what we’re doing isn’t the pursuit? What if we’re pursuing a lie? What if we were never meant to experience this idea of “the pursuit” so soon? Check out this relationship update that God gives on Adam and Eve:

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

God makes this game-changing announcement about how relationships are supposed to work. A man will leave his father and mother and he will hold fast to his wife. This phrase “hold fast to his wife” comes from this Hebrew word dabaq , which means to chase after something. God is telling us that when a man becomes married, He starts to chase after his wife with the intention of catching her.

FAST, FASTING. Fasting is the deliberate, temporary abstention from food for religious reasons. In the biblical material, fasting is total abstention, and is thus to be distinguished both from permanent food restrictions, like those against unclean animals, and also from occasional abstention from certain foods, like meat on Fridays, a practice adopted by the later Christian Church. At the end of the 19th century, our subject attracted the attention of social anthropologists of religion. They set out to compare fasting practices in many primitive religious cultures in order to construct a general theory of their origin and development (see Westermarck 1907). Some scholars, adopting an individualist perspective, emphasized that fasting produced heightened states of consciousness, resulting in visions and dreams, which were identified as the ground of all religious conceptuality (Tylor 1871: 410). Others, taking a collectivist starting point, treated fasting simply as a rite of preparation …

ABD

דָּבַק S1692 TWOT398 GK1815, דָּבֵק S1695 TWOT398 GK1816 vb. cling, cleave, keep close (NH id., Arabic دَبِقَ (dabiqa), Aramaic דְּבֵק, דְּבַק, ܕܒܶܩ, ܕܒܰܩ (dbeq, dbaq))—Qal Pf. דָּבַק 1 K 11:2 + 2 times; וְדָבַק consec. Gn 2:24; דָּבֵ֑ק 2 K 3:3; 3 fs. דָּֽבְקָה Ru 1:14 + 5 times; דָּבֵ֑קָה Job 29:10; 1 s. דָּבַקְתִּי ψ 119:31; 3 pl. דָּֽבְקוּ 2 S 20:2; וְדָֽבְקוּ consec. Dt 28:60; דָּבֵ֑קוּ Jb 41:15; וּדְבַקְתֶּם consec. Jos 23:12; Impf. יִדְבַּק Dt 13:18 + 3 times; 3 fs. תִּדְבַּק 2 K 5:27 ψ 137:6; וַתִּדְבַּק Gn 34:3 + 2 times; sf. תִּדְבָּקַנִי Gn 19:19; 2 ms. תִּדְבָּ֑ק Dt 10:20 Ez 29:4 (del. B Co); 2 fs. תִּדְבָּקִין Ru 2:8, 21; 3 pl. יִדְבְּקוּ Nu 36:7, 9; 2 mpl. תִּדְבָּ֑קוּ Jos 23:8; תִּדְבָּקוּ֑ן Dt 13:5; Inf. cstr. וּלְדָבְקָה־בּוֹ Dt 11:22 + 2 times;—in Hexateuch only JD, except Nu 36:7, 9 (P);— 1. cling, cleave to, a. lit. sq. בְּ Jb 19:20 (bone to skin), so sq. לְ ψ 102:6; sq. אֶל 2 S 23:10 (hand to sword; accidentally om. with other words 1 Ch 11:13 cf. Dr 2 S 23:11), …

BDB

1815 דָּבַק (dā·ḇǎq): v.; ≡ Str 1692; TWOT 398—1. LN 18.12–18.23 (qal) cling to, i.e., fasten oneself to an object (Ru 1:14; 2Sa 23:10; Job 29:10); (hif) stick to (Eze 3:26; 29:4b+); (pual) joined fast, be stuck together (Job 38:38; 41:9[EB 17]+); (hof) be made to cleave, stick to (Ps 22:16[EB 15]+); 2. LN 83.23–83.32 (qal) stay close, formally, cling, i.e., be in close proximity to another object (Ru 2:8); 3. LN 15.75–15.80 (hif) catch up, overtake, engage, i.e., make linear motion to come to the same place as another person or party, for either favorable or hostile intent (Ge 31:23; Jdg 18:22; 20:42, 45; 1Sa 14:22; 31:2; 2Sa 1:6; 1Ch 10:2+); 4. LN 34.1–34.21 (qal) be united, joined, i.e., be in a close association, implying a normal continuing relationship (Ge 2:24); (hif) be associated, formally, bind, i.e., be in a close association as a figurative extension of a belt fastening objects together (Jer 13:11+); 5. LN 13.104–13.163 (qal) happen, formally, overtake, i.e., have an event happen …

DBL Hebrew

be joined NASB95, NKJV shall cleave KJV 1900, AV 1873 [variant reading] LES adhærebit VGCLEM clings NRSV hold fast ESV is united NIV shall cling LEB προσκολληθήσεται LXX Swete

Text Comparison

דָבַ֣ק ḏā·ḇǎqʹ

דבק dbqto cling, stick, cleave, hold

דבק dbq to cling, stick, cleave, hold

Vap3MS verb, Qal, wᵊqātal (waw + perfect), third person, masculine, singular

H1692 Hebrew Strong’s

to unify relationship verb

Saga, Primeval Genesis 1:1–11:9

Prose 1:1–3:13

Myth 1:1–2:25

Figure of Speech Name: Ellipsis

Figure of Speech Description: Exaggeration Name: Hyperbole

Figure of Speech Description: Quotation Name: Gnome

The creation Cultural Concept

Longacre Genre Primary: Narrative: Story Secondary: Expository: What things are or were like

Intertext Target: Matthew 19:5 Corpus: New Testament Relationship: Allusion

Intertext Target: Mark 10:7–8 Corpus: New Testament Relationship: Quotation

Intertext Target: 1 Corinthians 6:16 Corpus: New Testament Relationship: Citation

Intertext Target: Ephesians 5:31 Corpus: New Testament Relationship: Quotation

Semantic Feature Category: Subsequent

“hold fast” refers to:

A Man — Any adult male human.

God creates woman Event

Marriage — The state of being united to another person as husband or wife.

Sex — Sexual intercourse.

Women — Female human beings.

Covenant, Creation, Creativity, Death and Dying, Divorce, Family: Husbands, Family: Parents, Family: Wives, God: Providence, Homosexuality, Honor and Shame, Law, Loneliness, Men, Purity, Revelation, Sin, Singleness, Stewardship, Suicide, Wisdom, Work

u Matt. 10:16; 2 Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9; 20:2

Mt 10:16 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

2 Co 11:3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

Re 12:9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

Re 20:2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,

1 In Hebrew you is plural in verses 1–5

Ge 3:1–5 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. •He said to the woman••, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat•• of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch •it, lest you die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it •your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

v ch. 2:17

Ge 2:17 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.” , which means to chase after something. God is telling us that when a man becomes married, He starts to chase after his wife with the intention of catching her.

God is telling us that the pursuit doesn’t happen until the day you say “I do.” The chasing of your soulmate begins the day you are married. Can you see how radically different this is than how we’ve made it? We think the pursuit begins in the dating process, but God says it happens in our marriage.

To some of you, this probably sounds really backwards. It's like God is asking you to never kiss anyone until you’re married, or you can start dating when you’re 30. But what God is doing is setting you up for the most successful marriage possible filled with joy. Everyday marriages end as partners come to the conclusion that the pursuit has ended. They remember back when they were dating and how happy they were, yet in their marriage, the pursuit has vanished. They’ve stopped chasing each other, and stopped making each other feel special, so they've come to the conclusion that maybe they never found the “one.” So they divorce and try starting the pursuit over.

But God has a different plan in mind for you. If the pursuit begins the day you say “I do,” that entails a marriage spent on chasing each other and fighting for one another. If we can’t understand what it truly means to pursue each other, we will never understand what it means to be married. The pursuit is the marriage when you think of it on God’s terms.

It's this infinite adventure of trying to sacrifice yourself for your partner. It's this promise that you make to your spouse, no matter what happens, I will never stop loving you and chasing after you. When you say, “I do,” God is firing the starting line gun, and that’s when the chase begins. And here is what happens when you pursue someone on God’s terms:

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

They were both naked, and they were not ashamed. They could see everything about each other, and it didn’t stop them from chasing each other. Shame had no place in this relationship. They could stand side-by-side and love one another. Isn’t that what we all want? Someone that can see us for who we are, and it doesn’t stop them from loving us?

TWO BECOME ONE

God describes this couple as "becoming one." We spend our entire lives in search of the “one,” yet this couple had become one. Do you see the difference? We think that there is someone out there who can complete us, but Adam and Eve were made complete by God. He made them one. When God isn’t in the mix, we will never feel complete. We’ve taken this idea of the pursuit and we’ve made it on our terms, yet we always feel empty. But when Adam and Eve did it on God’s terms, they felt complete and unashamed.

Paul goes even further with this narrative.

, — Husbands , love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (31)"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh ." 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

What Paul is saying here is so radical. Paul is comparing the relationship of a husband and wife to Jesus and the church. The word that Paul uses for our version of love is “agape.” Agape is a love that is so strong, you would sacrifice your life for it. It goes even deeper than just sacrifice, though. This love is so strong, that no matter how the other person acts or responds, your love will never change. Covenant love. Your wife could spit in your face and tear you down, but you would continue to love and sacrifice for her.

Can you see how this type of pursuit is so different from our world?

There are so many influences out there that will tell you that if your spouse isn’t putting in the same work as you, then you can give up on them.

They’ll tell you that if you’ve lost all the love in your marriage, then you never really knew the person and you can start pursuing a divorce instead of your spouse.

But Paul says the opposite. Paul tells us that no matter the conditions or what season you are in, husbands must love their wives in a way that is equal to how Christ died for humanity. There are two reason Paul makes this comparison.

1. To show us what the pursuit looks like.

Paul is showing us that to truly pursue someone, it means to sacrifice for them. True love is not shown in how we feel, but in our actions. Marriage is not about who does more, but about loving unconditionally.

The testimonies of countless marriages have lasted for many years will tell you that there were several times when divorce became an option, but they chose to love each other through it all. The pursuit is not the times you feel comfortable with one another, but in the moments you fight to keep each other. The pursuit is an uncomfortable conviction to always be there for each other.

2. To point us back to God as the source.

Paul makes a connection between man and wife to Christ and the church. Remember when I said that God had made Adam and Eve “one”? Paul is pointing us back to the concept of oneness and how it relates to Jesus.

We let culture tell us out there that there is someone who can complete you, and they are not wrong. Where they’re wrong is thinking that it's someone other than Jesus. There is not a single person on this earth who will ever make you feel complete. When you pursue a person in hopes that he or she can fulfill you, the relationship will be filled with more suffering and heartache than you can bear. Jesus is the only person who can complete you.

Everybody wants a story that ends with, “They lived happily ever after.” Everyone wants a successful marriage. But what if the way you were living right now could determine that? God is the missing piece that creates the oneness in the pursuit. If the pursuit doesn’t begin until the day you say, “I do,” then maybe it's time you started pursuing something else. Would your life look different in five years if you chose to start pursuing a relationship with Jesus instead of other people?

Over the next three weeks I want to break down three ways you can start dating more effectively, but more importantly, how you can start preparing your heart for the best marriage ever.

But first, ask yourself this: What have I been making the pursuit about? Have I tried finding someone to complete me? Have I been chasing something that culture has told me to chase?

It’s OK to want to find that someone, because God put that desire in your heart. So during the next couple of weeks, come back and join us as we break down what that should look like.

Matthew 6:5–15 ESV

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 5:5–15 ESV

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

Small Group Questions:

Why do people strive so hard to find someone to date in middle school and high school?

What have you been making the “pursuit” about?

What have you found in previous dating relationships?

Have you tried finding someone to complete me?

What does the culture tell you to chase?

What would it look like to replace what you have been chasing with the pursuit of something else?