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]

| T |

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 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.

Marriage is falling out of fashion; it is not unusual for people in their thirties and forties to have been in multiple relationships—relationships and not marriages.

Our youth are sexually experienced at increasingly earlier ages.

Gratuitous teenage sexual activity has become so commonplace that though we may still be disturbed, we are no longer shocked at reports of 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, some studies suggest that professing Christians may not be faring that much better than are outsiders.

I fear that defenders of marriage have already been defeated.

Whenever we are compelled to define a social institution as well established as marriage, that institution is ridiculed by the very fact that it requires definition.

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

The ascendancy of modern feminism exposed a long-standing tension between the sexes that simmered just below the surface.

It is not merely that contemporary social currents threaten the institution of marriage, but it is apparent that the present social condition 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 often conspired to ensure that women were 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 in society.

Women, likewise, often considered themselves superior to men even as they chafed under what seemed at times to be an unjust domination.

In reaction to perceived injustice, contemporary feminism has evolved until it is less an affirmation of women’s social equality then it is raw male bashing.

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

Before the law, males have few rights, and if the male happens to be of European descent, he is 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.

Both the nation and entire denominations have been feminised, with the result that manly character once honoured is today ridiculed and censured without hesitation.

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 us 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 Adam received from the hand of God a helper fit for him.

The account of the first marriage is provided in our text.

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.

The words Moses used, helper fit [from the Hebrew *ēzer kenegdô*], might seem 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 had no say in accepting the woman; 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 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*?

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.

Vive le difference, 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 helper fit /for Adam, so God made /a helper fit/ for Adam, one who 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 complementation in marriage—mutual strengthening by partners in a 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 so 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 in no small measure lends her strength to her husband.