BETTER TOGETHER
ADAM AND EVE
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 3:8-12, MATTHEW 19:4-6
FEBRUARY 13, 2011
A sacrament is a rite or a ritual that is considered sacred: established by God, set apart for God. In the Protestant world, there are two sacraments: the sacrament of baptism and the sacrament of Holy Communion. Both of these are viewed as sacred rituals or rites established by God. In the Catholic world, there are seven sacraments. These seven include baptism and Holy Communion, but they also include other rites and rituals, and one is marriage. In the Catholic Church marriage is viewed as a sacrament.
I must say that with regard to marriage, I am more a Catholic than I am a Protestant. I have a sacramental view of marriage. I believe that marriage is sacred. I believe that marriage is established by God, regulated by his commandments, and then blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ. And is to be held in honor amongst all people. I take very seriously the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 19, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning, made them male and female?” He said, “For this reason, a man leaves his mother and father and is joined (cleaves) to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh so that they are no longer two but they are one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
We live in a world that puts asunder what God has established. We live in a culture that has taken the sacred establishment of marriage and puts it asunder. We do this through infidelity; we do this through casual divorce. And we do this even now as we as a culture seek to redefine marriage in the name of compassion and with the power of the gay lobby. Perhaps you are sitting there thinking, “Maybe the Bible is wrong.” Maybe you are sitting there thinking, “Maybe Jesus was wrong.” I tell you heaven and earth will pass away but his Word will never pass away. He is the way and the truth and the life. I hope you understand that, as we approach the consummation, the Bible prophesies that people will depart from the faith, that they will no longer endure sound teaching. They will turn away from listening to the truth. The subject we are dealing with this week and the weeks to come is a sacred subject; it is the institution of marriage, established by God and foundational to society.
We begin with Adam and Eve, and we are looking at Adam and Eve in the context of the purpose of marriage. Certainly, there are many purposes that God has in marriage, but one of the key purposes God has in marriage is companionship. So, we begin by looking at companionship. What I want to do today is look at companionship and the intimate companionship that marriage is meant to be. Then I want to take a few moments and look at some of those things that hinder that companionship within marriage and what we can do about that.
We begin with Adam and Eve. You understand that in Genesis 2-3 we have the story of Adam and Even. You understand that in the Christian world, there are a variety of perspectives with regard to Genesis 1, 2, and 3. There is no doubt that in the Bible God uses a variety of literary genres. There is no doubt about that. From poetry to apocalyptic literary genre, God uses a variety of forms. There are those who look at Genesis 2-3 and the story of Adam and Eve and they believe that God is using a parabolic genre and there are those that look at it and believe that God is using an allegorical genre and there are those who look at it and believe that God is using the genre of historical narrative. In my mind, I have no doubt that Adam and Eve are historical people. And the Bible treats them as historical people. Now there may, in the story, be parabolic or allegorical elements, but Adam and Eve are real people and God breathed on them, imparting the imago Dei, and through them God created the human race. The name Eve means life giver, and the Bible tells us she was the mother of all the living. The name Adam is more difficult etymologically. The Hebrew “Adam” may mean ground or earth, for out of it Adam was taken and to dust he returns. Eden is the name of the garden in which God placed them. Eden is unique in all the earth. Eden is a very, very special, unique, wonderful place. Outside of Eden, there is death and decay. The angels have fallen, and they had fallen long ago, but in Eden there is perfection. God placed Adam and Eve in Eden, he breathed on them, and he imparted the imago Dei, the very image of God. There is reason to believe (certainly I believe) that in Eden Adam and Eve and their progeny would not have experienced death. They would have continued to live. But you see, sin entered the world. Adam and Eve sinned. You know that story.
We look at Adam and Eve and we see the purpose of marriage and that purpose is tied up with companionship. I want us to look at a few of the phrases used in Genesis 2-3 describing the companionship of marriage. First of all, “it is not good that man should be alone.” For this reason, God established marriage. It is not good that man should be alone. God therefore has created us as relational beings and we need each other. You see, marriage is the most intimate, deepest expression of companionship. All human beings need companionship, and the deepest expression of companionship in the will of God, in the plan of God, is marriage.
Now, you might be single, and you might be single by the will of God. That is not the normative will of God. The normative will of God is marriage. We can look at Christian history and we can see the monastic movement, where men and women of Christ went to live apart. We can look at Christian history and we can see communal movements, where men and women of Christ came and lived together and held all things in common. But, the primary purpose of Christ, the primary purpose of God for this world is marriage, that we would experience relationship, in its deepest form, through marriage. So, it is not good that man should be alone, Genesis 2:18.
Genesis 2:24: leave and cleave. “A man leaves his mother and father and cleaves unto his wife.” Again, this is an image of companionship.
We live in a world where kids don’t always want to leave. Sometimes parents don’t want kids to leave. Ornithologists, those who study birds, tell us that there are some birds who actually, at some point in the nurturing of the offspring, start bringing prickly material and putting it in the nest, trying to make the nest less comfortable so that they would leave. Ornithologists also tell us that there are some parenting birds that actually push the baby birds, at some point, out of the nest from the top of the tree, forcing them to use their wings and leave. This is the plan of God that we leave.
I must say that my dad, at times, made the nest a little bit prickly, but I see the will of God in it. The will of God is that we leave and we cleave. This word for cleave is the Hebrew word “dabaq,” and it means “to stick to, to hold fast to, to never let go of something.” To hold on tight, no matter how hard, no matter how long, don’t let go. This is the will of God in marriage. Till death do us part we hold on. We leave and we cleave, and this is companionship.
Another phrase: “The two shall become one.” This is intimate companionship. In Genesis 2:24, but also Matthew 19, Mark 10, 1 Corinthians 6, Ephesians 5, we see this phrase. We see this phrase many times in the Bible describing marriage. “The two shall become one.” This oneness is not just sexual. It is sexual, but it is not just sexual. This oneness is physical, it is emotional, it is mental, it is relational, it is spiritual, and it is even financial. The two shall become one. There is a depth of companionship here unlike any other relationship. This is the will of God for marriage.
Jesus said, “Be joined unto his wife and the two shall be joined together.” The Greek word is “kollao,” and actually it is an intensified form of “proskollao.” Kollao means to glue or cement, and proskollao is intensified so it is like superglue. This is the will of God for our marriages, that they be joined and super glued. There is also this other word of companionship, helpmeet. We find this in Genesis 2:18, Genesis 2:20. “I will make a helper fit for him.” The Hebrew is “ezer,” that means helper, but it is actually a Hebrew phrase “ezer kenegdo,” “a helper fit for him.” “Kenegdo” is a special word. I hope you understand the concept of the wife biblically is one of equality. There is no inferiority here. The helper fit for him, kenegdo, means of like nature, of equal status, of equal value, of equal worth. So, it is a helper of equal status, a helper of equal worth, a helper of equal value. Maybe the word helper implies inferiority, the word ezer. But no, it does not imply any inferiority, not this Hebrew word. In fact, this word is used four times in the Old Testament to describe the relationship of mankind with God. And God is called our helper, the same word ezer. In Psalm 30:10, the psalmist calls out, “Lord God, be our helper, ezer.” So, you have what God is to mankind, our helper, the wife is to the husband. But there is no implication of inferiority. It is a helper of equal worth, a helper of equal status.
I just came back from Fresno. I shared a few weeks ago that Barb and I were going to go to Fresno. I told you that I wasn’t looking forward to going to Fresno. We got up at three o’clock in the morning to go. I am not a morning person. I am not an evening person either. I have one good hour during the day when I function well. Any way you look at it, three o’clock in the morning is a bummer. I got up at three, at an hour that we did not want to get up, to go to a place where we did not want to go. We went to Fresno. We were there for a meeting of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Presbytery of the West. They wanted me to come because a “descending overture” had come down from general assembly relating to women in leadership. I had been the co-chair of the national committee that sponsored the descending overture. So I went to Fresno, to the Presbytery of the West, to represent it.
Everything turned out great. I am very pleased with our denomination, very pleased with the fact that in our churches there is freedom for each church to do as they feel led of God and feel guided by the holy scriptures with regard to women. I will say that what bothered me is some conversations that I had with people there, with pastors. I had conversations with pastors, and it didn’t matter whether they were egalitarian or complementarian. I understand the arguments both might use, but it was clear to me that some of them did not view women as equal, equal in the sight of God, of equal value of God, equal status with God, co-heirs to the grace of life, equal inheritors of the gospel. I tell you, however you interpret certain passages relating to home and church, in the sight of God, no doubt biblically, male and female are equal. We were both created in the imago Dei, both created in the image of God. We are both created in the image and likeness of God, we share the divine nature at some level, and we are both fallen and desperately in need of grace. There is a companionship that God has called us to in marriage that doesn’t work well if we don’t value each other equally. Whatever our roles might be, if we don’t value each other equally, somehow this companionship deal just doesn’t work.
It is called marriage and we hold onto each other over the years through good times and bad, valleys and mountaintops, dreams shattered and dreams fulfilled. We hold on until death do us part. This is the plan of God and there is a companionship there that is found nowhere else, a oneness. The will of God is that our oneness would make of us best friends—that in this life and in this world, we might have many friends. My best friend will be my wife and her best friend would be her husband. This is the companionship of marriage.
Let’s take a few moments and look at what hinders marriage and the companionship and the development of companionship in marriage. The first thing that hinders it is devaluation. When we do not honor and value each other, companionship suffers. I have a list of questions here that were asked to kindergarten children and some of the answers they gave. I want to read a few of them to you and make a couple of comments. Of course, they are humorous, but I also want us to take a deeper look. These are actually questions given to elementary students about marriage. “How do you decide who to marry?” This is Allen, he is ten years old. Allen says this: “You have got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports and she should keep the chips and dip coming.” Allen’s going to learn some stuff later on.
Here is Kirsten, age ten: “No person really decides before they grow up who they are going to marry. God decides it all way before and you get to find out later who you are stuck with.” The question is, “What is the right age to get married?” Here is Freddy, age 6: “No age is good to get married at. You have got to be a fool to get married.”
“What do most people do on a date?” Here is Lynette, age eight: “Dates are for having fun and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.” Here is Martin, age ten: “On the first date they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.”
“When is it okay to kiss someone?” Here is Curt, age seven: “The law says you have to be eighteen years old to kiss someone. So, I wouldn’t want to mess with that.” Here is Howard; he is eight years old. “The rule goes like this: if you kiss somebody, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It is just the right thing to do.”
“Is it better to be single or married?” Theodore, age eight: “I don’t know which is better, but I will tell you one thing. I am never going to have sex with my wife. I don’t want to get all grossed out.” Here is Anita, age nine: “It is better for girls to be single, but not boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.”
Finally, this: “How would you make a marriage work?” This is Ricky, age ten: “Tell your wife she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.” I am pretty confident of this: Most of these kids didn’t think all of this stuff up on their own. They have heard some stuff; they have seen stuff. Kids are watching their parents; they are listening to their parents. Many of these kids, I am pretty confident, heard some comments that showed a lack of value. Maybe these kids, I am sure, in listening to their parents, saw things and heard things that showed a lack of value for marriage and for each other as husband and wife. I think it is biblically, so important, that we wake up every morning as husband and wife and think, “How can I value her? How can I value him? What can I do to show honor?”
I hope you understand how valuable mankind is in the sight of God, all of us created in the imago Dei. The breath of God is upon us; we are the crown of his creation. You look in Psalms 8. “Oh Lord our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.” Then the psalmist goes on to write, “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established, what is man that you are mindful of him? But you have created him little less than ‘elohim.’” This is man, male and female, crowned with glory and honor, created in the image of God and a little less than Elohim—little less than God, little less than the angels. This is the way God, in his Word, views us. Should we not, as husbands and wives, honor each other?
You look in Ephesians 5 and you see that beautiful passage, verses 21 through 32, where the Apostle Paul writes that he views the Christian marriage as analogous to the relationship between Christ and the church, so that as the church looks to Jesus Christ and seeks to honor him in her life, Paul says the wife should look to her husband and honor him in her life. As Jesus Christ loves the church and gave his life up for her, the Christian husband is to love his wife and to lay his life down for her each day. This is a teaching the world cannot understand and accept, but in the heart of the husband and the wife there is to be this desire to serve and honor. It is the plan of God, and something happens to companionship when we don’t do it.
In 1 Peter 3, we have the statement of Peter that wives are to be submissive to their husbands. In this particular passage, he places it in the context of evangelism, for wives that are married to non-Christians. He says, “Wives, be submissive to your husbands so that some, though they do not obey the Word, may be won without a word by the reverent and chaste behavior of their wives.” In this context he is asking women to do this to win their husbands to Christ. Then you come down to verse seven and he says, “Husbands,” talking now to Christian husbands, “Live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor upon the woman.” I say that we don’t honor each other enough. So often what happens in a marriage is we cease to value.
I read this past week about a guy named Benjamin Kubelsky. Benjamin Kubelsky was born in 1894; he was a child prodigy and a very skilled violinist, kind of like Frank who plays up on stage here every Sunday morning. He was a child prodigy and a tremendous violinist. Benjamin went off to World War I and came back and performed in Vaudeville. Then he began to perform on stage. He went to Hollywood. He wound up making 20 Hollywood movies. In 1932, he was on the Ed Sullivan Radio Show, and then developed a radio show of his own. In 1950 he established a TV show, which ran for 15 years on television.
Of course, he didn’t go by Benjamin Kubelsky. He took the name Benjamin and turned it into Benny and went by Jack Benny. That is how the world knew him, as Jack Benny, a famous comedian. I tell you, he loved his wife. He struggled with stuttering. If you have seen the movie that is out now called The King’s Speech, it is a wonderful movie, you know what a handicap stuttering and speech impediments can be. That was true of Jack Benny; he had a horrible problem with stuttering, particularly when he became nervous. Whenever he got around girls, he was nervous. So, when he went to ask Mary out, whom he would eventually have as his wife, he couldn’t talk. All he could do was stutter, he was just so nervous. She didn’t know what was wrong with him. He was never able to ask her out, so he began to just send her roses each day. Finally, she said to him, “Jack, what is this? Why are you sending me roses every day? What is it you are trying to say?” Out of that, he was able to get his first date with her.
They went out on a date. I think you know that when they got married, all the days of their life, Jack Benny bought roses for Mary every single day! They would have seven groups of roses in seven rooms of their house, and they would just rotate one out and another one in every week. So, it went through all the days of their marriage. Then Jack Benny died at 80 years old. The next day, there was someone at the door and Mary went to the door and it was a bunch of roses. Mary said, “Oh, you don’t understand, Jack just died.” The guy said, “No, you don’t understand. Jack has made arrangements with me to give you roses every day for the rest of your life.”
Now, most of us could never do that—we don’t have the money to do that—but the truth is you need to figure out every day some way to value and honor each other. It is from the Bible, and it has to do with companionship.
I think the thing that most hinders companionship is sin. I think in our marriages, the one thing that is most devastating to our companionship and our marriage relationship is simply sin. I was reading, just a couple of years ago, from the Denver Post an article on Telluride and the Telluride town council. I found myself laughing out loud. I don’t know what you think of when you think of Telluride. You probably think of mountains and beautiful scenery and fishing and hiking and skiing, and all those things are true. Telluride is also a “new age” kind of place, where you see Victorian homes with Tibetan flags on their porches and where they have Native American medicine men bless the slopes every year. According to the Denver Post, the town council, which meets in Rebecca Hall in Telluride, was having a lot of problems because nobody was getting along. They were fighting and they were arguing and there were power-plays and accusations and rage and turf-wars and a real struggle for power. They would get so mad that they would just stomp out and the council would just have to quit.
The town council in Telluride decided something must be wrong with Rebecca Hall. Something must be wrong with the building, they decided. This surprised them, because before every meeting they burned sage sticks to ward off evil vibrations. But still something, they thought, must be wrong with Rebecca Hall. So, they brought in a Native American shaman, named Christopher Beaver, and he performed a smudging ceremony in which he burned imported menthol and let it waft through the building and try to purge the residual evil there. I just laughed out loud. What a flaky world we live in! I want to tell you something. If you are having a problem in your marriage, it is not your house. It is in you. Just like with the town council, it is in our hearts, and it is called sin. It is hard.
I think in a lot of marriage there are hidden sins. People don’t want to deal with sin. There are a lot of sins that we, perhaps, try to hide, but it kills companionship. Maybe you have some hidden sins. Maybe they are financial sins. Maybe you are doing some stuff at work with your company that involve fiscal misconduct. Maybe you are involved in gambling and you are hiding it and hoping that your wife never finds out or your husband never finds out. Maybe you have some hidden sexual sin. Maybe you are having an affair, maybe you have committed adultery and you are hiding it. Maybe you are having an affair of the heart. Maybe you are struggling with lust, but you don’t want your wife or your husband to know it. Maybe you are struggling with addiction to pornography, and you are downloading pornography on the internet. Maybe you are subscribing to pornographic publications, and you hide it. Maybe your sins have to do with alcohol use or drug use. Maybe you have some hidden drug use you don’t want your spouse to know about.
They are hidden sins, but all of it affects marriage at the core. I know this is a hard subject. I would say to you, confess and repent. I know there are counselors who might say, “Be careful. Before confessing certain sins to your spouse, you have got to ask, ‘is this loving towards her? Am I just dumping my guilt or do I really care about what this information is going to do to her?’” I understand why counselors would say that to you, but remember, we are told biblically to confess our sin. We confess our sin to God, but we also confess our sin to others who hold us accountable. Also remember that in a marriage our goal is to be so vulnerable to each other and honest and to come into the light, and not to keep our sins in the dark.
I love the statement of Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage. This book was written in 2000, and it is already a classic. We have some classes that we are going to be teaching here later this month based on this book. He argues that marriage is not primarily about happiness. It is about happiness, but not primarily about happiness. It is primarily about holiness. Marriage is in the will of God and in the plan of God a classroom that is meant to transform us, where we learn to forgive and we learn what it means to love. We learn holiness together in the midst of that journey and friendship and companionship. It is the plan of God. And that is why in 1 John 1, John writes, “We are to walk in the light and not in the darkness.” We walk in the light when we confess our sins and we seek that holiness.
I know that we don’t have time, and this is such a huge subject, but I know that there are other things that can affect companionship in marriage. It is not just devaluing each other, failing to honor one another, and it is not just sin. I know tragedy can affect our companionship. I know for any of you who have lost kids, it is a great test on a marriage and how that marriage can hold together. For any of you who feel like you have had failed parenting and your kids haven’t turned out, that can be a huge stressor on your life together and the companionship that you share. I know that financial collapse stresses the marriage. We are going to be taking a look at finances in marriage in just a couple of weeks.
We have this clear message from God that marriage is sacred, it is established by him, regulated by his commandments, blessed by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to be held in honor. God has given us to each other that we might be one, that we might experience oneness physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, spiritually, and yes, even financially. God has brought us together that we might be best friends. He wants us to experience this depth of companionship. He wants us to honor each other and think of, each day, how we can value each other in the midst of our differences.
Another great book, by the way, is Mad About Us by Gary and Carrie Oliver. This book is about moving from anger to intimacy. It is a great book about anger in marriage. The Olivers argue that when people get married, they are madly in love and then the years go by and they are just mad. His whole argument is what you can do to turn it around and what you can do to understand that anger and then to use some of it constructively and find transformation and to learn to value each other in the midst of your differences. It is a great book. I am sure we have it in the Inklings Bookstore.
There is so much to talk about. We want to make sure we value each other; we want to make sure that we confess and repent with regard to sin in our life and we walk together in the light. We also want to make sure that we dream the dream that God has and that is that our love would be triumphant, even over tragedy and over all of these things that our love would be triumphant.
I think we close with the words of the apostle Paul: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am but a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all knowledge and have all faith so as to move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have to the poor, deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind; it is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude; it does not seek its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in the wrong, but love rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, love endures all things. Love never ends.
I love the way that Paul describes love itself. That is really what we are learning in marriage. We are learning to be the people of God and to be more Christlike and we are learning to love and we are learning to forgive in the midst of this deep friendship. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.