Marriage and the Gospel

So far, we have seen both the PURPOSE and the PATTERN for every marriage. Last week, we identified the PROBLEM with every marriage: sin. Every marriage now lives under the curse of the fall. Women are assertive, men are either passive or dominating, and both partners are selfish and proud. Death comes forward as a great enemy that will end every marriage. And as we read through the pages of the Old Testament, we see the ripples of sin in marriage as God’s pattern is further distorted through polygamy, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, and the dilution of gender roles.

This presents us with somewhat of a dilemma: If all marriage has been marred by the fall, how will it ever display the covenant love between Jesus Christ and His people? How will it be redeemed? Can it be redeemed? Scripture’s answer is a resounding “YES!” Remember that God promised a Redeemer the day the curse was declared, One who would destroy the serpent’s work (Genesis 3:15). 1 John 3:8 identifies that One as Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:20 says that through the blood of Christ’s cross, God is reconciling “all things” to Himself. That includes marriage. God redeems marriage through the gospel. But He doesn’t just redeem it through the gospel; He also does so for the gospel. What God wants to do through the gospel is to lift marriage out of the mire of the fall and use it to display His covenant love for His people.

Today we are going to consider how God redeems marriage through the gospel and for the gospel and what that looks like when it is fleshed out. We are going to call God redeeming marriage through the gospel something that He does vertically and God redeeming marriage for the gospel something that He does horizontally. The Christian life is both a vertical and a horizontal experience. The vertical/horizontal experience that I am thinking of is the one Jesus used in John 4:14 and John 7:38 of a spring/fountain that is constantly full and overflowing. Jesus described conversion here as Him placing an everlasting, satisfying spring within us that would fill us up and overflow. Vertically, it is us experiencing God’s covenant love by grace through faith and horizontally it is that covenant love overflowing to others.

In other words, displaying covenant love should be the overflow of a regenerated heart. The grace of Christ should overflow into every relationship that we have. Now this is applicable to every relationship that we have, but nowhere is it more important than in marriage because of the unique purpose of the marriage relationship. If there is anywhere that we should see the grace Christ’s covenant love displayed, it is in the home.

1) The Vertical: Covenant Love Begins and is Sustained by God’s Grace being Extended to Us

If we had to find a word in the Bible to encapsulate the way that God’s covenant love is expressed to us, it would be in the word, “GRACE.” God’s expression of His covenant love for us and our experience of that covenant love are summed up in Him lavishing His grace upon us. So marriage then should be full of grace if it is going to display what it is meant to display. But here’s the catch: it is impossible to truly express the type of covenant love that we are talking about without first experiencing it for yourself. In other words, there is no overflow from an empty well. Let’s consider just a few passages to see why I am saying this.

i) Ezekiel 36:22-27

^“22 Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. ²³ And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. ²⁴ I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. ²⁵ I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. ²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. ²⁸ You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

There are two points that I want to make from this passage. First, I want you to see that it takes a new heart to begin obeying and to keep obeying God in the way that we are supposed to. It will take the indwelling of the very Spirit of God. This is the blood bought obedience of the cross that is a reality in the life of every believer. The second thing is that God is doing this solely by His grace and for His glory. They are not receiving this grace because they have been such a good people. They do not deserve it.

ii) Ephesians 2:1-10

^“1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ² in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— ³ among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. ⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his GRACE in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

It is very important to see both what this passage says and what it doesn’t say. It tells us who we were apart from Christ: dead in sin, slaves to Satan and this world, and hostile to God. It also tells us how that reality changed: because God in His grace made us alive. It doesn’t say that we turned over a new leaf at some point, started being good people, and so God then made us alive. He lavished His grace and love upon dead, rebellious enemies who were under His wrath. Why am I making such a big deal about this? It is because thinking through just how much God’s grace overcame in your own life will make it much easier to express this grace to your spouse. Your anger towards your spouse is nothing compared to the wrath of God that was pointed toward you, and it was overcame by His grace. Piper says that we should let the measure of God’s grace to us in the cross be our measure of grace to our spouse.[1]

(1) Philippians 1:6, 2:13

We also learn from scripture that expressing covenant love is something that must be sustained by grace. This is the implication of Philippians 1:6 and Philippians 2:13. Philippians 1:6 tells us that it is God who is bringing to completion the good work that has begun in us. Philippians 2:13 tells us that it is God who works in us both to will and work for His good pleasure. So we are utterly dependent upon the grace of God both in the ability to display this love in the first place and in the ability to continue to display it.

2) The Horizontal: Covenant Love is Displayed and Cultivated by God’s Grace being Extended by Us – Here is the OVERFLOW OF GRACE

i) Displayed:

(1) Ephesians 4:1-3

“¹I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

We are commanded to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord’s calling upon us – with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit. This is a call to Christian UNITY. Where is this more important than in marriage and in the home?

(2) Ephesians 4:17-32 –

¹⁷ Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. ¹⁹ They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰ But that is not the way you learned Christ!— ²¹ assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, ²² to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, ²³ and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

²⁵ Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. ²⁶ Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷ and give no opportunity to the devil. ²⁸ Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. ²⁹ Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³²Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.^”

(3) Philippians 2:1-5

^{1 “}So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, ² complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³ Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. ⁴ Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,”

(4) Colossians 3:1-21

^{5 “}Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming. ⁷ In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. ⁸ But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. ⁹ Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. ¹¹ Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

¹² Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, ¹³ bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (See 2:13-15 ) ¹⁴ And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵ And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. ¹⁷ And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

¹⁸ Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. ¹⁹ Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. ²⁰ Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. ²¹ Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.^”

ii) Cultivated:

I said that covenant love was also cultivated by this overflow of grace. Here is what I mean by that: as our spouse begins to overflow the grace of God toward us, that display of covenant love causes us to fall in love with them. Romance begins to be rekindled where it was thought to be lost. Why should this display of grace cause us to fall in love with them all over again? It is because when my wife begins to respond to me with this overflowing grace we have seen, she begins to remind me of someone. She begins to remind me of my Savior. So I begin to fall in love with her all over again because she is displaying the beauty of my Savior me.

I think this is one place you really find out whether someone in a marriage is truly a believer or not. When a spouse begins to display covenant love and grace to you and you don’t find that attractive at all, I have to conclude that you very possibly don’t have a new heart. As long as there is single breath in a believer’s new heart, it will be drawn to the beauty of its Savior. My prayer today is that if you have never encountered this amazing covenant love of Jesus Christ and been made alive in Him, that you would come to Him in humility and faith today. And if you have, my prayer is that you would humble yourself before Him in faith and utter dependence in order to see this reality of overflowing grace in your home.

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[1] Piper, John, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence.” Pg. 46

Marriage and the Fall: Genesis 3:1-24

Let’s begin with a little review: We said in week one that Marriage exists to bring glory to God by displaying the covenant love between Jesus Christ and His bride, the church (Ephesians 5:31-32). It is a covenant horizontally between a husband and wife and vertically between a couple and God and that covenant love is ultimately about my faithfulness to my spouse and to God. Then last week we looked at the first marriage in Genesis 2:18-25, and said that God’s pattern for marriage in every age and every culture is a monogamous, heterosexual covenant union entered into before God and consummated by sexual intercourse, in which the covenant partners experience intimate companionship as a new union set apart from their parental bonds. These are some of the big ideas that I am wanting you to leave with every week and I am going to continue repeating them to you every week because I want them to become ideas that you are able to verbalize on your own to others.

So far we have seen the last marriage in Revelation 21:1-4 and the first marriage in Genesis 2:18-25, and they give us the Bible’s picture of the ideal marriage. Today, we are going to see why no marriage will ever fully live up to this ideal. Today we are going to see the ideal dismantled by Satan and sin.

Now before we get started, let me give you a disclaimer: Genesis 3:1-24 is not ultimately about how sin and Satan destroy marriage. It is not ultimately about how marriage falls apart; it’s about how everything falls apart. We are simply going to look at the events of Genesis 3:1-24 through the lens of marriage.

1) Satan is Seen to be the Great Destroyer of Marriage (3:1-6)

Satan is the first enemy we see in God’s good creation and the way he attacks it is by attacking this first married couple that are made in the image of God. Understand this: the reason that Satan wants to destroy marriage and everything else is because he ultimately desires to mar the glory of God. It is true that he does desire to hurt you too, but ultimately, his desire is to rob God of His glory. That’s what he is after. Knowing this should deepen our perspective of marriage. When our marriage falls under fire, we are to ultimately contend for the glory of God, which again is contended for by displaying the covenant love between Christ and His church. This is the picture that Satan wants to warp in the following two ways:

i) By Overturning God’s Good Design (1-6)

The first way that Satan seeks to destroy the first marriage is by overturning God’s good design. What we see in Genesis 3:1-6 is a complete role reversal in which the creation order is turned on its head. In God’s good creative order, this couple was to live under the rule of God as His representative rulers and stewards of the earth. The husband was to be the head of this partnership, loving leading, protecting, cherishing, nurturing, and providing for his wife as they exercised dominion over God’s creation. Here in Genesis 3:1-6, we have a creature seducing the woman to lead her husband to rebel against the rule of God.

It is very significant that the serpent approaches the woman and not the man in this temptation. Who did God originally give the prohibition to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to? He gave it to Adam, before the woman was created, because Adam was created first as part of God establishing male headship in the first marriage. So this is a direct attack on the husband’s headship here. Ladies, please don’t miss this. This is one of the ways that Satan will seek to disrupt and destroy your marriage: by attacking the headship of your husband through you. He will seek to overturn God’s good design.

ii) By Questioning the Truthfulness and Authority of God’s Word and the Goodness of God’s Character (1b-5)

The second way that we see Satan destroying marriage and everything else is by questioning the truthfulness and authority of God’s Word and the goodness of God’s character. Did you see this? First, He tries to get her shook up on God’s instruction to them and then to view God’s instruction as non-authoritative. These are two obstacles that must be overcome to move in God’s direction for marriage. I would say the way that the first obstacle works itself out today is ignorance. Satan’s effort to shake us up on what God says is very easy because we are not familiar with what God says. We have a whole repertoire of “preacher sayings,” but nothing that we could take anyone to a chapter and verse on about marriage or anything else. The way that the second obstacle works itself out is simply rebellion. We think that God’s Word should be authoritative for everyone except us. It’s like how many of us approach the speed limit: we think what the sign says is the speed limit; we just don’t think that it applies to us. We think we can go faster.

Secondly, Satan questions the goodness of God’s character. He emphasizes the one prohibition that God has given them in the face of unimaginable provision. He then implies that God’s motives for them are not good. In essence He is saying, “What kind of God is this that He would keep this from you? What you don’t know is that He is really trying to keep you from something good. He just wants to keep you under His thumb. This garden is really a prison and this tree is the way out.” He succeeds in getting Eve to think that God is being shady with them. And suddenly she is thinking that this good prohibition is evil and is calling this evil tree “good for food.” Please don’t miss the application of this point. First of all, do you know what God says about your marriage? Secondly, do you view that as truthful and authoritative? Finally and foundationally, do you view what God’s says as good instruction flowing from the goodness of His character?

2) Sin is Seen to be the Great Disease of Marriage (3:6-19)

i) The Essence of Sin: PRIDE (5-6)

Now before we talk about how sin affects every marriage, we need to see sin for what it is. This is one of the most profound things that Genesis 3 does; it reveals sin for what it is. We see plainly the essence of all sin is PRIDE. Did you see the bait? “You will be like God…” (5). This is the great wickedness represented by this tree. To eat of it would be to act in the place of God, pronouncing what was good and evil for themselves in rebellion to what God has pronounced good and evil. Pride always results in idolatry and rebellion. It makes an idol out of our self and leads to rebellion because in seeking to be our own god, we are forced to view anyone else who calls themselves God as rivals. So let me be clear here: pride is when we choose to act in the place of God and pronounce what is good and evil for our self in rebellion to what God has pronounced to be good an evil.

Pride is a cancer to any marriage and any relationship and it has many faces. I want you to see that Eve’s pride is expressed in her asserting herself and pronouncing the tree good and that Adam’s pride is expressed as passiveness. Raymond Ortlund, Jr., commenting on this passage says, “Eve usurped Adam’s headship and lead the way into sin. And Adam who had stood by passively, allowing the deception to progress without decisive intervention…abandoned his post as head. Eve was deceived; Adam forsook his responsibility. Both were wrong and together they pulled the human race down into sin and death.”[1] In what ways does pride express it self in your marriage? I would say looking back over seven years of marriage that pride has been at the heart of every conflict we have had. It is normally the reason the conflict begins and is always the reason the conflict continues.

ii) The Effects of Sin (7-19)

(1) Initial Effects (7-8)

There are two initial effects that we see in Genesis 3:7-8. This couple experiences alienation from God. They experience shame and they are not comfortable being naked before God or each other. When God seeks them, they hide from Him. When God questions the man, He blames His wife.

John Piper has a very insightful take on why this couple experiences shame initially after the fall. He says the presence of covenant love between them collapsed, and that it did so in two ways. First, the person viewing my nakedness is now no longer trustworthy, so I am afraid I will be ashamed. Eve is no longer trustworthy because she has chosen to act in the place of God, independently of him. She has chosen to be selfish to the core. If she will rebel against God, why wouldn’t she rebel against me. What is to keep her from seeking her own interests at the expense of mine? Adam has chosen to not protect wife. What if he won’t do so in the future? So suddenly their nakedness isn’t comfortable because they don’t fully trust each other anymore.

The second say they feel shame is in the fact that they themselves are no longer at peace with God, and they feel guilty and defiled and unworthy,” and therefore ashamed in the presence of someone else. In other words, there is this huge gap between what they are and what they should be and they don’t want the other one to see it. So to cover up this gap, they cover up what is there.[2]

I want you to see here again why I call pride a cancer to any marriage. Pride seeks to cover shame. It says, “I want it to look like I’m OK and I want you to think that I am OK.” This is one of the dangers of preaching this series: for you to see what marriage is supposed to be and try to put that on as a front for the rest of us. Humility is the opposite of pride and whereas pride seeks to cover shame, humility seeks to confess it. This is another insight from Piper here. He points out that God does clothe them, but that clothing is meant to be a confession, not a cover up.[3]

Here’s where I’m going with all of this: We all experience these different faces of pride and shame over our sin because we are all sinners. We all live after and outside of the garden. This is our reality. If you are married, you are married to a fallen sinner and your spouse is married one too. You are going to sin against one another. My point is simply that when it dawns on you that you have been sinned against that you would express covenant love in return and when it dawns on you that you have sinned against your spouse (been selfish, for example) that you would express humility in confessing sin and shame to them in repentance.

(2) Effects entailed in the Curse (14-19)

I am not going to go through every detail of God’s curse upon the serpent, the woman, and the man. I simply want to point out how these curses will affect marriage in history. In the first curse upon the serpent (14-15), God declares to the serpent that there will be “enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.” This means that in the course of history there will be a people who belong to Satan and a people who belong to God. There will be two kingdoms, and “enmity,” or strife and contention, will exist between them. One clear implication of that is that the world will not view things like marriage the way that God does.

In God’s curse upon the woman, we see that her natural relationships in the home will be frustrated. She will experience pain in childbearing and childrearing. Marital harmony with her husband will be disrupted and will become a power struggle resulting in a pendulum swing of female leadership and male domination. It will tend to gravitate between these two extremes. A wife will be tempted to try and rule her husband. That is the meaning of her “desire” being “for” her husband (16). A husband will be prone to dominate his wife through by either passively forcing her into action or actively dominating her.

In the curse upon Adam, we see two things. One is that his responsibility to provide for himself and his family will be frustrated (17-18). Now we basically see that everything under man’s headship will resist Him in some way. I think this is to teach man what it will be like to patiently bear with us throughout history. We also see the one enemy that will destroy every earthly marriage: death (19). God pronounces a death sentence upon the human race. Every marriage that stays together will eventually experience the pain of one spouse having to bury the other one.

3) God is Seen to be the Great Redeemer of Marriage (3:8-24)

i) God’s Questions (9-13)

Here is hope. Immediately after this heinous rebellion, we see a God of mercy and grace seeking out this couple in the garden. And notice who calls out for: “the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (9). Don’t miss this: God holds Adam ultimately responsible. Romans 5:12-21 clearly states that sin enter the world through Adam, not Eve. They both sin here, but God tells the man in Genesis 3:17 that He is issuing this curse because Adam listened to the voice of his wife rather than God and because Adam disobeyed God. Men, this means that God holds you ultimately responsible for everything that is taking place in your home. If God were to knock on your door, He is going to ask for you first, regardless of whom else in your home is in sin.

God proceeds to ask a series of questions to this couple to lead them to introspection, confession, and repentance. Consider these questions with me for a minute. The first one is this: “Where are you” (9)? Where are you with the Lord today, in your marriage? Some of you are hiding. Look as the next one (11): “Who told you that…?” We need to be careful who we listen to in our lives, especially in our marriages. This is because of what we said earlier, that this world does not view marriage in the way that God does. One of your coworkers may make you feel real good about a change you need to make in your marriage, but is what they are telling you squaring with what the Bible says about marriage? “Well, if he did that to me, I would leave him on the curb!” That may make you feel real good and justified in leaving, but that is not the type of covenant love we see commanded of a spouse in the Bible. Who are you listening to for marital advice? The last question was essentially, “Have you done what I told you not to do?” He asks this to both of them.

Again, God is seeking to lead them to introspection, confession, and repentance. These are not questions that God asks for His own curiosity. He knows where Adam is (9). He wants Adam to consider where he is. He knows who they have been listening to. He wants them to consider who they have been listening to: not Him! He knows that they have done what He commanded them not to do. He wants them to own and admit that. That’s confession and repentance. I would suggest that this is a very healthy practice for you marriage, for you to practice regular confession and repentance of your sins against God and one another. What are your failures in marriage? Your two options are to pridefully cover them up or to humbly confess them and repent of them.

ii) God’s Promise (15)

In the blackness of history’s darkest day, God makes a promise that is a blinding ray of hope across the pages of the Bible and of history. He promises a Deliverer, a better Adam. He will be the offspring of a woman and will crush the head of the serpent and destroy what Satan has accomplished on this day. This means that there is no way back to the garden of Eden; there is only a way forward: through the work of this Redeemer. According to 1 John 3:8, this Remeemer’s name is Jesus Christ. Through His finished work on the cross and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, He and He alone will make possible the restoration of the ideal marriage. I want to be clear here: Jesus Christ is the only hope for any marriage. God does not promise to fix this through Adam or Eve, but through this offspring.

iii) God’s Clothing (20-24)

God paints an incredible picture of what this Redeemer will do with what He does next. He clothes this couple with animal skins. Now before I get to the picture, let me first state what is plain about God clothing them: God does intend for our nakedness to be covered. Piper brilliantly expresses that, “public nudity today is not a return to innocence but rebellion against moral reality. God ordains clothes to witness the glory we have lost, and it is added rebellion to throw them off. And for those who rebel in the other direction and make clothes a means of power and prestige and attention getting, God’s answer is not a return to nudity but a return to simplicity (1 Tim. 2:9-10, 1 Peter 3:4-5). Clothes are not meant to make people think about what is under the clothes. Clothes are meant to direct attention to what is not under them: merciful hands that serve others in the name of Christ, beautiful feet that carry the gospel where it is needed, and the brightness of a face that has beheld the glory of Jesus.”[4] I am not a legalist, but I do believe the church today needs a healthy dose of what Piper is talking about.

Now let’s talk about the picture that his paints. God had declared that they would “surely die” on the day that they ate from this tree (2:16-17). But God shows mercy and grace rather than justice and wrath by shedding the blood of a substitute and clothing them with its skins. This looks forward to the day when God would require the death of His Son Jesus Christ (the Lamb of God) in order to clothe us with the righteousness of God. As we said, there is no way back to the garden of Eden, but this is the way forward: the cross. God will go on to kick them out of the Garden of Eden here to make room for this redemption, placing the cherubim and a flaming sword in the garden to guard the tree of life. What is amazing is that the Bible ends with a wedding between God and His people in a city that has a garden with the tree of life in it (Revelation 22:2). What removed the cherubim? In the Old Testament, we not only see them guarding the way of the tree of life in the garden of Eden, but we also see them on the curtains entering the most holy place of the tabernacle (Ex. 26:1) and the holy of holies in the temple (2 Chron. 3:14). The day the Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world, that veil tore apart from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51). What’s the point? The death of Christ removed the cherubim. He made the way forward back to the ideal life of the garden. He can make a way forward back the ideal for your marriage as well.

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[1] Ortlund, Jr., Raymond, “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism”, pg. 107

[2] These two paragraphs are simply an abbreviation from John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”, pg. 34-38

[3] Piper, John, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”, pg. 37

[4] Piper, John, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”, pg. 37

The First Marriage: Genesis 2:18-25

Let's begin by briefly reviewing a few key statements from last week's blog. We said that Marriage exists to bring glory to God by displaying the covenant love between Jesus Christ and His bride, the church (Ephesians 5:31-32). That is it’s meaning and purpose. We also said that marriage is a covenant horizontally between a husband and wife and vertically between a couple and God and that covenant love is ultimately about my faithfulness to my spouse and to God. We looked at what I called “the last marriage” in Revelation 21:1-4 and learned from it that marriage should be a place where we display covenant love, pursue one another’s holiness, treasure God, and depend upon Christ for grace to accomplish all of this.

The Backdrop of the First Marriage (Genesis 1:26-28): Here is where we’re going: we are going to combine the first marriage with last marriage to arrive at the ideal marriage with the understanding that the first marriage points to the last; it being ultimate. The first marriage in the Bible takes place in Genesis 2:18-25, which is an expansion of Genesis 1:26-31. What this means is that the first marriage takes place in the context of God creating man and woman in His image to be His representative rulers and stewards of creation. They are to represent God to all of creation, to rule the earth on God’s behalf (as stewards), and are to reproduce image bearers of God to fill up the earth (procreation) with the glory of God. We are going to learn four things from this first marriage:

1) The First Marriage is Meant to be a Pattern for All Earthly Marriages

Genesis 2:24 is a PATTERN STATEMENT for all marriages. It is God’s commentary on what has just taken place. That is the significance of the word, “Therefore.” God is saying that since He established the first marriage in this way, this is way all marriages should be. Both Jesus and the apostle Paul, when they teach about marriage, interpret Genesis 2:24 in this way (Mark 10:2-9, Ephesians 5:22-33). It is the Bible’s pattern for marriage: a man leaving his father and mother and holding fast to his wife in a new “one flesh” union where they can be “naked and…not ashamed.” From what we read in Genesis 2:18-25, we can at a minimum say the following about God’s pattern for all marriage:

i) Monogamy

When God creates marriage, He creates it to be a monogamous relationship. This is the pattern. To meet Adam’s need for a companion, God created a woman to be his wife (22), not ten women to be his wives. He could have and this would have certainly filled up the earth faster, but He didn’t. This simply means that God’s design for marriage is one man and one woman for one lifetime.

ii) Heterosexuality

God also creates this marriage to be a heterosexual relationship. He doesn’t create another man to be Adam’s wife and companion. He creates a woman. I’m sure you’ve heard the joke: “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”

Homosexuality simply flies in the face of God’s good created order. One of the functions of marriage is procreation (having children) according to Genesis 1:28, and that is an impossibility in a homosexual relationship. Neither two males, nor two females can reproduce on their own. It is not God’s design. God’s good design for marriage is a monogamous, heterosexual relationship.

iii) Sexual Intimacy

Here we see that in God’s design, marriage is to be consummated by sexual intercourse and that sex is to be enjoyed in the context of a husband and wife relationship. This is one thing that is meant by their becoming “one flesh” and their being “naked and…not ashamed.” This is how Paul interprets this phrase in 1 Corinthians 6:15-16, where he is warning against sex outside of marriage, whether it is with a prostitute or anyone else. He says that when we commit sexual immorality with someone else, we are becoming “one flesh” with him or her. He doesn’t mean that if we sleep with someone, that we are automatically married in God’s eyes. He means that we are forming a bond that is deeply physical, emotional, and spiritual, that is to be formed between only a husband and a wife.

John Piper calls sexual immorality “an exploitation of marriage prerogatives.” He says, “The shell of oneness is there, but not the covenant meaning.”[1] Mark Driscoll often comments that our culture tries to separate three things that the Bible makes inseparable: marriage, sex, and children. What both of these guys are saying is simply that many people want the pleasures of marriage without the covenant commitment of marriage. The pattern established by God at the first marriage is that when someone gives himself or herself away physically, there are supposed to be covenant strings attached. See is this example makes sense: my son loves icing, but not cake. So every time he eats a piece of cake, he ruins it by licking the icing off and leaving the cake. This is analogous to what happens when sexual activity takes place before or outside the context of marriage: it licks the icing off the cake, ruining it.

We’ll talk more about this subject in a later sermon, but for now we just need to see that God’s pattern, negatively, is that sex is not to be practiced outside of the marriage union and that, positively, it is to be enjoyed inside the marriage union. It is a good and beautiful thing that is not to be neglected (1 Corinthians 7:3-5). That is God’s design.

iv) Covenant Love

The other thing that is meant by their becoming “one flesh” and their being “naked and…not ashamed” is the reality of covenant love. “One flesh” is covenant language. This is to be a union that is inseparable; a union that is permanent. That is how Jesus interprets this phrase in Matthew 19:3-6. He says that God created us male and female to become “one flesh” in marriage. Since two people who are married are “no longer two but one flesh,” no man should separate what God has joined together. The implication is that “one flesh” implies permanence of the marriage union. They are becoming something that should not be separated again. That’s covenant.

Covenant love is also seen in their being “naked and…not ashamed.” This does mean sex, but it also means so much more. Their nakedness is a symbol for the absence of shame. There is complete transparency between them. There is no guilt. There is no pride to move them to hide anything. There is nothing to hide. There is no mistrust. It says, “I am completely comfortable being vulnerable before you.” That is what happens when someone is committed to loving you in covenant. Piper is so helpful here. He says the reason there is no shame is not because they had perfect bodies, but because of the presence of covenant love. “The first way to be shame-free is to be perfect; the second way to be shame free is based on the gracious nature of covenant love. In the first case, there is no shame because we’re flawless. In the second case, there is no shame because covenant love covers a multitude of flaws (1 Peter 4:8, 1 Corinthians 13:6).” He goes on to say, “Marriage was designed from the beginning to display the new covenant between Christ and the church.” “The very essence of this covenant is that Christ passes over the sins of His bride. His bride is free from shame not because she is perfect, but because she has no fear that her lover will condemn her or shame her because of her sin.”[2] True, there are no flaws or sins to look past or worry about here in Genesis 2:18-24, but “the eventual exercise of that covenant love was God’s design.” So the pattern again is covenant love, for one spouse to say to the other, “You can be completely transparent before me physically, spiritually, and emotionally. You don’t have to hide anything or be ashamed of anything, no matter how ugly, or silly, or sinful. You can trust me to love you in and through all of it.”

v) Companionship

Have you ever noticed in reading Genesis 1-2 that there is only one thing that God says is “not good” in paradise? He says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (18). God then creates the woman to remedy this one deficiency in paradise. Now God’s saying this does not mean that it is not good for anyone to be single. That would contradict the teaching and the ministry of both Jesus and Paul. But this does mean that it is not good for anyone of us to go at life alone. We need God, who is a friend that sticks closer than a brother and we need the companionship of others, whether that be in marriage or in the friendships and relationships that we cultivate in the body of Christ.

When it comes to marriage, God’s design is for it to be a most intimate and romantic companionship. We see several things that companionship in marriage is in this passage. First, it is fulfilling. I think one of the reasons that God parades these animals before Adam after telling Him that He would make a “helper fit for him” was to show Adam that there was not a helper fit for him in all creation. He was alone. In one sense, God wanted Adam to feel lonely so He could fill that loneliness up with a wife that he would now appreciate more than he would have had he not been lonely. It is tragic when someone who is married feels lonely after many years. We are not meant to feel lonely in marriage. Secondly, it is transparent. Again, this is part of what is symbolized in being “naked and…not ashamed.” Thirdly, it is compassionate and caring. She will be “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (23). When she hurts, he will hurt because to hurt her is to hurt him. Her pain is his pain and her joy is his joy.

Finally, it is romantic. To use a word from Bambi, Adam is “twitterpated.” Remember, God has paraded all these animals before Adam to show him that he is alone. Then God puts Adam to sleep, performs a surgical operation on him, takes out one his ribs, from which he will make Adam’s bride. When Adam wakes up, God brings this beautiful, naked woman to him. Adam says, “Whoa…Man!” and that is how woman gets her name! Just kidding, but he does sing her a poem on the spot. Husbands, when was the last time you wrote your wife a letter or a poem or a song? We think that is just silly stuff we do when we are dating, but here we see it being an essential part of God’s design. What I mean is that we are to cultivate romance.

vi) Priority of the Marriage Union over the Parent/Child Union

We see also here that God’s pattern for marriage is for a man to “leave his father and mother” and to “hold fast to his wife” (24). This means that the marriage union of a husband and wife is to take priority over any parent/child union. There are two places this is to be applied. The first one is between a couple and their parents. Their relationship with one another takes priority now over their relationship with their parents. The second place this is to be applied is between a couple and their children. Their relationship is also to take priority over their relationship with their children. This is important to remember in a normal family and especially in a mixed family.

So at a bare minimum, we have the pattern established that marriage is a monogamous, heterosexual covenant union entered into before God and consummated by sexual intercourse, in which the covenant partners experience intimate companionship as a new union set apart from their parental bonds. Again, this all fits into the backdrop of man and woman’s creation in God’s image to steward and fill the earth by procreation.

2) The Pattern of the First Marriage Establishes a Complementary View of Manhood and Womanhood

Complementarianism means that men and women both bear the image of God and are therefore equal in their personhood and worth, but differ in their distinct roles, which complement each other. It celebrates both equality between men and women and the beneficial differences between men and women. I want to be clear here: regardless of what our culture says, the Bible does not teach unqualified equality between men and women. We are equal in some ways, but we are not in other ways. Anatomy would be an obvious example, but it runs deeper than that.

If we were to sum up these differences between men and women established here at creation, the word that would sum up men and husbands would be headship and the phrase that would sum up women and wives would be the helpful submission. Genesis 1-2 clearly establish male headship. The man is created first, not the woman (18). The woman came from the man (22). The man names the woman (23). Part of the woman’s purpose in being created was to meet a need for the man (18). She is his equal, but she is also his helper. This is the way that Paul interprets these events in 1 Corinthians 11:3,8-12 and 1 Timothy 2:13 (see Eph. 5:22-33 also). So male headship is at the heart of Biblical manhood and the essence of Biblical womanhood is helpful submission. Let me give you some definitions: “Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.” Helpful submission is“the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.”[3]

This complementary view of men and women does not demean women in any way. She equally bears the image of God (1:27). The stewardship man and woman have over the earth is a joint stewardship (1:28). The point of this animal parade was to show Adam that he had no equal in creation! When God creates woman, we are to learn from this that she is his equal in a way that nothing else in creation is (23). She is NOT seen here as a lowly, degraded, slave-like creature meant to be a man’s property. On the contrary, God is seen here as a loving Father walking this beautiful bride “down the aisle” to her husband (22). Adam is smitten with her (23). She is taken from his side, a place close to his heart to walk beside him and rule the earth along side him as his helper (21-22). If you were to study this Hebrew word for “helper” here, you make a very moving observation: it is used for God sixteen of the nineteen times that it appears in the Old Testament[4] (Ex. 18:4, Ps. 20:2, 33:20, 70:5, 115:9-11, 121:1-2, 146:5). God is called the “helper” of His people. This means that a woman’s role is anything but demeaning; it is glorious.

3) The Pattern of the First Marriage is Rooted in Creation, not in the Curse or in a Culture

This is a very simple, yet very important point. God’s design for marriage is rooted in God’s creative order, before the fall. This first means simply that marriage is God’s idea (and as God’s idea a good idea) and secondly means that this design for marriage is God’s design for marriage in every age. It is to be followed in every culture and at every point in history.

I’ll give one example. If someone flew past me on a highway in Germany and I angrily caught up with them, forced them to pull over, and proceeded to tell them that they were breaking the speed limit because they were driving faster than 55 miles per hour, what would be the problem with that? The problem is that the speed limit is different in Germany. As a matter of fact, the speed limit varies from state to state and from town to town. For many people, that is their understanding of marriage. They dismiss the Biblical design because they think it is the product of ancient culture and since we live in a different one today, we can redefine marriage. Even among Christians, some aspects of manhood and womanhood are thought to be the product of God’s curse in Genesis 3 that need to be redeemed. They think things like headship and submission are products of the fall and that we need to get back to the unqualified equality of the original creation. But what we have seen is that unqualified equality was not part of God’s original creation. These things are rooted in God’s good creative design. And marriage doesn’t find its definition in a given culture. It’s not like the speed limit. Marriage finds its definition in God’s creation order seen here in Genesis 1-2, and that means that it is to be followed in every culture in every age.

4) The First Marriage is Meant to be a Picture of the Last Marriage Between Jesus Christ and His Bride, the church

Remember that we said that when God created the first marriage, He had the last one in mind. That is the point of Ephesians 5:32. We see this in two powerful ways in Genesis 2:18-25. In the husband, we see the first Adam put to sleep and his side opened up and from what comes from his side, God fashions a bride for him. Jesus Christ is called the Last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45. This Last Adam would leave His Father and be put to sleep in death on the cross. A Roman soldier would open up His side and God would take what flowed from His side and with it purchase a bride for Him. But unlike the first Adam, the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, has never and will never fail His bride. He is the Last Adam and He is the greater Adam.

With the woman, remember that I told you that this word “helper” is used mostly for God in the Old Testament. Just as her subordination to her husband didn’t affect her equality with him, we see God, our “helper,” in the New Testament subordinate Himself to human flesh without sacrificing any of His deity to supremely “help” His people on the cross by dying in their place and for their sins. So we have two analogies that teach us the gospel in this first marriage, because that is what the gospel will accomplish: the securing of a bride for God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

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[1] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 31

[2] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 33-34

[3] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 80

[4] Waltke, Bruce K., “Genesis,” pg. 88