Who he really is. I want to share this morning from Genesis, but before I do, I want to tell you about a gift that I was given, um, which is, gee, over 30 years ago now. Actually, probably one of the most amazing gifts I've ever received in my life.
Um, the incredible thing about this gift is that after nearly 30 years, you'd think that something would wear out after 30 years, right? I mean, cheap, because no matter what you've got, but this gift has actually got better. It works better now than when I was first given this gift, and I appreciate it and I enjoy it more now than the day that I was first given this gift.
And if you're really sharp, you'll know that I'm talking about the gift of marriage. It is a gift that God has given me specifically in the person of Mishi, but it is a gift that truly, for more than 30 years, has been the richest source of joy outside of my relationship with Jesus. So just to make that clear, but it's in Him that we experience what we do in marriage, and it has been the richest source of joy in my life.
It has been the greatest delight and has also given birth, literally, to two very precious children whom we love and are the delight of our lives. It is a relationship that has shaped me more than any other. I have been more frustrated in marriage than in any other relationship. It has really been, and I know you're all laughing because you've experienced that as well. It's the highs and the lows, but this gift of marriage is something which is so, so precious to me.
I honestly can say that it is something that I treasure, um, more than anything else in my life in the person of Mishi, other than, as I said, what we have in Jesus. And the most amazing thing is that not only has this gift not worn out after over 30 years, but it's going to last until one of us or both of us die or Jesus comes home. It's an amazing thing.
There's not much in this life that we can say will last for the rest of our lives. Man, it doesn't matter how good the pair of shoes that you've gotten, at some point in time, they might need retrading or might need to be thrown away. But this gift of marriage is something which is really, really precious.
And so I want to speak this morning on the magnificence of marriage. The magnificence of marriage. Why is that important for us today, Church? Why is it specifically important? It is for this very simple reason that, as we will see in Genesis, that marriage is one of the primary building blocks of society.
It is the relationship upon which other relationships rest and grow from, and many of the problems that we face in society are able to be traced back to problems in marriage. Because where there are healthy marriages, there are healthy families. Where there are healthy families, there are healthy communities. With their healthy communities, there are healthy societies and cultures. But the opposite is sadly true.
And so when we look at marriage, it's with that in mind. I do want to say this morning, because I'm very aware this morning that there are a number of you that are either single, have never been married, or are possibly single because you're divorced, or possibly single because your husband or your wife has sadly passed away.
And so I do want to make this very clear, and I might repeat it again, but right up front to say this: that this is no condemnation of anyone that finds themselves to be single for whatever reason that may be. The point is not pointing fingers at someone who is not single. The point is to elevate marriage to the place and position that God intends it to be. That is my sole purpose in doing that, that we would have a high view of what marriage is.
Because sadly, we have troubled marriages, many of them. We have, and I suppose every one of us at some point goes through trouble in our marriages, but we don't live with trouble in our marriages. We ought not to if we're under the rule and reign of Jesus. There are dysfunctional marriages, and there have been marriages that have broken down, and the result of that, what that has led to, is that there's a very low view of marriage generally.
And this is borne out by the fact that actually less people are being married now than ever before in human history, percentage-wise. Less people are being married now. So because of this, marriage isn't valued, and it's desired less and less.
So what is really important for us to look at is what is a Biblical picture of marriage, restoring what might be a distorted view of what marriage is because of what we've seen possibly in mum and dad, or distorted because of what we've experienced in an unhealthy marriage.
But when we look at what Scripture teaches about marriage, we have this picture of what God has designed and how He's designed and created it to work so that we would restore a godly high view and purpose of marriage. Yes, I must be honest with you, when I got married, the purpose of marriage was my happiness. Seriously. And I'm not alone in that, I'm sure.
I was not yet born again. I was an incredibly selfish young man, and I married Mishi because I thought she'd be good for me. I had no concern about me really being good for her. Maybe some weight was in the mix; it wasn't like I was completely unaware of that. But my primary reason for marriage was the purpose of being happy, and Mishi was the one who was going to make me happy.
I thank God that in His mercy and in His grace and in His kindness, He has changed that view to a more biblical picture. And I say this with humility but with firm conviction that we've enjoyed so many of the blessings that marriage is when we have come back to doing things more of the way God intended for us.
And so my hope is that as I share today, it will do the same for you. We know that foundations are of critical importance, right? Marie, you recently built, and I imagine that after they'd thrown the foundations, they wanted to make very sure that they were set and settled before they started building on them.
Because this is true: you can use the highest quality building materials, you can have the best builder, you can take as long as you want to complete that task, but if your foundations are not secure and not set and haven't been laid properly, then at some point in time, that building is going to fail.
Some of the major disasters that we've had around the world is when massive building projects, there have been corners cut in the foundations, and it's a matter of time before those buildings come crashing down, sadly with disastrous consequences.
So as we look at the foundation of marriage, it's really important that we look at what Genesis says about marriage. We're going right back to the beginning because this is where God lays those foundations for marriage. This is where He sets things in place and says, "This is how I have designed and created marriage to work."
And it's interesting because Genesis, the Lord kind of paints in broad brush strokes of marriage, but then later on in the New Testament, we see these wonderful passages that kind of flesh this out and give so much more detail into, like, how does this practically look as a husband or a wife?
And so we're just going to look at Genesis this morning, and then later on, possibly next week and the week after, we'll see how God expands on this incredible union of marriage. Genesis shows us God's definition and intention for marriage before the fall, before sin entered the picture, before marriage was so distorted, before we started redefining what marriage is and reinterpreting what marriage is.
We've got things called marriage these days, unions that are called marriage that bear no resemblance to the marriage that God set as a foundation and a pattern for marriage. And we'll be going into that over the next few weeks. It's an unpolluted, undiluted view of marriage that God gives us in Genesis that is absolutely vital to a healthy society.
Why bother? Why bother? I've got a fairly happy marriage. I'm cool. I'm good to go. Well, have you ever thought about this: that the way that we live our marriages will either make marriage attractive or unattractive to others? It will either give hope or cause hopelessness to others who are married or are not yet married and desire to be married.
As followers of Christ, those who bear His name, Church, we have the responsibility, if we are married, to live in a way that we make marriage as precious as it should be, as attractive as it should be to others, and that we realize the vital importance of that.
So that our marriages would be an example that others would want to emulate. That when they look at your marriage as a follower of Christ, there would be hope if they're going through difficulty or there's trouble in the marriage, as they would be able to look at your marriage and think, "But there's hope. There's hope."
And possibly even reach out for some help or advice or counsel in marriage. And so we bear a huge responsibility in our marriages in terms of how we live. You might ask the question today, "But I'm single, I'm divorced, I'm widowed, or a widower. What does this have to do with me?"
Well, maybe if you're single, it might well awaken a desire for marriage. If we have a look at the biblical picture of marriage and you've seen maybe an unbiblical one, it might be something that just stirs in your desire, "God, actually, I do want to be married. I see what this is. I see how it can be, and Lord, I would love that for me."
It might also settle in your heart that you don't have the desire to be married again and to know that that's okay. There are many people that live a happy, fulfilled single life. And in saying that, can I say this: that marriage does in no means equate to completeness or superiority or value or importance or greater purpose.
If I can maybe put that in a more simple way: if you are single, it does not mean that you're incomplete or inferior or that you have a lesser purpose or are less important or are in any way less valuable than someone who is married. Because our identity and our image is in Christ, and when He made male and female, He made them complete, and then there was marriage.
And so I say that for two reasons: hopefully just to settle that in your heart, but also when we speak of marriage, that it doesn't somehow give the enemy an opportunity just to whisper some unhelpful, deceitful lies into your ear.
If you're single, it might also help you to see the importance of marriage and to pray for those who are married. When was the last time you, as a single person, prayed for marriages to really fully represent what it is that God has intended marriage to be?
And so the message itself might not be specifically for you, but I trust it will be encouraging and helpful for you nonetheless. I've asked Mishi to read the passage this morning, and it's from Genesis chapter 2. It'll be from verse 1 through to verse 25.
Thank you, my darling. Yes, I am a sick. Good morning, Church. Thank you, Father, for Your word. It is precious to us.
Genesis chapter 2, verse 1: "So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. On the seventh day, God had completed His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it He rested from all His work of creation.
These are the records of the heavens and the earth concerning their creation. At the time that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, no shrub of the field had yet grown on the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.
But mist would come up from the earth and water all the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there He placed the man He had formed. The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river went out from Eden to water the garden. From there it divided and became the source of four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon, which flows through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. Gold from that land is pure; bedelium and onyx are also there.
The name of the second river is Gihon, which flows through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which runs east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die."
Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him." The Lord God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky and brought each to the man to see what he would call it.
And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal. But for the man, no helper was found corresponding to him.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. Then the Lord God made the rib He had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man.
And the man said, "This one at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. This one will be called woman, for she was taken from man." This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
Both the man and his wife were naked yet felt no shame. Thank you, my sweetheart.
First things first: marriage is God's idea. It's not some clever concept that we as men came up with. And there's so much of what God does; there's so much mystery to it. It's just sheer mystery is a marriage. This whole one flesh understanding is quite mystical, isn't it?
I mean, it takes us a lifetime to try and figure out what this is. But the point is this: the Lord is the Creator and the designer of marriage. He knows exactly how He has created this to work. If we're going to learn about marriage, it needs to be from the designer. If we're going to learn it from anyone else, it's going to be a flawed understanding of that.
And so what God says about marriage is the most important thing about marriage. It's a process that God goes through, and it's quite amazing because we're not told how long Adam was alone for. Have you ever thought about that? Like, how long was it that Adam was alone for?
It couldn't have been so short because he realized that he was lonely. And there are some people, some very clever people, I guess, that have figured out that if Adam named all of the animals that God brought to him, it would have probably taken at least 40 days.
Because Adam wasn't just looking at a creature and randomly giving a name. In these days, the creature would be named for what it did, like what was its function and purpose. And so this took some time for Adam to probably observe, to find out, "Hey, what's going on? What does this creature do?"
But in doing that, he was also working the garden. And so it couldn't have been just a day, a day, and then all of a sudden Adam's lonely. It would have been a period of time for Adam to realize that.
But as he is looking at all of these different animals and as he is observing them and as he is naming them, he's also seeing, "But hey, they all have helpers, male and female. There's a togetherness here." And it was at that point that he realizes that he doesn't have a helper. No suitable helper was found among the animals. None of those would be a suitable foil, if you like.
And he came to realize that actually he needs something and someone different from what the animals were able to offer, someone like him. But we know that the Lord's not caught out, right? Not caught by surprise. And He didn't create Eve because Adam was just lonely.
It wasn't an emotional decision that God made; it was a very intentional, very thoughtful, and purposeful decision to make Eve. And so what does He do? When He puts Adam to sleep, somebody once said just to get him out of the way so he didn't mess things up. I don't know; he was still all right.
But the Lord puts Adam to sleep, He removes a rib from his side, and He closes up the flesh. What a beautiful description of God doing this work as Adam sleeps. And then the Lord brings Eve and presents her to Adam.
And that Hebrew word is "Isha," and I wonder if there isn't maybe exactly what it must have felt like: "Wow, wow! At last, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, someone like me, a suitable helper for me found nowhere else, someone who matches my very nature."
And God creates this beautiful, beautiful vision named Eve. She was the help that Adam needed. Can you imagine that God is helping man through women? And nothing about that has changed throughout the centuries. What a beautiful thought!
God is helping man through woman. Ladies, from the get-go, we see here that your God-given role is to be a helper. If I can just say in very simple terms, to be a helper means to be helpful. To be helpful in your marriage, are you being helpful to your husband?
Not just standing, pointing out his faults, criticizing him, recognizing where his shortcomings are, but actually helping him to do what God has called him to do. And we'll get into the other side of that coin a little later on because they are two sides.
We see from the get-go that woman was created from man, and Paul revisits this in later letters to the church, how woman was formed from man. There's a divine order that God establishes that has nothing to do with value but has everything to do with His created order and structure of society, of marriage, and all that follows from that.
And so being a man or a woman doesn't make you of any more or less value or importance, but it does assign to us a God-given role that is very different. And I think if we as husbands and wives are able to embrace those roles as God defines them, not driven by some broken society that's trying to bring about inequality, which has been established, God established this from the beginning of time.
That was lost through the fall. Jesus comes and He re-establishes this, the value of women being the equal value of man, but assigned different roles—same, same, but different. And so Adam's made us to be a very special creation. She used to be a helper.
Isn't it interesting that God chooses from the side, a rib, not from the head, not from the foot? And maybe that is something which is important for us to recognize, that it's taken from the side of Adam so that we would understand that Eve is alongside the one she is called to help.
Not from the head that she would be above Adam, not from the feet that she would be anything like a servant, a slave, or subordinate, or inferior in any way, but alongside. How beautiful is that? Marriage is designed with a God-given purpose, and that purpose is so very important for us to understand, Church.
As I mentioned, when I married Mishi, this purpose was the furthest thing from my mind. That it has certainly come into view a lot more since I was saved and got a better understanding, I think, of what God has created marriage to be.
And I think there is a huge importance in us knowing what their purpose is because it really does help us understand the responsibility that we have, the privilege that God has called us to, to partner with Him in this purpose.
And that first purpose is multiplication, procreation, to fill the earth with children of God who will know Him, who will worship Him, who will love Him above everything, will partner with Him to subdue and rule over the earth under God's authority.
To subdue, which really means to tame it or make it serve purposes. And that's God's intention, is that we would be a people that procreate, filling the earth with those who, under God's authority, will do His will in the way that He wants it to be done.
Procreation, man, that's not a one-man job, is it? Able how independent Adam might have been, procreation is not a one-man job, right? There, guys, we realize men in marriage, we need women.
And so that is an incredibly important part that we don't become prideful, we don't become arrogant, but we understand our weaknesses. We understand that actually we need our wives. There's a reason why God has created them, not just for procreation, but certainly as part of it.
That's also why we see that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. And I can say that again, Church. Society doesn't get to determine what marriage is. We don't get to redefine what marriage is.
If God's intention, which we clearly see when He gives Adam and Eve the commission to go forth and multiply, it cannot be a man and a man, a woman and a woman. Marriage is inherently a man and a woman. If it isn't, it can't fulfill God's purpose for marriage.
It doesn't meet the requirements that God has set for marriage to be a marriage which is one man with one woman for one lifetime. It sounds strange that we even have to say that, but we live in a day and age where we have tried to twist and distort and redefine marriage to be something that suits our sinful, depraved natures, and thereby reducing marriage to something way short, way different, and aberration, really.
It absolutely doesn't resemble anything of what Biblical marriage does. And so we bear that responsibility to live in a way that is truly appealing and attractive to others and in a way that is truthful.
For us to be gracious to those that believe differently, that believe marriage can be between a man and a woman, I'm sorry, a woman and a woman, and a man and a man, or a tree and a person, or a dog and a person, or a fictional character and a person.
We've got to be well-equipped to deal with that, but we can't ever move away from what the biblical definition of marriage is. Because if we say that we love people, how can we not speak truth?
How can somebody who believes that way of thinking, I mean, taking it to an extreme, with somebody who marries their dog or their horse, how can we say, "You know what? That's okay for them. If that's what they believe, that's cool. Like, it's not harming anybody."
Well, it actually is. It's dreadfully harming to the person who is living under a delusion. And how can that possibly be good for them? How can it possibly be good that we leave them with that delusion?
I don't know about the animals. I, I, geez, I don't even want to go there. Poor animals, they get no choice to marry this person. The next thing they know, their name is on the blooming marriage certificate. Like, how did that even happen?
I was quite happy in the field and the paddock running around, and I found myself married to some nut job. It's really, it's crazy.
on Nov 05, 2023
