In the sermon 'Marriage In The Garden' by David Green, the focus is on the creation of man and woman as described in Genesis chapter 2. The sermon explains that on the sixth day of creation, God noted it was not good for man to be alone, prompting the creation of a 'helper' suitable for Adam, which was Eve. This act established the first marriage, underscoring the divine intention for human companionship and the ideal of marriage as one flesh. The sermon emphasizes the distinct roles and differences between humans and animals, highlighting the unique qualities and responsibilities of humanity. The speaker addresses contemporary challenges to traditional marriage, advocating for the biblical authority on marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Various biblical references are used to support this view, stressing the importance of adhering to God's original design and order for marriage.

Alright, so Genesis chapter 2, your copy of God's Word. Let's go ahead and start verses 18, going down to the end of the chapter. Lord willing we'll finish up chapter 2 tonight. Genesis chapter 2 beginning verse 18 says, then Yahweh God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.

Out of the ground, Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the sky, and he brought each to the man to see what he would call it. Whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. Yahweh God fashioned the rib which he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man.

Then the man said, This one finally is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, because this one was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife. They shall become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Today we want to consider the subject of a marriage in the garden. Marriage in the garden. This portion of God's Word as recorded here begins in an interesting way. Verse 18, then Yahweh God said, then Yahweh God said, way God said. When we think about that and meditate upon it, to whom is he speaking?

Who, who Is he speaking? Who should he speak to at this point? It's not to any created power, But rather this is one of those instances where the triune God is speaking to him that was begotten of himself, the wonderful counselor as we read about in Isaiah. The sort of thing that would have happened in the council halls of eternity past. This we catch a glimpse of here.

Similarly, as we read and studied a little bit, back there in chapter 1 and verse 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God, the God of the Bible, Elohim, Yahweh, the Lord, Adonai, He had no need for man to counsel with. He had no need for angels. This was, This was a consultation that was going on.

No one else was involved. This was with the Godhead. And as he spoke, for the first time in all the history of the world, he says, it is not good. It is not good. Right there on day six, everything else, God saw what he had made and it was good.

God saw what he had made and it was good. And God saw that it was good. And it was repeated over and over for five days. But here, in the midst of day six, He says, it is not good. And it wasn't because of something that he did.

It wasn't because God had left something off. It wasn't because he made a mistake in creation. If he would have left things as it were, it would have been good. And don't misunderstand this though. He wasn't making things up as he went along.

This is written for our benefit. He had a perfect plan in place from the very beginning. And that perfect plan included a man and a woman. All of the animals that had been made, they had a male and female. There was a pattern, male and female, male and female.

But Adam, Adam was alone. And right there on day six, Yahweh God declared, I will make an helper suitable for him. Have you ever wondered about that word help meet in the King James? What's a help meet? It means a helper.

A helper suitable. A helper intended for. A helper meet for Adam. She was made for him. And this is what we find as we open up the text here.

Out of the ground, verse 19 says, Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky. He made each and he brought each to the man to see what he would call it. Whatever the man called the living creature that was its name and the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found an helper suitable for him." At first glance there seems to be a contradiction here. It seems to be something going on from chapter one to chapter two, but there's really no contradiction. What's going on is Chapter one gives us the overview, chapter two gives us the details.

Now chapter two, the way that it's worded sometimes in some translations, some people have thought that as God created the animals, They were created in front of Adam, and Adam named them as God created them, but that's not what was going on here. What's happening is The animals were created prior to Adam, just like we read in chapter 1. And when Adam was created, Yahweh, God brought these animals that he had already created to get their names. Now he did this not because God couldn't have named them. He did this I believe so that Adam could become familiar with the animals and so that he could better obey and fulfill the commandment that was given.

If you remember back in chapter 1, verse 27, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth. If he's going to have dominion over all of these things, what better way than for them to be brought to him and for him to name them. In the created order of things, the animals are not made to be masters over us, we're made to be masters over them.

That's why, that's why Isaiah, I mean Josiah, I'm looking right at him, Josiah can have a bearded dragon and put it in a cage, But a bearded dragon can't have a Josiah and put him in a cage, you see. We're given this creation mandate. And Adam was given this so that he could see the animals but also to emphasize something else, something that gets missed in our world and that is that there is a difference, There's a difference between Adam and the animals. And so, we have the same creator, yes. And yes, there are some similarities.

For instance, the primates, the monkeys, the chimpanzees, all that. They may have hands with five digits on them and so on and so forth. But there is a difference. There's a difference between Adam and the animals. We didn't descend from the animal kind.

They're not our relatives. There is a marked difference between them and us. Now some people when they read this text they say well how in the world could Adam have named all the animals in one day? If we take the days of creation literally, we do. How could Adam have named them all in one day?

Well, first of all, you'd be surprised how much work you can actually get done when you're not distracted by television or an iPad or whatever else we got going on in our world today. I don't have nothing else to do but to name the animals. And so if you have a task, you're not distracted by anything else, you can get a lot done in a single day. But also, Also, we need to remember that Adam did not need to name all of the animals. So while we may think about all of the many creatures that we're familiar with, remember not every animal was named.

So in the text we find he named the birds of the air. He named the cattle or the domesticatable animals. That's what cattle means there. And he named the beasts of the field. A missing were the fish, he didn't have to name the fish, he wasn't told to name the beasts of the earth, nor was he told to name the creeping things.

Now the other thing to remember is that we've seen an explosion, so to speak, of different variations within the kinds. And so when God created the dog kind, for instance, he didn't have to create the poodle and the chihuahua and the labrador and the wolf, on and on we go. He may have just created one kind of dog, like maybe some sort of a wolf kind, and from there, their descendants became the different breeds of dogs. And so it wouldn't have been as complicated as what it is now, But lastly, I would say this. You and I, we have trouble remembering the names of animals sometimes.

And certainly to try to name an animal, a bunch of animals, and then to remember them. What kind of expectation is that? You get a job and you're first day on the job they say name all the animals. So, hold on, I just got here, right? How am I going to remember all of this?

Can I have a piece of paper and a pen? Oh, those haven't been invented yet. What am I going to do? How am I going to remember all this? Well, Adam was a man who was created in such a way with full brain capacity.

The effects of sin had not come on this earth. And so what he handled in a few hours, you and I might take weeks, months, or years to try to remember, But the reality is we don't even use all of our brain capacity. And a lot of that is because of sin. A lot of that is because of the distractions that we have in this world. What language he used, I don't know.

I mean Josiah asked me the other day if, I think it was the lion, right? If the lion was what Adam named it, I don't know. A lot of animals, I'm sure that the names have been passed on down through the years into our own language because we're all descendants from Adam. But there are some animals that would have been forgotten about and then rediscovered. So like some of the dinosaur kinds, and some of that sort of thing.

If he had a name for those, we wouldn't know about it, because they were forgotten for a while. No doubt, Adam was impressed with the variety of God's creation. Even in the fallen world that we live in, it's hard not to be impressed with the variety of what our God has given to us. You look up at the sky and see the birds or look at the animals and just just know that there's great variety in God's wonderful creation. But as he looked at that and he viewed all of the different kinds of animals there was no one like him No one like him And he knew that he knew that there was a difference Verse 21 So Yahweh God Verse 21.

So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place." Isn't this great because here Adam's just been introduced he's named all these animals maybe hundreds, perhaps even thousands of animals. Now Yahweh God gives to him a deep sleep, Deep sleep. Now there's sleep that's good and then there's sleep that's really good and and you and I we work a few hours. I've been tired lately because I've had some extra work going on, but you feel so good to lay down and get some rest.

But here we find, here we find Adam resting, but more than that, More than that, this is the very first surgery that was ever done. And how fitting it is that in this surgery, It was performed by none other than the great physician, our great God Yahweh, as he took the man that he had created, whose name is Adam by the way, and what does Adam mean? Names mean things in the Old Testament. Adam means man. And so he took the man, Adam, and he put him to sleep, I put him to sleep, caused this deep sleep to fall upon him.

He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. It was perfect. It was perfect surgery. It's perfect surgery. And in verse 22, Yahweh God fashioned the rib she had taken from the man into a woman.

And he brought her to the man. As I said this is the first marriage in the garden. Not much is left from the Garden of Eden. As I said last week, you know, We don't know where the Garden of Eden is or was, as it were. But there's this one relic that has survived, passed down through all generations, into all cultures, and it's still very good for today and that is marriage.

As one writer said, the author of marriage is God. It is his ordinance. He it is that by his ordinance has made of two one flesh." So we see as Yahweh took the rib from Adam and made Eve with it. Now, some people get this idea that that this can't be true because men and women have the same number of ribs. So they said well this this can't be true.

But understand something. If your If your daddy didn't have a finger, does that mean you'd be born with no finger? No. No, you'd be born with all your fingers. So what happened to Adam is just what happened to Adam.

So don't fear if you count your ribs and you count your wife's ribs and say, oh, well, we all have the same amount of ribs. The Bible is true, absolutely true. We find here that there's there's absolute unity of the human race. You know, we have a man and we have a woman. Now think about this.

She was created for the man. Which means that she complimented him. She was a helper. She was made for him. And we see that even up until this very day.

Men and women are created for each other. In order to believe in evolution, you would have to believe that separately over millions, billions of years, however long it took, that a man evolved with all his male parts and functions and all that and somewhere else over millions of years a woman evolved with all of her woman parts. And in the process of time, Those two actually were able to come together and have children. That's a lot of chance, probability, and maybe, hope so, might have, could have, perhaps. All without any kind of record, evidence in any fossil record or anything.

God's Word tells us how it happened. Tells us how it happened. And he made it. He made them both perfectly with the ability to reproduce The way that they, the way that he intended. Why a rib?

Well, there's a lot of practical reasons why he might have done this. You know, He could have used any other part of the body I suppose, but a rib. One of the old Puritan writers said, well she wasn't of the foot nor of the head, for she's neither superior nor inferior to man. In her creation, she was on the same level with God. In their relationship, the man should not lord over her, nor should he put her in charge.

The rib, he went on to write, comes from out of his side showing us that she is to walk beside him. It's also under his arm picturing the protection the man is to give the woman, and it's also near his heart. She is to be loved by him." What a great picture that we have just thinking about the rib and why it wasn't something else. Obviously last Lord's Day I was in First Corinthians talking about marriage psalm and I couldn't have intersected these two sermons any better if I had planned it. But you know, we go into the New Testament and throughout the Old Testament into the New Testament, it's always the same.

Marriage is attacked in our world today in a horrible way. Some say it's just tradition. Some say it is just a relic that we ought to leave in the past, that these are new days now. And certainly we hear a lot about men and women that just kind of get together, shack up or live together and that sort of thing. We hear about one-night stands and all that sort of thing.

We hear about men wanting to marry other women. Women wanting to marry women. So marriage has been redefined in a terribly disgusting way with the homosexual movement and all that sort of thing. But the Bible is the absolute authority on this. Without the Bible, this whole thing is brought to a to a battle of debates over opinions.

So I might have my opinion, someone else has their opinion, and there's no way to settle it. But we aren't left with just our opinions, we have the Bible, the Word of God. Sadly, sometimes even some so-called church leaders get fearful about this sort of thing. I heard of a church leader one time who was asked why he was against gay marriage. His answer was because down through the ages, culture after culture has taught that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Well, that may be true, but where he should have started, He should have started with the word of God. Because if marriage is determined by cultures, by laws, by opinions, then anything can go. But God has not changed. This is His ordinance. He set it up and we must not change it.

Over in Matthew chapter 19, Matthew chapter 19 and verses 4 through 6. He answered and said, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. When questioned over a controversial issue in his day, Jesus took them straight back to the Bible. And that's where we should go as well.

Over in 1st Timothy chapter 5. 1st Timothy chapter 5 and verse 14. As Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, therefore, I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, give the enemy no opportunity for reviling, for some have already turned aside after Satan. This is so important that when the house, when the home gets out of order, you know Paul is saying here that some have already turned aside after Satan. There's an issue that they should get married first.

Bear children, keep house. This is God's order. This is God's order. In fact, in Hebrews chapter 13, the writer of Hebrews put it this way. Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 4.

Marriage is to be held in honor among all. The marriage bed is to be undefiled. For the sexually immoral and adulterers God will judge. The marriage, Marriage is what? Between a male and a female.

That's the only true marriage that there is. And the Bible is clear, crystal clear on this. I was mentioning on Sunday, I'll mention it again. The man and the woman in the Garden of Eden, the woman designed for the man, They were designed for each other. So it is in marriage.

Anything outside of marriage, any kind of sexual relations outside of marriage, is a sin before Almighty God. Before Almighty God. And so we must believe the scriptures are true. We must are true, we must hold this practice in its entirety. In chapter 2 of Genesis in verse 23, then the man said this one finally is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

This one shall be called woman because this one was taken out of man. She's called woman because she came from man. Over in the New Testament 11. 1st Corinthians chapter 11. Verse 8, For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man.

Woman, but woman for man. For indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake." And of course he's presenting an argument for the head covering as he goes on, therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. And so, So in this argument that Paul is giving here, he brings up the fact that in the created order that the man was created first and then the woman. And so all of these things are brought out for a reason. Now what happens when you go out of order?

Well when you go out of order from God's very good creation there's disorder, chaos, ruin even. This is true whether you have a relationship with someone of the same sex or if you get into a relationship with the opposite sex, get into a marriage, and somehow the wife becomes the head of the house, and that sort of thing, or whatever it might be. Any kind of getting out of God's created order is wrong. And it never ends well. Verse 24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." I don't think that Adam was speaking here.

In fact, I believe that the LSB translator did a good job by putting the quotation marks in verse 23 and not carrying it on. As we know in the King James translation, there are no quotation marks. So some people when they read this they think well verse 24 is a continuation of what Adam said. I don't believe that. For one, as smart of a fellow as Adam was, we got to remember there were no mothers or fathers at this point.

So he would have had no concept of leaving them. But This is where we kind of think things through. Even if you're still reading out of the King James, you think these things through and understand that even though Adam wouldn't have known what was going on, our perfect God, Yahweh, he knew what was happening, He knew what would be going on. He knew that someday, someday Adam and Eve would have some children And there'd be an issue if this wasn't brought up, and that is, oh, this is my baby boy. I don't want him to leave mommy, right?

What do you mean get married and leave the house? I've got things for him to do here. God has an order that he's established from the very beginning. A man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his own wife. They become one flesh.

This idea of one flesh is big. It's a big deal because those they are to become one and it's consummated in their intercourse as we see we read about in 1st Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 as Paul wrote to the church Corinth, I preached on this and bring it up again because he says here in verses 16 and 17, Do you not know that one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For he says, the two shall become one flesh, for the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him." And so this oneness in marriage is a beautiful thing, but oneness with anything else is a sin. Is a sin.

Indeed, many a life has been ruined because of going this wrong way and joining up with a prostitute or someone who is not your wife, joining up with someone who's not your husband, that sort of thing. Not only is there the shame of it all, the sin of it all, but also there's a great risk of STDs and all that sort of thing as well. And while our world might say, oh well, safe sex is where it's at, the Bible says abstinence before marriage. And when you're married, only with your spouse. That's the biblical teaching.

Why? Why? Because God knows what's best. Genesis chapter 2 and verse 25 says, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Nothing in the garden up until this point had happened to arouse mankind's sense of guilt or shame.

Everything was in harmony the way that it should have been. Had there not been any sin, had sin not entered God's beautiful garden, his beautiful world, it may have continued that way forever and ever. But as we'll see in chapter 3, there was a disturbance. And so, we'll stop there being thankful tonight, though, for God's very good creation. He has done all things well.