The Creation of Marriage and Sexual Knowing

[0:00] Father, we give you thanks and praise for your word. We give you thanks and praise that your word is true. We give you thanks and praise that even when your word is very hard to us and seems to confront things in our lives that are close to our heart, we thank you, Father, that you speak not because you take delight in the death of a sinner, but you speak because your heart's desire is that we will turn from our wickedness and live.

[0:30] That you desire, Father, to redeem and restore us in the person and work of your Son. So, Father, turn our hearts to Jesus. Grip us with what he did for us upon the cross as we listen to your word.

[0:44] And this we ask in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen. Please be seated. So, as many of you know, I have several coffee places where I'm a regular.

[1:00] And in these places where I'm a regular, people eventually, the baristas in particular, but also some of the other regulars eventually learn that I'm a pastor. And we often have conversations.

[1:12] And many of the different baristas in the coffee shops that I go to, I eventually invite them to come to my church. I mean, they'll ask me where I'm the pastor. And I was thinking about this a lot yesterday as I was working on my sermon some more.

[1:26] And this morning as I was driving in, what it would be like, and I don't know, I have no idea whether one of the baristas that I've invited have come this morning. I can't really see you very well. The combination of the lights in my glasses, which are for reading, not for seeing in distance.

[1:42] But as you probably know, many people who work in the coffee shops that I frequent are gay or lesbian. And identify very closely with that, the LGBTQ and other letters community.

[1:58] And I was thinking, especially as I was driving in this morning, what would it be like if this is the Sunday that they come? Because whether you realize it or not, the text which Emily read, which we're going to look at right now, is a text which speaks very directly to the biblical understanding of marriage and of sexual knowing and of sexual identity.

[2:22] But that's what we're going to look at. And so it's really important to keep a particular thing in mind. And by God's providence, it happened to me on Monday this week. There's these two really lovely older men who come into one of the coffee shops.

[2:35] There's one particular coffee shop where I do most of my sermon prep. And there's these two older men, lovely guys from out in the country. And they come in, you know, once or twice a week. They've gotten to know me.

[2:46] We chat. They know I'm a pastor. They never ask anything at all about spiritual things. Just once we've had a conversation about something. But they're just very, very, very friendly. And so this past Monday, one of them came and tapped me on the shoulder.

[2:58] I was, you know, focused. My first crack at Genesis 2, 18 to 25. And one of them tapped me on the shoulder and said, George, does that book have me in it?

[3:11] And this is one of those times. Somebody must have been praying for me Monday morning. Because I said, without any hesitation, I said, well, actually, it does talk about you in here. And he was surprised. He said, well, what does it say?

[3:22] And it says, you're in far greater danger than you can possibly imagine. And you have far greater hope than you've ever dreamed of. And I wish I could say that we then had a spiritual conversation.

[3:34] But he just laughed and went and sat down with his buddy. But you never know what seeds are planted. And that's true. This text and the Bible as a whole warns us that we're in far greater danger than we can ever really, really, really understand.

[3:49] But also that we're far more loved and have a far greater hope than even our most outrageous dreams have never even come close to it. So it would be a great help to me if you open your Bible.

[4:01] And we're going to look at this text. Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 to 25. And it's the second creation story. And it begins, the whole second creation story begins in verse 4.

[4:15] But we're sort of skipping that early part. We looked at that a couple of weeks ago at church. By the way, if you need Bibles, there's some Bibles over here. You should just feel free to get up and get a copy of a Bible so that you can follow along.

[4:26] And what's happened is that this is the second creation story. It's focusing more on the creation of Adam and Eve. And in the first part, Adam is created, but not the woman.

[4:39] And, you know, other things are sort of said about how Adam is created. But then in verse 18, the story continues. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

[4:55] I will make him a helper fit for him. And just sort of pause. That little three-word, four-word, helper fit for him, is an important idea.

[5:05] It's going to be repeated in another verse or so, which shows that it's an important idea to try to get our minds around. So just the man has been created. That's how the story goes. But it's not good that the man is alone.

[5:19] In fact, there's a little bit of a tension. If you've been reading from the beginning, Genesis 1, and then you read this, you'll see in Genesis 1 that time after time and time it says, It is good. It was good. It was good.

[5:30] It was good. It was very good. And now we see this sort of second look, like from a second perspective about how God has created, that the man has been created, but there's a not good.

[5:43] The work of creation hasn't been completed because the man's alone. And in particular, there is a helper fit for him. I'll talk about that more in a moment.

[5:53] That still has to happen. Verse 19. Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

[6:10] And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

[6:21] But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. And so just sort of pause there for a second. There's some details here in the story, which are all like, this is a text to really be meditated upon.

[6:34] One of the reasons I'm preaching through the book of the first 11 chapters is that I think, and I talked about this more in my first three sermons in the series, that we're so afraid of looking at this because we're afraid of getting caught up with controversies around evolution and young earth and all of that, that Christians increasingly are afraid to look at these early chapters, but they're really central.

[6:55] Like, if we don't understand these first chapters, it's hard to understand the rest of the Bible. And we're afraid to look at them, to memorize them, to meditate upon them, to ponder them.

[7:07] And that's one of the reasons. Like, we're just facing our fears, folks. And we're looking at these texts. They're not scary texts. They're very, very wise. And they're very, very helpful. And they're very true. And it's a very, very interesting little dynamic here.

[7:20] The animals come out of the ground. That's how God creates them. That's the language which is used. And God has this Adam. And there's a not good because he's alone.

[7:31] And there's a helper fit for him that has to happen. But God doesn't just create it right away. He has this, the naming of the animals first as part of Adam's awareness as well.

[7:41] That in a sense, he surveyed living beasts. And there's nothing fit for him. A helper fit for him is not found. So then the story continues in verse 21.

[7:53] So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, that is not God but the man, while the man slept, God took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

[8:09] And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. And just sort of pause there for a second. This is sort of, I mean, it's worth lots and lots of meditation upon.

[8:25] Obviously, it's both a true text, historically true. But obviously, it's weighted with symbolism to try to communicate in a very, very simple picture language to us really, really deep truths.

[8:40] See, one of the things which is very interesting here is that the animals have all been created out of the ground. But woman is not created out of the ground. It's really actually very, very important.

[8:52] The text is trying to communicate to us that it's not that women and men are of a different nature. As you know, there's many religious systems which denigrate women.

[9:06] And Christians, to our shame, have often denigrated women. And there's many, many systems of political and social and theological and religious and spiritual talk that make it almost as if women are a lesser creature.

[9:22] That they're almost like our chattel. That we can almost treat them like animals. That we can cover them up. That we can just boss them around in a way which is deeply denigrating to them.

[9:35] But what the text is showing is that woman and man are of the exact same nature. It makes it very, very clear. This funny image, which for many of us, it's very easy to make jokes about it as if the Bible is really, really stupid and foolish.

[9:48] But the Bible here is saying something very, very, very profound. This idea that men and women have the exact same nature. That there's a fundamental equality in their nature.

[10:02] And this is a type of dynamite idea. I mean, the church, we Christians, because we want to keep slipping back into religion. We want to keep slipping back into accommodating to our culture, whatever our culture is.

[10:15] And it's easy for us to keep getting unbalanced because we want to keep slipping into our culture. But this is one of these healthy viruses that's constantly there challenging us to understand the fundamental equality, the fundamental same source as man and woman.

[10:32] And so when it first seems like an odd thing, like even mentioning the animals coming out of the ground, it's an important thing to meditate upon. And the other thing, though, that's very important is this whole idea of that helper fit for him is also going to be very important, as we see in a moment when it's going to talk about marriage.

[10:50] Because if Genesis 1, the first story of creation, I mean, both stories tell us different things about God. And they both stories tell us different things about what it means to be human.

[11:00] And last week, when we looked at human beings being made in the image and likeness of God, there's a lot of really important teaching here. And now there's an unpacking of that, which is going to be connected to sexual knowing and marriage and sexual identity.

[11:15] It's going to be talked about here in this story. But, well, okay, when I was younger, when I had to move, or when Louise and I and the kids had to move, we couldn't afford buying boxes.

[11:30] I mean, I don't even know if moving companies sold boxes to mere mortals back then. So you'd go and you'd try to get a banana box, LCBO boxes. I don't know if any of you have ever moved with a whole pile of different boxes.

[11:42] You know, banana boxes, Apple boxes, LCBO boxes. And they don't fit together very well. You know, that's one of the reasons why moving companies, it's so wonderful when you discover, whoa, you can buy boxes that all fit together.

[11:57] And it's such a great thing, you know, but boxes are all just boxes. They don't say, here we're going to give you a diamond shape, a star shape, a star of David shape, a round one. They're all, they fit together.

[12:08] But what this text is trying to communicate, and it'd be more like an entire separate sermon with this idea of help or fit for him. It's talking about the man and the woman, they fit, but there's an angularity and pointedness about each of them.

[12:29] I mean, those of you who've been married or have dated, you understand your spouse has pointy bits. It's that my pointy bits can irritate Louise and her pointy bits can irritate me.

[12:41] And that's part of learning how to stay married. But it's not as if God just took two blobs of jello and squished them together. It's not as if he had two identical cubes and laid them side to side.

[12:52] But that every human being, but man in a sense have a particular type of male, mannish, angular, non-symmetric shape, as does woman.

[13:04] But God somehow in the mystery of his created order has made it so that the man and woman can fit together. So there's something equal, something complementary, and something different about the way that God has made the man and the woman.

[13:22] And that's all communicated in this very simple picture language. Very simple, easy to remember, but very, very profound and powerful. And then the text goes on, and we see here, verse 23, and this is really cool.

[13:37] If you're like me and you're a Christian and you believe that this is God's word written, and ultimately God is the ultimate author of this, what you see in the next verse in poetry are the only words spoken by a human being before evil came into the world.

[13:56] Isn't that cool? The only recorded human words before evil comes into the world. Not quite entirely true, because there's a few little, you see some words with Eve, with the serpent, as part of the beginning of evil coming into the world.

[14:12] But just this pure with no evil, no shadow of evil, just an unfallen creation where everything is good. And what are these words in poetic form? The man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, completely equal, and fit for him and him for her.

[14:34] She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

[14:46] And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And that little image is an image of what, at the end of the day, we all long for, not to stand naked. I definitely do not long for that.

[14:57] But what we long for is a type of complete transparency and being of ourselves, and being transparent and being unashamed and with no evil.

[15:11] And there is a great human longing for that. A great human longing to be transparent, to be open, to be yourself, without shame and without sin.

[15:24] And every human being has it, and I think only ultimately the scriptures explain, why that longing is present in human hearts. It was woven into us at the moment of creation, that we should relate to each other and relate to the created order and relate to God in such a way that there's just this complete openness, transparency, and ourselvesness without sin and shame.

[15:50] But here's the really big thing, though. I don't know if you noticed it. Look again at verse 24. So verse 23, we've had Eve is created. God brings Eve to Adam.

[16:01] In a sense, if you want to use an old-fashioned traditional marriage analogy, it's God who walks Eve down the aisle. to meet Adam at the front.

[16:16] And we have the bone of the bone and the flesh of the flesh. So male and female have been created. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And if you're like me, you go, one moment, that doesn't follow.

[16:28] Like in our day and age, the existence of male and female, people don't say, therefore, because there's male and there's female, because there's man and the woman, therefore, heterosexual monogamous marriage happens.

[16:42] That's not a therefore to us, is it? Not even close. Like in our day and age, what we say is, you know, listen, George, I don't know what all this big fuss is with you Christians.

[16:54] There's this thing called sexual pleasure. There's other types of pleasure as well. There's pleasure around food. There's pleasure of, there's aesthetic pleasure, in terms of looking at a nice piece of art.

[17:05] There's pleasure in terms of nature. There's physical pleasure, just sort of just being alive. And there's sexual pleasure. And there's all sorts, the only limit to the way you can experience sexual pleasure is the limit of your imagination and your taste.

[17:20] And, you know, as long as you can just, that's the therefore, there's men, there's women, there's pleasure. And therefore, whatever allows you to experience pleasure, as long as it doesn't hurt the other person, well, go for it.

[17:35] It's, the therefore is actually a shocking thing. So I want to just say a couple of things. These, I mean, one of the reasons I, by the way, just as an aside, if you read books on preaching, the way I do points is not the way you're supposed to do it, just so you know.

[17:54] I'd get an F in sermon points. And, but one of the reasons I write these points is I know that some people were, they, hearing words, if they see it, it also helps them to understand, and that's why I write these points, even though I fail at sermon points.

[18:11] If you could put it up, this is an important thing for us to remember now, because some of us are maybe feeling a little bit uncomfortable. One man, one woman, heterosexual, monogamous marriage, and we're feeling very uncomfortable uncomfortable because it doesn't describe us.

[18:27] On Friday, I had the great privilege to speak on Parliament Hill to some of the staff workers who are Christians on Parliament Hill. And, of course, Parliament Hill, I'm speaking to staff workers for political parties.

[18:39] And one of the things I said as I was going into this, as I said, this is not a political talk. This is not an us versus them. This is not looking for Twitter bits that we can use to get people, because all of us struggle with different sexual issues.

[18:54] This is not about people out there who are bad or are demonized versus us who are pure. We're talking about deeply personal human issues. And one of the things we have to understand, even though at first this Bible passage is going to seem to hurt some of us, we have to understand that beginning and the end is going to be the same point.

[19:14] What is it that the whole Bible... The Bible is aware that it's only in the first two chapters that it talks about the world before evil comes in. Next week, we're going to look at the introduction of evil into the created order.

[19:27] And most of the Bible, then, from Genesis 3 right to the end of the book of Revelation, is all about God's dealing with the presence of evil.

[19:38] And what we need to know is that even when God's word seems to be hard to us, that Jesus seeks, redeems, and restores lost and ruined masterpieces.

[19:55] Jesus seeks, redeems, and restores lost and ruined masterpieces. And if you're here and you're same-sex attracted, if you're here and you're transgendered, you should not understand me to say that, okay, now he's saying I'm ruined.

[20:14] No, no, no, no, no. Well, actually, I am. I am. But I'm saying it about myself, too. And I'm saying it about every single person here.

[20:26] If you're a guest here, you are sitting amongst lost and ruined masterpieces, with no exception, some of whom, hopefully most of whom, I pray all of whom, Jesus has not only sought you, but he has redeemed you and is working at restoring you.

[20:50] Some of us feel like the type of masterpiece we are is one of those great old Dutch masters that just look so unbelievably lush and lavish and beautiful.

[21:04] Some of us are more like a Picasso, all weird angles that don't really seem to fit together and not really one dimension, you know, two-dimensional. And some of us are more like Van Gogh's.

[21:15] We're not all the same masterpiece, but the way to understand what Jesus is all about, what the Bible is all about, is that Jesus comes and seeks us. What is that phrase of the church's one foundation by Luther?

[21:28] From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own love he bought her. Is that how it goes? And for her life he died. That very beautifully captures this idea.

[21:42] Every one of us is a masterpiece, is how God has created us. We are now bent and marred and broken by sin. We are lost and ruined.

[21:54] But Jesus seeks us. He redeems us. And when we are his, he begins the process of restoring the masterpiece, just as if some horrible Nazi had stolen some artwork and finally somebody discovers it now in an attic.

[22:14] And, you know, maybe it's a priceless Picasso and there's water damage and all sorts of other damage and it's found, it's restored, redeemed to its original owner and the work of beginning to restore it, to bring out the beauty begins.

[22:30] That's what grace is. So, some of you might say, I've had this said to me, it was a couple of years ago, it wasn't recently.

[22:43] Somebody said to me, George, you know, it's really, you know, all those texts in Genesis and, you know, in the Bible, but, you know, especially, George, those texts in Genesis, they just, they come from an age when they didn't understand same-sex attraction, they didn't understand healthy same-sex desire, they didn't understand the capability of forming sustained relationships, they didn't understand the creativity and the beauty that comes from within that community, and it was just a prop, to prop up the social order, and that's all that it was.

[23:12] You just have to understand that the Bible is limited to a time where it didn't understand the range of things, it's propping up a social order, and it's just out of date. It just has to be brought up to speed.

[23:23] It has to, the social order and social understanding is just different. And when I say that, it's a very compelling argument. In fact, some of us might even be getting a little bit anxious as to whether, that I even would say that in public in a church.

[23:39] But here's the interesting thing, it's very, very compelling, but it's completely wrong. Andrew, could you put up the next point? Biblical teaching on marriage, sexual identity, and sexual knowing is perennially, I can hardly say that, countercultural, and perennially good news.

[24:01] Let's take for a moment that this text, which I just read, was written either in around the year 1500 or around the year 1300. In either one of those years, BC, either one of those years, what did all the smart people think?

[24:14] What are all the people who are the best educated? If you went to the best educated places in Cairo, what we now call Cairo, in Alexandria, in Babylon, if you went to the places where the powerful, the rich, the best educated, if you went to them and asked them advice, what would they tell you?

[24:31] They would say that Genesis chapter 2 is complete rubbish. Why? Well, because, George, obviously the smart thing is polygamy. The entire world, every culture, was polygamous.

[24:44] George, they'd say, it's just very, very natural. A man should try to be a real man. And real men who are successful and powerful and almost like a god, they deserve many wives.

[24:56] And it's just obvious, George, that you have wives to guarantee that there's legal passing on of property, but a man like myself, a powerful man, I also need other sexual outlets, which is why I have concubines.

[25:10] And George, it's just very obvious from the way that the world works, all of the smart people understand it, that part of worship is appeasing and dealing with the gods. And sometimes that means sacrificing an animal.

[25:22] And George, sometimes that means you go to the temple and you have sex with the priestess. That's what all of the smart people understood. And in fact, if you read the Old Testament, you'll see constantly that the Old Testament people of Israel were constantly struggling with going back to follow what the smart people understood.

[25:43] See, the fact of the matter is, is that when the Bible said, then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

[26:01] This teaching is perennially countercultural. In every culture, at every time, and it is always good news.

[26:19] Now, do you notice that verse 24, it sounds like a funny verse, but it's actually really important. If you could put up the next slide, please. This next, this verse 24 tells us three essential steps in an essential order.

[26:36] I can hardly say it. I'm having speech problems this morning. I leave forever. I hold fast forever. I know sexually. Look at verse 24 again.

[26:46] Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother. Very interesting, eh? It's one of the things about all of the biblical teaching on sexual relations, like in marriage, all of the teaching about marriage.

[26:59] It shows that there's both always a fundamental equality between the man and the woman, but it also shows, sorry for a big word, time out, big word moment. I'm not showing off.

[27:12] An asymmetric relationship, not a symmetric relationship. Like if you look at Ephesians 5, one of the tasks given to the wife, believe it or not, is not to love her husband.

[27:28] One of the tasks given to the wife is to respect her husband. There's several in Ephesians 5. And it's that the husband, one of the tasks given to the husband is to love his wife.

[27:41] And there's other language there of the husband being willing to die for his wife that's describing what loving is. But it's an asymmetric relationship. It's not husband, respect your wife, wife, respect your husband, you know, husband, love your wife, wife, love your husband.

[27:55] No, I mean, it's not saying that obviously women shouldn't love their husbands, but there's this constant asymmetric aspect to it, not the same. And it's very interesting in this text that it talks about the man leaving.

[28:10] Now, it doesn't mean that the woman doesn't leave her family, but this is three steps, an essential step. And what it's talking about is that for the men here, I mean, this is something that you can just meditate upon.

[28:23] This verse is well worth meditating upon because it's marriage is, it's describing not only marriage, but the place of sex within marriage, sexual knowing within marriage and in life, is that the first step of an essential three is the leaving forever.

[28:42] And in particular, it's a primary task of the male. And I think, and we're going to have an interesting conversation around this over coffee and other places, I think it's because in an age where chauvinism, and if we're going to see this after the fall, that part of the problem constantly for men is violence against women and a desire to lord it over women.

[29:10] And so the task is for a man to abandon all of his other sources of comfort and power to be only for his wife. A complete abandonment of power and prestige and any other source of comfort or influence or importance because in those times, these times, the livelihood would have been connected to the family.

[29:38] So there's this idea of complete abandonment of power to give yourself to your wife as the primary relationship. And, you know, it can be extrapolated.

[29:49] In the New Testament, it's extrapolated and developed and it's part of the marriage vows. if you go to a Christian marriage and forsaking all others is, but it's a special task given to the man.

[30:01] The second is that they both hold fast forever and hold fast is covenant language. It's the language of, of being close, of committing yourself to the other.

[30:14] Not only do you, you leave the other sources of power, the other sources that will give you direction, so to speak, the other sources that will be of your power and your influence and you're learning because now we're fallen human beings where evil has come into the world.

[30:28] It's not describing how marriages actually work, it's describing how God created marriages to work. And so the thrust now is on the holding fast. It's covenant language, it's language of holding fast till death do us part.

[30:43] It's the language of commitment, it's the language also implied within this whole fast of something public and communal. and marked. In other words, it's not describing two people living together and then at some point in time they sort of realize that they've been stuck together for a long time and maybe they'll continue for a while and there's nothing formal, there's nothing to mark it.

[31:07] But this whole fast, this whole idea of a covenant of something which goes on which has some degree of formality of public, of yes, I will to it.

[31:19] And so first there's the leaving, second there's this commitment and of holding fast and then the third thing is the sexual knowing, sexual knowing.

[31:31] Look again at verse 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. In this particular context it's a very polite way of talking about sexual knowing.

[31:46] and this is a very hard thing for us, isn't it? This is a very hard thing for us.

[32:01] So just to help, before I sort of talk a little bit about how this is good news for us, if you could put up the next slide, I just want to make sure we understand what the Bible is saying here. In the beginning, the good God created a good creation with faithful, monogamous, heterosexual marriage as an essential, natural feature.

[32:23] That's what the Bible is claiming. Remember the Bible is making a very big claim that things don't just happen completely by chance and by accident and purely by cause and effect, that there's actually, that the universe in a sense is designed, that it's created with a plan and a design feature to it which scientists can understand and begin to understand more and more and more.

[32:49] And you talk to physicists and scientists in the room and they'll tell you the more they know, the more they know, they don't know. But that's another thing. But what this text is saying is making a very, very big claim. It's saying that in the beginning, the good God created a good creation with faithful, monogamous, heterosexual marriage as an essential, natural feature.

[33:08] Listen again to verse 23 and 24. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother.

[33:20] The therefore, right? A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. If you could put up the next slide, Andrew, just to make sure we understand it.

[33:32] And some of you don't understand this language of social construct, but some of you work more in arts or social science or legal environment. And so you maybe have a bit of an understanding of what it is. But I want to make sure I'm nailing it here that I'm making it clear to us what the Bible's saying.

[33:47] When it says, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man, the helper fit for him. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

[34:00] What the text is saying here is that monogamous heterosexual marriage is not a social construct. It is woven into creation by God from the beginning.

[34:11] What's a social construct? Social construct is, you know what, George? You know, once again, it's all just about pleasure and not hurting people and so, George, since it's about pleasure and not hurting people, like why isn't it that, you know, that you can have like whatever marriage is, it's just a contract, George.

[34:29] That's all it is. It's just a contract and so why can't completely willing people as long as they're of age and nobody's being hurt just have contracts? Contracts that express love.

[34:40] Why can't, it's just a, George, George, that's just something which developed in the 50s or the 30s or whatever, this concept of marriage. It's just a social construct and, you know, obviously, if I was having a discussion about this, you know, at a university faculty that don't believe the Bible, I would talk about this in a different way but before we talk about it in different ways, we have to understand what the Bible itself teaches and what the Bible here is making very clear is that monogamous, heterosexual marriage is not a social construct.

[35:14] That's because of the word therefore. But that, in fact, it is woven into creation by God from the beginning. If you could put up the next one.

[35:27] So what this text is in a sense saying, now that we understand how it is that God has created men and women and God has created a place within creation, created order for marriage that it's somehow natural to God's original creational intentions and that therefore even sexual identity is to be understood within this text just as it was last week when we talked about the image of God and that therefore out of the way that God created human beings and originally before evil that therefore the place of sexual knowing comes after I have left and after I have held fast and then with the one woman there is sexual knowing.

[36:15] And so what the Bible is teaching here and this helps us to understand all of the rest of the biblical teaching because of course evil has come into the world. Brokenness has come into the world and temptation has come into the world and cheating and of all sorts of different types has come into the world.

[36:38] So you see from this text follows something that all sexual stimulation or sexual knowing outside a faithful monogamous heterosexual marriage is both a sin and a violation of how God created us.

[37:00] You see that's the whole point of this therefore. therefore. It's a big therefore. Like it's a really, really, really, really big therefore. And you know within this whole text I didn't mention this but if you go back to verse 18 when it talks about the man being alone and the helper fit for him that's an extremely highly emphatic.

[37:21] In other words if we were to try to write that in a print that in a way that brings out what the original language is trying to do those first you know it is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him not only should it be bolded but the font should be twice as big.

[37:42] It should jump out at us this idea of the helper fit for him and the complementarity which leads to the creation of the woman the helper fit for him equal but somehow complementary and different and the man shall leave his father and his mother all sources of power and identity separate from his wife and hold fast both hold fast to each other and then comes the sexual knowing that what is not from that is not only a sin but is a violation of how God created us which is a hard teaching isn't it folks?

[38:25] See that's why I began by giving the end how Jesus Christ seeks redeems and restores lost and ruined masterpieces that's what's going on you know last week I gave a I got a little bit of pushback about trying to describe aliens and me sitting on a toilet and brown stuff as to whether it was appropriate in a church service but another way to put it is let's say after this service I'm you know some of you all left and I'm up my son's visiting you know from out of town and my son Jesse and I and Tommy and Emma we're just the four of us are out there chatting and all of a sudden an alien spaceship lands at the intersection of Besserer and King Edward and out comes something that's obviously an alien and whatever sort of vaguely looks like arms it starts pointing them and starts knocking out parts of the

[39:28] Ottawa Little Theater and parts of the buildings around there and people go running and screaming but Jesse Tommy and Emma and I not wanting to see people hurt rather than running away we run at the alien tackle the alien do our Will Smith from the original Independence Day and knock that alien down and hold it down and we somehow cover it so it can't fire ray gun things killing people and the police eventually come and people of course are taking things for YouTube videos which will go viral and get a couple of billion hits and all that and then eventually because it's an alien the police don't come any closer say you got to cover it yeah we got to cover it eventually people hazmat suits come and take the alien away and put them in an enclosed thing so it can't have its terrible alien germs infect people and meanwhile they would take the four of us Jesse Emma Tommy and myself off and they would also put us in isolation and here's the type of thing we have no idea what a healthy alien is like so they'd have no idea whether somehow or another when Jesse punched the alien in the nose whether he in fact it wasn't a nose it was its life center and he was killing it and it's dying before their eyes because they have no idea how an alien is to function but they know that when I start to turn a very very bright red and part of me is turning black and part of me is turning yellow and part of me is having skin peeling off they'd say that's not good

[40:54] George has an alien virus infection and they might not know exactly how to treat me but they know what health looks like they know what health looks like and you see that's why Genesis 1 and 2 is so important and it's really really wonderful that Genesis 1 and 2 go together here because you see if we only had Genesis 2 if we only had Genesis 2 then we would think that health means you're married and if you're not married you're not healthy if you're single you're second class but that's why the two stories are so important because what we see when we look at the two stories together what we see is that on one hand marriage is somehow between a man and a woman is woven into the created order but because of Genesis 1 it's very clear that it's not necessarily the case that a man and a woman need to be married to a member of the opposite sex to be fulfilled to have dignity to have integrity and to have worth that in fact if you go back and listen last week and if you look at that first part you see that every human being by the very very nature that we bear the image of God have an inherent integrity dignity value and worth that's not connected to whether or not we're married it's not connected to whether or not

[42:30] God blesses us with children it's explaining sexual desire and it's explaining the place of marriage and using sexual desire in service to the common good of humanity and to the glory of God but it's definitely not saying when you look at the two stories together that unless you're married you are an incomplete person it's a very very powerful and very very wise it's why when we Christians because of cultural pressure are afraid to think through and read and meditate upon Genesis 1 and 2 it is to our hurt and to our detriment it's 42 minutes I need to could you just put up the next point please and then try to wrap it up you know it's very very interesting where's the gospel in all of this you know because the gospel is you know it's very very interesting look at the test again therefore man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh in some way this relationship of leaving of holding fast of being one flesh in some ways it's going to end up becoming a picture of all of God's covenants with his people that are going to happen after the fall

[43:54] I mean even now it describes not obviously in the exact same way because God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit don't have to leave each other but it pictures we'll see it next week of this connection and this oneness between human beings and God and then after the fall when we can no longer be naked and unashamed and all of the different ways the covenant that God makes with Seth the covenant that God you know with Adam and Eve in terms of how he's going to redeem the covenant with Noah the covenant with Abraham the covenant with Moses the covenant with David and most importantly the new covenant with Jesus there's all this aspect of this holding fast or covenant and this desire to somehow be one but it's most completely and perfectly fulfilled in the person of Jesus who on the same night that he was betrayed took a cup and after he had taken a cup he took the bread and he described how that what he was inaugurating was a new covenant and the disciples were going to be filled with all sorts of confusion because of Jesus' capture his betrayal his horrific death their complete and utter refusal to believe that he would rise from the dead all of that they're going to be completely and utterly puzzled by it they're going to be heartbroken they're going to be destroyed and then Jesus is vindicated in his resurrection what is it that Jesus said he doesn't leave his father and mother but he leaves heaven he leaves God the Father and God the Holy Spirit and he leaves to seek and just as in Ephesians it's going to talk about how the man's love for his wife is to be as if he is willing to die for her we see that because Jesus not only leaves but he holds fast to us in such a way that when he dies upon the cross it's my sin that he's holding fast and he's not only holding fast my sin so that he dies for my sin he's holding fast so that his perfect obedience to the Father is being held against me and the result of his death upon the cross when we receive it by faith is that not that we are one flesh with God but that we are at one with God from heaven he came to sought her to be his holy bride with his own blood he bought her and so we see that Jesus to restore us he could you put up the final point

[46:34] Andrew please that he seeks us we didn't seek him he seeks us that he redeems us and that once he comes in and takes us he's going to restore us that are lost and ruined masterpieces and I don't know if that means that I'm going to be married or not married I don't know if that I don't know what that's going to mean I mean I know what it is for me because I'm married but I mean for us listening to this we don't know what it means but we know that as as we cleave to Jesus and as he begins to work in our lives I mean for those of us who are same-sex attracted maybe there'll be a change in our desire maybe there won't be but the Bible's teaching is not saying that if you're not in a marriage relationship you're second class it's not saying that at all but that every person is a masterpiece lost and ruined and Jesus comes and seeks and finds you and redeems you and as you cleave to him and come to him and submit to him and listen to his word he restores you in the direction of Genesis 2 and Genesis 1 he will restore you so that the masterpiece becomes more and more and more clear as we trust him to restore us please stand just bow our heads in prayer

[48:02] Father you know the different ways that we violate your creational intent in Genesis 1 and 2 Father you know the men amongst us or the women as well who struggle with pornography Father you know those of us who struggle with different types of same sex desire and acting out on it you know Father those of us who we're not sure what our gender is and who we're attracted to you know those of us Father who are just struggling with any type of attraction Father you know there are so many different ways that we are sexually broken and we come before you Father not as the pure and as the holy but acknowledging before you that every single one of us was or is a lost and ruined masterpiece a masterpiece because we are made in your image and we thank and praise you Jesus that you sought us that you redeem us that as you hold fast to us and we submit to you and walk with the Holy Spirit that you will work to restore the masterpiece that is us we ask Father that you help us to be willing to repent that you would help us

[49:15] Father to be willing to submit to you and to learn to walk with you so that you will work your work of restoration and healing in our lives Father bless those who are married here bless them in their marriage and for those of us who are single Father bless us in our singleness that in whatever state you have called us that we will live to bring you glory and all this we ask in the name of Jesus your Son and our Savior Amen