April 23, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, from a Priscilla & Aquila Centre evening seminar held on Wednesday 12 March 2025, Simon Flinders, Archdeacon to the Archbishop of Sydney, speaks on Genesis 2 and the beginning of all relationships.
He reminds us that while marriage is good and brings many blessings, those blessings are not ultimate ends. Instead, Genesis 2 points us to God’s greater purpose for his creatures and their relationships with one another.
Hear Kara Hartley and Jocelyn Bignill’s talks from this evening seminar on the Priscilla & Aquila Centre website.
For more audio resources, visit the Moore College website. There, you can also make a donation to support the work of the College.
Contact us and find us on socials.
Find out more and register for the P&A event, “A history of Complementarianism”.
Please note: The episode transcript provided is AI-generated and has not been checked for accuracy. If quoting, please check against the audio.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre evening seminar held on Wednesday the 12th of March 2025, Simon
(00:30):
Flinders, Archdeacon to the Archbishop of Sydney, speaks on Genesis 2 and the beginning of all relationships.
He reminds us that while marriage is good and brings many blessings, those blessings are not ultimate ends.
Instead, Genesis 2 points us to God's greater purpose for his creatures and their relationships with one another.
(00:53):
We hope you find the episode helpful.
Good evening, everybody.
It's, uh, great to be here with you and our, our goal tonight is to.
Uh, mine, Genesis 2 for its riches, and, uh, hope you'll, uh, be able to follow the outline.
(01:13):
There were some available at the door or on Slido.
Um, I'm gonna speak from this passage for a little while, and then afterwards Cara and Joss are gonna reflect a little bit more, a lot more
briefly, um, from their personal perspective, I guess, uh, the implications of this chapter four, their lives as a married woman and a single woman.
And, uh, then we look forward to your questions and engaging with you in that way afterwards.
(01:36):
Uh, I'm gonna pray and then I encourage you to leave your Bibles open at Genesis 2, and you can follow on the outline.
Father, we really want to thank you for this, uh, privileged opportunity this evening of coming again to your word.
And we ask that your Spirit would be with us guiding my words and directing the thoughts of all of our hearts, that we might come
(01:57):
under the Lordship of Christ as he speaks to us this evening, and that you would shape our lives according to the truth of your word.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I wanna begin tonight by thinking about the wider setting of our text.
Uh, Genesis 2.
I imagine this will be familiar to most of, if not all of you, but nevertheless, I
(02:17):
think it's important for us to take a few moments to think about Genesis 2's context.
Genesis one tells the story of creation, the beginning of all things, but one God himself, of course, is the but one.
Genesis does not tell the story of God's beginning because he did not begin.
(02:40):
He was there before all else began.
His Spirit hovered over the waters and his word gave birth to all.
That is.
He spoke and everything came to be, and then he rested.
And then when we come to chapter two, verse four, we find the author of Genesis zooming in on humankind.
(03:03):
Genesis chapter one, verse one to chapter two, verse three, acts like a prologue to the book.
And from chapter two verse four, we begin to hear the accounts of those God made and their families.
The formula with which verse four begins is one that will be repeated several times through the Book of Genesis.
This is the account of, for example, you'll see it again in chapter five, verse one, uh, chapter six, verse nine, and the pattern continues.
(03:29):
But here it choose to introduce us to an account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Effectively, what we get in chapter two is a partial retelling of chapter one,
but in a less structured way, and the focus here is on the creation of people.
If Genesis one was the wide angle lens where we see the creation on the grandest possible
(03:51):
scale, Genesis 2 zooms in to show us what it looked like when God created male and female.
And one of the key questions Genesis 2 invites us to ask is a question about the goodness of the creation all through chapter one.
This was the refrain.
God saw what he made and it was good.
(04:12):
Good, good.
Very good.
Genesis one uses the word good to describe what was in the mind and heart of God.
When he looked over all that he was made, it was just right.
It was exactly as he wanted it to be.
All good,
(04:32):
but was it
in verse 18?
Genesis 2 strikes a suddenly discordant note.
God said It is not good for the man to be alone at the point at which God had created a male, but not yet a female.
Everything was not just right.
(04:53):
It was not exactly as God wanted.
It was not good.
Not yet.
There was a part of God's design for creation yet to be introduced.
And Genesis 2 invites us to think about why it invites us to see how God made what wasn't yet good, just right.
(05:14):
And that's what we're gonna be focusing on this evening.
So secondly, let's look at what the text actually tells us.
This is our exposition.
We see firstly in verses four to seven, the transition from no one to one.
Verses five and six are very reminiscent of chapter one, verse two, they're
describing the emptiness and the formlessness of the earth before God began to create.
(05:38):
But then verse seven tells us about the first person to ever be set on the earth.
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
It's a reminder to us of the incredible power of God.
God doesn't just go down to Bunnings and pick up a bag of bones and a few two inch sinews and nine meters of industrial strength skin.
(06:05):
God's not just assembling raw materials here.
He's forming a person.
From next to nothing.
He takes dust and creates a man with all the intricacies and complexity and personality that every human person contains.
And then he breathes life into the man that he's made.
(06:29):
The Lord God is not just the one who forms the human body.
He's the life giver and the man becomes a living being.
A living being in the image of the God who has formed and enlivened him.
And then having told us about the man, the author of Genesis begins to tell us about the garden where he'd placed the man.
(06:51):
Verse eight says, now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed the Lord.
God made all kinds of trees grow outta the ground.
Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.
Notice those two words there in verse nine, pleasing and good.
What God has made for the man is both those things.
(07:14):
It supplies his fundamental needs, but it does so in a delightful way.
Do you notice God has provided pleasure as well as basic necessities?
And I think that's a fascinating detail to have been included here because it obliterates straight away any notion of God being in favor of
some kind of monish deprivation as if to really honor him in the world is to live a basic or frugal existence without any hint of enjoyment.
(07:41):
No, God is the inventor of pleasure.
He creates aesthetically as well as functionally.
Which is why we can still look around us at hundreds of things in the world and find them pleasing to the eye because God is the creator of beauty,
and not only is the garden pleasing and good, it's also fruitful.
(08:06):
I suspect that's the main point of verses 10 to 14, which described the rivers that flowed through and from the Garden of Eden to many other places.
The rich bouncy of this garden is not just for Adam.
God's provision is so abundant that it overflows to bless other places and in time other people,
(08:27):
but the garden is also full of possibilities.
Lemme read you again from the second half of verse nine.
In the middle of the garden with a tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In verse nine, that's all we're told.
We're simply informed of their presence.
But even to hear about something called the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is to hear a word.
(08:52):
We'd rather not hear a word that sounds an ominous note.
Even this early in the piece, the very presence of this word evil is a reminder to
us that within this garden there is a dark potential in the midst of everything good.
It's the first hint to us that this wonderful story God has begun may have a tragic twist before the tale is fully told.
(09:20):
And for us, it's a reminder that whilst the garden was good.
Whilst it was exactly what God wanted, it was not perfect.
Certainly not in the way that heaven will be perfect.
Heaven will be a place where there is no dark potential, no possibility of evil ever again.
(09:40):
Even at the very beginning of the Bible, we reminded that the Garden of Eden was not the end point of God's plan.
It was the beginning, and it wets our appetite for a place like Eden, but a place
which will be even better, a place where there'll be no trees like this one.
And in verse 15, we hear that God placed the man in the garden of Eden and he's given a purpose to work the garden and to take care of it.
(10:08):
And in verse 16, God underlines for him the great freedom he has to enjoy the garden and
to eat its fruit, including the fruit that grows from the tree of life we just heard about.
But as verse 17 tells us, he must not eat the fruit of the other more ominous sounding tree.
If he does, there will be terrible consequences.
(10:30):
So you note here that God places a limit on the man's freedom, but the limit the divine command gives him is for his own good.
So it is with all God's commands, they're given in love,
but it's at this point that we come to verse 18, tellingly.
(10:52):
It's at this moment that God declares that something about this man's life in this garden is not good.
He's alone,
and it's important we understand this aloneness because it doesn't say he was lonely.
Verse 18 isn't primarily describing a subjective experience, one we know very well.
(11:13):
Loneliness.
No, it's describing an objective reality.
Adam was alone.
He was with God.
Yes, and that was wonderful.
But in terms of human companionship or society, he was on his own.
He was the only human.
(11:34):
This isn't an aloneness unlike anything you or I have ever experienced.
In fact, it's hard for us to even imagine it.
A number of years ago, I traveled to South Africa with my family, and while
we were there, we spent a day in a national park known as Ado Elephant Park.
It's basically a 1600 kilometer nature reserve.
(11:58):
We spent a magnificent day driving through it, saw all kinds of African animals up close.
It was fantastic.
Now, I want you to imagine for a moment that I got left behind in the park when the others drove home.
Imagine if the park then closed for the night.
And all the staff went home and imagine that for some reason the park was then closed for days and I was locked in and I couldn't get out.
(12:24):
So I was just left wandering through the park, and the only other living creature I might come into contact with was some kind of animal.
And now, if you can imagine that, in fact, that was the only life I'd ever known.
If you can begin to picture that, you can start to approach an understanding of what Adam's aloneness was like.
(12:45):
He was the only human in his world, and this is utterly unique in history.
So God's next step is to find for Adam something or someone that will bring his aloneness to an end.
In particular, God's gonna find him a helper.
(13:05):
And this word, too is very important to understand when God says that it's not
good for the man to be alone, does he mean that he seeks companionship for him?
Is it that the man is created for intimacy but he's without it unless he has a mate?
Is God simply observing that the man longs for a connection deep inside with another human being?
(13:26):
Well, there may be truth in all of those things, but I think it's actually very significant that God uses the word helper.
Because the search for a Heller for the man is not just about companionship or intimacy.
It's not primarily about the search for a soulmate.
This is a search for someone to share the work.
(13:48):
Remember, verse 15, God put the man in the garden not simply to enjoy its goodness, but to work it and take care of it.
And in verse 18, God identifies that he needs a partner in the fulfillment of that purpose.
God's not trying to find the man, someone he can simply come home at night and snuggle with.
God wants to find the man, someone who will go to work with him in the morning and labor with him through the day.
(14:12):
He doesn't just need a friend or a lover.
He needs a helper.
And once God articulates that it's not good for the man to be alone, the search for a
suitable helper is on, and God brings to the man all the animals he's made and he names them.
So the man's sitting there coming up with titles like Tyrannosaurus and Hippopotamus
(14:34):
and Aardvark and Yak, but none of them proved to be a suitable helper for him.
That's the conclusion we get to in verse 20, and so God creates again.
This time he takes one of Adam's ribs and from the rib he makes a woman, and so one becomes two.
Verse 22.
(14:55):
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he'd taken outta the man and he brought her to the man.
The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.
God presents the woman to the man as the answer to his need.
(15:17):
She's a gift to him and not the fruit of his own initiative.
God is the author of this good thing and the man is deeply satisfied.
Here we see God creating human fellowship and interaction for the first time.
(15:37):
What we're seeing here is God creating at the most fundamental level human community.
This is the beginning of all relationships.
At this point, we're introduced to the whole concept of society, of friendship, of family.
Here we see the germination of something that one day give birth to what we know as the church.
(16:03):
Adam is no longer alone.
But of course, the rest of the Bible does see this moment, not just as the beginnings of
human relationship, but as the very first instance of a particular kind of relationship.
It's the first instance of marriage.
Because into the drama of this scene, we have the insertion of verse 24.
(16:27):
We've just seen one human person become two.
Now the author tells us that the two become one.
Verse 24 stands out in the text because it, it does interrupt the flow of the story.
It's a verse which stops to reflect on this historic moment coming together of the first man and the first woman.
And the verse then looks forward to all future occasions like this.
(16:48):
It sees this moment as the first of many marriages that the world will know and it sees in this first marriage a pattern for all future marriages.
And verse 24, I think, tells us three key things about how God intended marriage to be.
Marriage would first involve a leaving.
The man will leave his father and mother and leave his family home.
(17:10):
Here, there's a clear break in the generations.
There's a fresh start where every new marriage begins, and I guess that in modern Western societies where fial
duties are often not given much attention, this may seem like a minor point to make, but in societies like
Ancient Israel and even in other cultures, today, we are honoring parents is one of the highest human obligations.
(17:33):
This leaving.
Is a significant challenge, but nonetheless, a necessity in God's eyes.
But there's also a uniting.
So the man doesn't simply leave his family behind.
He leaves his family in order to form a new one.
He's united to his wife and a new family unit has begun.
(17:53):
They will unite by sharing the same home.
They will unite sexually as well.
And as we saw earlier, if they're thinking rightly about their marriage,
they'll be united in their desire to fulfill their responsibilities before God.
And to help each other do that.
And then thirdly, they'll become one flesh, such as the power of their unity, that there's a very real sense in which they're no longer two, but one.
(18:23):
The word flesh must be at least partly sexual in connotation, but we'd be foolish, I think, to reduce it to only being a sexual thing.
The phrase one flesh is really an attempt to express a union that affects all of life, not just a sexual relationship.
Now, of course, all independent personality and life is not just sucked up into some completely indistinguishable oneness.
(18:49):
Nevertheless, there is a merging of lives to such a great extent here that an inseparable and permanent unity is established.
And so at the end of Genesis 2, that's how we find Adam no longer alone, no longer without help.
God has supplied his needs abundantly.
(19:11):
And verse 25 gives us a wonderful picture of all being well.
Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.
Sadly, uh, by the end of the next chapter, the very possibility of that kind of shameless vulnerability has vanished.
(19:31):
But here there is a very beautiful kind of openness and innocence, at least for a moment.
Now I wanna turn to teasing out some implications of this chapter, and I wanna do that in three parts.
Under three headings, you'll see them on your outline there.
First marriage, then singleness, and then the kingdom of God.
(19:56):
So firstly, marriage.
Let me say four things about marriage from Genesis 2.
Number one, we see here in Genesis 2 that marriage was part of the answer to Adam's aloneness.
Of course it is only part of the answer because the creation of the woman was not just
about the creation of marriage, but the creation of human relationships altogether.
(20:21):
So it is not only in marriage that God meets the need of human beings to have helpful companionship.
There are many other kinds of relationships too that are the fruit of this moment.
Genesis 2 describes, and yet it is significant that God doesn't create just another man.
He creates someone who is very much like Adam, but yet who is also different.
(20:44):
So Genesis 2 is saying something about the particular way in which relationships
between men and women meet our needs for partnership in the purposes of God.
And so Genesis 2 is most definitely saying something in particular about marriage.
It is true, it's, it's not good for people to be alone like Adam was alone and in order to satisfy
(21:06):
the human need for another or others, part of what God has provided is the gift of marriage.
So those of us who are married ought to be very thankful for this aspect of God's provision.
And that leads me to the second thing I wanna point out about marriage.
Here it is about complementarity.
(21:27):
God identifies not just that Adam needs a helper, but that he needs a helper fit for him, a suitable helper.
That's the word used in both verse 18 and verse 20.
What's being conveyed here is that Adam needs a helper who is both like him and unlike him.
In verse 23, Adam celebrates the way in which his wife is like him, but it's also clear
(21:50):
that in order for him to be suitably helped, he needs someone who will compliment him.
In his commentary on these verses, John Calvin calls the woman Adam's counterpart, and I quite like what that word captures.
Marriage is the coming together of two people who can help each other because they're not exactly the same as each other.
(22:14):
Thirdly, we see here that marriage is about an intimate unity.
When verse 24 describes the two becoming one flesh, something very profound is being said.
And when verse 25 tells us they were both shamelessly naked, we are hearing something
important about the kind of intimacy that God hoped would characterize marriage.
(22:36):
This intimate unity is what the Apostle Paul in Ephesians five calls a profound mystery, and it's a profound mystery
that's stitched together in God's purposes with another profound mystery, the intimate unity of Christ Jesus.
His bride, the church.
(22:57):
This is emerging of two lives in body and in purpose.
It's emerging, designed by God and accomplished by God, and it brings two people together into a united oneness.
That's so profound that Paul says you can't really explain it.
It's definitely something to be prized, certainly something to be protected.
(23:25):
The fourth point about marriage from Genesis, this is the one I particularly wanna stress tonight, is that it's not ultimate.
Whilst it is good, it is not theologically speaking, merely an end in itself.
It's not a good thing just to be enjoyed.
Rather, it's something to be used for God's purposes.
(23:48):
And this is why understanding the word helper here is so important because it will affect the way we end up thinking about what marriage is.
If we think that the creation of the woman for the man was just about his need for an intimate
companion, then we'll conclude that companionship and intimacy are the great purposes of marriage.
And so we will invest ourselves in producing and nurturing marriages where intimate companionship is the highest priority.
(24:17):
If on the other hand, we grasp that the creation of a woman for the man was about his need for a workmate in the fulfillment of
God-given responsibilities, then we will conclude that there is a purpose for a married couple that is beyond the couple themselves.
So then we'll invest ourselves in producing and nurturing marriages where the highest priority is the fulfillment of our God-given responsibilities.
(24:44):
And I think the distinction between those two outlooks makes quite a big difference on the ground.
This is a very important perspective for us on marriage.
I don't want you to mishear me.
I'm not saying God's not interested in companionship or intimacy.
It's obvious from Genesis 2 and from the rest of the Bible that we ought regard
intimacy, including sexual intimacy as a beautiful thing, a very precious gift from God.
(25:09):
There is companionship and intimacy to be enjoyed.
But we just mustn't reduce it to that as if that's all there is,
because it's not.
When chapter two, verse five described what the world was like before God created man, it said there was no one to work the ground.
(25:29):
And when God did make man and place him in the garden, verse 15 says He did so that he might work it and take care of it.
So when the woman comes along to help the man, Genesis 2 couldn't be clearer about what their partnership is for.
It's for doing the work that God's given them.
Together.
It's for obeying God together.
(25:51):
Adam's helper comes not just to be with him, to do life with him, but to assist him to live well, to partner him in living, to please God.
Now I'm well aware that this idea is actually quite a long way from how a lot of people naturally think, even amongst Christians.
(26:13):
I think there's a lot of confusion about this, and that's partly because we've been careless in our reading of the Bible.
But I think it's also because perhaps, largely because we're so strongly influenced by the culture we live in.
We live in a culture which so often does treat marriage, or at least partnering as if it's ultimate.
(26:42):
When I was a child, I used to read some of Richard Scarry's books.
I. If you're a similar vintage to me or perhaps older.
Yeah, you did too.
And uh, this is, this is one of his collection of stories.
It's called "The Best Storybook Ever".
Admittedly, that's a pretty big claim.
I'm gonna read you one of the stories from here.
It's called, "Is this the House of Mistress Mouse?" Uh, if you're sitting close to front, you might even be able to see the pictures.
(27:10):
This is the house of Mr Mouse.
He lived all alone and he was very lonely.
One day, he received a letter from Mistress Mouse.
The letter said, "Dear Mr Mouse, I'm very lonely too. Will you please come and visit me? Love and kisses, Mistress Mouse."
Mr Mouse said to himself, "I would like very much to visit Mrs. Mouse, but I don't know
(27:34):
where she lives. However, I'll just have to get into my little car and go look for her.
There's a house just ahead," said Mr Mouse.
"Perhaps that is where Mistress Mouse lives."
He knocked on the door.
"Is this the house of Mistress Mouse?" he asked.
Mr Mouse was very frightened for that was the house of Mr Cat!
(27:57):
"What a cute little mouse!" thought Mr Cat, as he watched him speed away in his car.
"I wonder why he was so frightened." But Mr Mouse knew better than to go into Mr Cat's house, didn't he?
Soon he came to a bright red barn.
He knocked on the barn door.
It was the house of Mrs Hen and her baby chicks.
"Please don't bother me. I'm teaching my chicks to scratch," she said.
(28:20):
And so Mr Mouse traveled on, until he came to a big castle house.
He knocked on the castle door.
It was the castle of Mr Lion.
He was in a very bad temper because he had a very bad toothache.
Mr Mouse raced away as fast as he could.
(28:40):
Finally, he came to a cute little house on a lovely country lane.
He knocked on the pretty little yellow door.
"Is this the house of Mistress Mouse?" he asked.
The door slowly opened.
Sure enough, this was the house of Mistress Mouse!
Mistress Mouse was so happy to see him.
(29:01):
Mr Mouse was so happy to see her.
"Will you marry me so that we'll never again be lonely?" asked Mr Mouse.
" Why yes," said Mistress Mouse.
And so they were married by Preacher Mole.
Mr Mouse gave Mistress Mouse a golden wedding ring with a bright diamond on top.
(29:22):
And from that day on, they were never lonely.
They went on picnics.
They took rides in the country.
They went rowing on the lake.
And then one night after they'd finished their supper, they heard something.
It was a tiny squeak, squeak, squeak coming from the bedroom.
(29:44):
What are you suppose it was that was squeaking ? It was their baby.
He wanted to be kissed.
Goodnight.
Good night, Daddy Mouse.
Good night, Mommy Mouse.
Good night, Baby Mouse.
Good night.
(30:08):
Now, I know that that's only a story for children.
I probably seems just kind of cutesy and harmless.
I do think this story is actually a really good example of the formative cultural narrative about marriage, which we imbibe.
We really do receive so many messages along these lines from popular culture.
Also, from our reading of literature and from the values of our families and friends, we see marriage and having babies as the ultimate achievements.
(30:40):
We see a fulfilling and happy marriage as the destination we want our lives to arrive at.
This is the soulmate happily ever after narrative about marriage, kind of marriage that Mr and Mistress Mouse had
in our culture Today, sex, marriage and family life are really valued with a kind of ultimacy.
(31:05):
That seems to be very seductive.
Our society does seem to believe that in one sense, at least, this is what life is all about.
A meaningful relationship, family leaving a legacy for the next generation.
But honestly, it's ludicrous.
(31:29):
It's so stupid.
I don't know where to start.
So many people have embraced this vision for life,
and so many Christians have bought into it too.
In fact, Christians have often endorsed it through their interpretation of pastors.
Like Genesis 2 story goes that Adam and Eve's marriage at the end of this chapter is the crescendo, the pinnacle of the creation accounts,
(31:55):
but you have to read Genesis 2 so carelessly to arrive at that conclusion.
Yes, it's true.
Adam and his wife come together in a complimentary way and in intimate unity.
Yes, it's true that their marriage is part of the answer God provides to the aloneness Adam previously experienced.
Yes, it's true that their marriage at the end of chapter two is a profound and beautiful thing, but it's not the ultimate thing.
(32:22):
Their marriage serves a purpose, a much bigger purpose than the enjoyment of their own relationship.
In God's wisdom, Adam and Eva brought together to help each other in the work
God has called them to they're married in order to serve God and obey God.
Our world may think that the defining moments of a marriage are when a couple are alone in their bedroom, but Genesis 2
(32:48):
suggests that the defining moments of every marriage are when husband and wife serve God together in the wider society.
Now what this means, of course, is that if your marriage, if you are married, and if your marriage is currently rich
and full of affection, then you mustn't let that lull you into some kind of dreamy confusion about what marriage is for.
(33:16):
Enjoy it.
Praise God for it by all means.
But remember that your marriage is a gift from God to be used in order that you may serve him.
Keep asking yourself, is my marriage oriented around the purposes of God?
And of course, this also means something if you are married.
(33:37):
But at the moment your marriage is disappointing or difficult,
it reassures you that a happy and an easy marriage is not the main point.
By all means, pray for better days ahead in your marriage.
And work hard to address issues that need to be addressed.
(34:01):
But don't put all your eggs for marriage in the intimacy basket.
Instead, get on with helping each other to serve Christ and His gospel however you can, and
delight in the ways that God is using your marriage to shape you and sanctify you for his purpose.
And of course, this also means something if you're single and desiring to be married.
(34:25):
It means you must work hard to understand what it is you seek.
Don't get sucked in by the Mr and Mrs. Mouse narrative about marriage.
If you get married, all your dreams won't come true.
You won't have found a soulmate who completes you.
(34:46):
You.
You won't have satisfied every longing God made you with.
If you think you're never gonna feel lonely again, you are seriously misguided.
If you think it's all diamond rings and picnics and tiny squeaks from the cute baby in the next bedroom, you are nuts.
If you're looking for something ultimate, if you're thinking this is what life is really all about, you will be deeply, deeply disappointed
(35:16):
or worse, you'll shipwreck your soul trying to create your own happiness.
When God offers you marriage, he's not offering you what the world we live in thinks marriage is.
God is offering you someone to come alongside you and to help you work for God and obey God.
If you want something other than that, marriage is not your answer.
(35:40):
But if on the other hand you want to spend your life in the service of Christ, then by all means pray for a spouse to help you.
And if that's what you want, you might also pray for singleness because it too has many advantages when it comes to serving God in his world.
(36:02):
So I next wanna reflect on what perspective Genesis 2 offers us on singleness as well.
And by single I mean anyone who's not married, whether never married or previously married and single again.
Now, let me suggest two things that Genesis 2 shows us.
Firstly, Genesis 2 reminds us that singleness is indeed the absence of a good thing.
(36:26):
It's very clear from this chapter that marriage is a gift from God, which is a blessing to a husband and wife.
It's part of God's answer to Adam's aloneness.
It does draw people into intimate unity with each other.
Does provide the married person with a like, but complimentary counterpart as they serve the Lord.
Together, these things are all good.
(36:47):
So Genesis 2 is a reminder that a person who is not married does not enjoy these blessings in the same way,
given some of the remarkably positive things the rest of the Bible says about singleness.
It might be possible for Christians to think that a single person isn't really missing out on anything.
(37:10):
It might be possible for some Christians to think that a person who grieves being single is making too much of it.
But I don't think the scriptures will allow us to draw that conclusion, rather, I
think Genesis 2 dignifies the grief of those who would love to be married but aren't.
(37:30):
If they grieve because they see what a good thing marriage is, and because they recognize within themselves a righteous
desire for a husband or a wife, then I think we'd have to say that their grief makes perfect sense in the light of God's word.
Ye yes.
There are also some other things.
God's word would urge them to think and feel about their singleness.
(37:51):
Things we find in passages like one Corinthians seven.
But for now at least, I wanna remind us that those who grieve not being married, grieve the absence
of something good and those who desire marriage desire a good thing that comes from the hand of God.
(38:13):
But there's also a second thing that Genesis 2 reminds us of when we're thinking about singleness.
That is, if marriage is only part of the answer to the aloneness Adam felt, then there must be other parts to that answer too.
Other provisions of God, which single people can enjoy.
And this all comes back, I think, to the point I made earlier about the unique nature of Adam's aloneness.
(38:36):
One of the dangers in reading this passage is that you might confuse Adam's aloneness with loneliness.
But so important to see here that loneliness, as we experienced it, was not the core of Adam's problem.
He was actually alone.
He was the only human like me, living with just the animals in ATO Elephant Park, none of us have ever experienced the aloneness of Adam.
(39:01):
In fact, Genesis 2 reminds us that none of us have ever been completely alone, precisely because of what God did here.
When God gave the woman to Adam, he was prefiguring marriage in a very real way, but at a more fundamental level.
He was creating human, community and friendship so that no human would ever again, ever again have to experience what Adam did.
(39:33):
I think it's correct to say that Genesis 2 is not just about marriage, but about what it means to be human.
Of course it is about marriage, but Genesis 2 is about something even more basic.
God saw that Adam was alone.
It wasn't good for Adam to be alone, and so God ensured that from the end of Genesis 2 onwards, human
(39:55):
beings would have the opportunity for relationships with other human beings, whether married or single.
Genesis 2 draws our attention not just to the blessings of marriage, but also to the blessings of family life.
Friendship of community, and in particular the blessings of community in Christ, family of God.
(40:18):
Genesis 2 celebrates all of these things, and it's a mistake when we treat it simply as if it's a celebration of marriage.
It's not.
Genesis 2 is a celebration of all that's good about human relationships.
Adam is so much more than a husband here.
By the end of chapter two, he's someone who has a suitable helper, but also looks
(40:40):
forward to the possibility of being a father, an uncle, maybe a grandfather, a friend.
And Eve is so much more than just a wife for Adam.
She too is a future friend and a future mother, and a future auntie and grandmother, indeed, she's literally the
one who, with her husband, will produce new humans in order to perpetuate the provision of God that we see here.
(41:06):
Hannah and Eve's relationship here is the origin of all kinds of relationships for every human being who comes after them.
So Genesis 2 reminds us that the choice between marriage and singleness is not a choice between intimacy and aloneness.
(41:29):
I really want you to hear me at this point.
The choice between marriage and singleness is not a choice between intimacy and aloneness
because Genesis 2 reminds us, for example, of the intimacy that can exist between friends precisely because of what God did in this moment.
As I've been saying, I think we have a terrible habit in our society these days of sexualizing everything.
(41:54):
It's now got to a stage where when two women enjoy a really intimate friendship, people start to wonder whether they're gay.
It's now got to a stage where when two men develop a deep affection for each other, we call it a bromance.
I. And it also seems we're at a point where a man and a woman claim to have a non-romantic friendship.
People suspect there's more to it than meets the eye, or at least it'll inevitably turn into something more.
(42:20):
These terrible instincts, Christians should have no part of them.
Our society has taught us to think like that, but we need to go back to the scriptures to be taught to think differently.
We must say no to that instinct, to sexualize everything.
It's possible for two women to be very close to each other without ever having a lesbian thought.
(42:42):
It's possible for two blokes to love each other deeply in an entirely non-romantic way.
That's not a romance, that's a friendship.
If we have to use a word which contains the word romance, then our category of friendship is too small.
Brothers and sisters, it's even possible for men and women to be friends without sexual desire getting in the way.
(43:03):
Of course, sexual desire is often used by Satan to undermine friendships.
So wisdom is needed, but we mustn't let the fear of that danger become the only thought we have about our friendships.
Friendships a beautiful thing, a great gift from God for us to enjoy.
Genesis 2 celebrates that provision.
(43:25):
I. And if that's true of friendship, how much more is that true of the church
family of God in Christ?
What a stunningly beautiful thing that is.
The relationships within the family of God are a very special gift from God for all to enjoy in the church.
Both single and married have eternal brothers and sisters.
(43:46):
They have mothers and fathers.
And within the family of God, there's also the possibility for both married and single to be spiritual parents through discipleship.
In Mark 10 verses 29 and 30, Jesus says this.
Truly, I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters, or mother or father, or children or
(44:08):
fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age, Holmes
brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields along with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.
That's a stunning promise.
One, I fear we so often fail to believe.
(44:30):
But it's a promise that would never have been possible from the lips of Jesus if it were not for what we read in Genesis 2.
So finally, what does Genesis 2 teach us about the kingdom of God?
Very simply, it reminds us that God's kingdom is the ultimate thing.
(44:53):
Marriage is not ultimate.
The enjoyment of friendship and community is not ultimate either.
All human relationships must look to a purpose beyond themselves, and that purpose is found in relating to God the king, and doing what he asks.
And we see three dimensions of that here in Genesis 2 that I wanna very briefly point out as we close.
(45:15):
Firstly, work
as we've already seen, what the earth lacked before man was created was someone to work the ground.
Verse five.
What God asked Adam to do in the garden when he was created was work it, take care of it.
God did not create humans without a purpose.
(45:36):
Yes, he made the world good and pleasing, and there was and is much for people to enjoy and the world God made.
But the enjoyment of the Earth's riches is not ultimately our purpose.
Our purpose as humans is to serve the God who made us.
And now that Christ has come, that purpose is deeply shaped by the gospel.
(45:57):
Our lives are all about doing the work in the world that God has called us to do.
And above all else, that means making disciples in our families, amongst our friends, in our churches, and throughout the world.
That is what life is for.
If we are married, this is what marriage is for.
(46:18):
But whether married or not, this is what God calls us to, to the work he's given us
to do, to bring people to know the Lord Jesus and to live their lives in his service.
Secondly, obedience.
'cause that's another thing.
Genesis 2 makes really clear about how the man and the woman must live their lives
(46:38):
there to live, recognizing the kingship of God and submitting themselves to it.
Did you notice in the middle of this chapter is a commandment?
You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the outset.
It establishes that men and women are made to listen to their maker.
Life will be best for them when they obey his word.
(47:02):
They don't know everything.
God knows far better than they do how to live in the world he's created and how to live well.
They must listen.
Trust his goodness and do exactly what he says, and that's as true now as it ever was.
(47:22):
Thirdly and finally, relationship.
'cause the man and the woman God created are not just asked to do the King's work and obey the king's word.
They actually invited to know the king and to be loved by him.
It's a striking thing here.
Don't you think that the Lord God talks to the man?
(47:43):
It's a striking thing here, that God makes the world, the man inhabits good and pleasing.
It's a striking thing here that God sees the man's deep need and he wants to meet it.
This is not a picture of a God who's.
Distant and disinterested.
This is a picture of a God who cares deeply for the people that he's made, and of course that hasn't changed either.
(48:11):
I wonder if I asked you what you think is the most intimate moment in Genesis 2, what you'd say?
I suspect our eyes would most likely drift towards the end of the chapter, and there is real intimacy there for sure.
But I've wondered as I've read this chapter again, whether in fact verse seven might contain the chapter's most intimate moment
(48:33):
in that verse, the Lord God forms a man with his own fingers,
and then he cradles the man's lifeless face in his hands and he kneels down, placing his lips over the man's nose.
And then he breathes.
(48:57):
He shares his own life with the man he's made, bringing him to life in the process.
It's a stunning moment.
Indescribably beautiful, and it stands in this chapter as an emblem of the kind of relationship with God that humans are created for.
(49:20):
As we well know in Christ Jesus, God offers us life and in a wonderfully predictive way.
This intimate moment in Genesis 2 is a sweet picture of what we have in Christ, God's life within us.
(49:40):
So Genesis 2 reminds us of what the gospel itself trumpets that God offers to people.
Single or married, a far greater joy than any human relationship can provide.
That's the ultimate thing,
sisters and brothers.
This is the gospel we proclaim, and it's the truth we live and experience every day.
(50:06):
The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Amen.
(50:27):
Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.
Our vision as a College is to see God glorified by men and women living for
and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy churches and reaching the lost.
We invite you to attend any of our upcoming events, including this one from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre.
(50:49):
The Priscilla & Aquila Centre aims to encourage the ministries of women in partnership with men.
It also promotes complementarianism, the view that men and women are created equal, but different.
In other words, complementary.
What do we really mean by complementarian?
What don't we mean by it?
What lessons can we learn from the history of this term?
(51:11):
Join us for the next Priscilla & Aquila evening seminar on Wednesday, 13th August 2025,
when author and theologian Claire Smith will share some of her wisdom on this topic.
To find out more and register, visit the Priscilla & Aquila website, paa.moore.edu.au.
(51:33):
That's paa.moore.edu.au.
You can find out more and register by going to the Moore College website (51:42):
moore.edu.au.
That's moore.edu.au.
If you have not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
through your favourite podcast platform so that you'll never miss an episode.
For past episodes, further resources and to make a tax deductible donation to support
(52:05):
the work of the College and its mission, please visit our website at moore.edu.au.
If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave a review on your platform of choice.
We always benefit from feedback from our listeners, so if you'd like to get in touch, you can email us at comms@moore.edu.au.
(52:30):
The Moore in the Word podcast was edited and produced by me, Karen Beilharz, and the Communications Team at Moore Theological College.
The music for our podcast was provided by MarkJuly from Pixabay.
Until next time.
Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre evening seminar held on Wednesday the 12th of March 2025, Simon
(00:30):
Flinders, Archdeacon to the Archbishop of Sydney, speaks on Genesis 2 and the beginning of all relationships.
He reminds us that while marriage is good and brings many blessings, those blessings are not ultimate ends.
Instead, Genesis 2 points us to God's greater purpose for his creatures and their relationships with one another.
(00:53):
We hope you find the episode helpful.
Good evening, everybody.
It's, uh, great to be here with you and our, our goal tonight is to.
Uh, mine, Genesis 2 for its riches, and, uh, hope you'll, uh, be able to follow the outline.
(01:13):
There were some available at the door or on Slido.
Um, I'm gonna speak from this passage for a little while, and then afterwards Cara and Joss are gonna reflect a little bit more, a lot more
briefly, um, from their personal perspective, I guess, uh, the implications of this chapter four, their lives as a married woman and a single woman.
And, uh, then we look forward to your questions and engaging with you in that way afterwards.
(01:36):
Uh, I'm gonna pray and then I encourage you to leave your Bibles open at Genesis 2, and you can follow on the outline.
Father, we really want to thank you for this, uh, privileged opportunity this evening of coming again to your word.
And we ask that your Spirit would be with us guiding my words and directing the thoughts of all of our hearts, that we might come
(01:57):
under the Lordship of Christ as he speaks to us this evening, and that you would shape our lives according to the truth of your word.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I wanna begin tonight by thinking about the wider setting of our text.
Uh, Genesis 2.
I imagine this will be familiar to most of, if not all of you, but nevertheless, I
(02:17):
think it's important for us to take a few moments to think about Genesis 2's context.
Genesis one tells the story of creation, the beginning of all things, but one God himself, of course, is the but one.
Genesis does not tell the story of God's beginning because he did not begin.
(02:40):
He was there before all else began.
His Spirit hovered over the waters and his word gave birth to all.
That is.
He spoke and everything came to be, and then he rested.
And then when we come to chapter two, verse four, we find the author of Genesis zooming in on humankind.
(03:03):
Genesis chapter one, verse one to chapter two, verse three, acts like a prologue to the book.
And from chapter two verse four, we begin to hear the accounts of those God made and their families.
The formula with which verse four begins is one that will be repeated several times through the Book of Genesis.
This is the account of, for example, you'll see it again in chapter five, verse one, uh, chapter six, verse nine, and the pattern continues.
(03:29):
But here it choose to introduce us to an account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Effectively, what we get in chapter two is a partial retelling of chapter one,
but in a less structured way, and the focus here is on the creation of people.
If Genesis one was the wide angle lens where we see the creation on the grandest possible
(03:51):
scale, Genesis 2 zooms in to show us what it looked like when God created male and female.
And one of the key questions Genesis 2 invites us to ask is a question about the goodness of the creation all through chapter one.
This was the refrain.
God saw what he made and it was good.
(04:12):
Good, good.
Very good.
Genesis one uses the word good to describe what was in the mind and heart of God.
When he looked over all that he was made, it was just right.
It was exactly as he wanted it to be.
All good,
(04:32):
but was it
in verse 18?
Genesis 2 strikes a suddenly discordant note.
God said It is not good for the man to be alone at the point at which God had created a male, but not yet a female.
Everything was not just right.
(04:53):
It was not exactly as God wanted.
It was not good.
Not yet.
There was a part of God's design for creation yet to be introduced.
And Genesis 2 invites us to think about why it invites us to see how God made what wasn't yet good, just right.
(05:14):
And that's what we're gonna be focusing on this evening.
So secondly, let's look at what the text actually tells us.
This is our exposition.
We see firstly in verses four to seven, the transition from no one to one.
Verses five and six are very reminiscent of chapter one, verse two, they're
describing the emptiness and the formlessness of the earth before God began to create.
(05:38):
But then verse seven tells us about the first person to ever be set on the earth.
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
It's a reminder to us of the incredible power of God.
God doesn't just go down to Bunnings and pick up a bag of bones and a few two inch sinews and nine meters of industrial strength skin.
(06:05):
God's not just assembling raw materials here.
He's forming a person.
From next to nothing.
He takes dust and creates a man with all the intricacies and complexity and personality that every human person contains.
And then he breathes life into the man that he's made.
(06:29):
The Lord God is not just the one who forms the human body.
He's the life giver and the man becomes a living being.
A living being in the image of the God who has formed and enlivened him.
And then having told us about the man, the author of Genesis begins to tell us about the garden where he'd placed the man.
(06:51):
Verse eight says, now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed the Lord.
God made all kinds of trees grow outta the ground.
Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.
Notice those two words there in verse nine, pleasing and good.
What God has made for the man is both those things.
(07:14):
It supplies his fundamental needs, but it does so in a delightful way.
Do you notice God has provided pleasure as well as basic necessities?
And I think that's a fascinating detail to have been included here because it obliterates straight away any notion of God being in favor of
some kind of monish deprivation as if to really honor him in the world is to live a basic or frugal existence without any hint of enjoyment.
(07:41):
No, God is the inventor of pleasure.
He creates aesthetically as well as functionally.
Which is why we can still look around us at hundreds of things in the world and find them pleasing to the eye because God is the creator of beauty,
and not only is the garden pleasing and good, it's also fruitful.
(08:06):
I suspect that's the main point of verses 10 to 14, which described the rivers that flowed through and from the Garden of Eden to many other places.
The rich bouncy of this garden is not just for Adam.
God's provision is so abundant that it overflows to bless other places and in time other people,
(08:27):
but the garden is also full of possibilities.
Lemme read you again from the second half of verse nine.
In the middle of the garden with a tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In verse nine, that's all we're told.
We're simply informed of their presence.
But even to hear about something called the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is to hear a word.
(08:52):
We'd rather not hear a word that sounds an ominous note.
Even this early in the piece, the very presence of this word evil is a reminder to
us that within this garden there is a dark potential in the midst of everything good.
It's the first hint to us that this wonderful story God has begun may have a tragic twist before the tale is fully told.
(09:20):
And for us, it's a reminder that whilst the garden was good.
Whilst it was exactly what God wanted, it was not perfect.
Certainly not in the way that heaven will be perfect.
Heaven will be a place where there is no dark potential, no possibility of evil ever again.
(09:40):
Even at the very beginning of the Bible, we reminded that the Garden of Eden was not the end point of God's plan.
It was the beginning, and it wets our appetite for a place like Eden, but a place
which will be even better, a place where there'll be no trees like this one.
And in verse 15, we hear that God placed the man in the garden of Eden and he's given a purpose to work the garden and to take care of it.
(10:08):
And in verse 16, God underlines for him the great freedom he has to enjoy the garden and
to eat its fruit, including the fruit that grows from the tree of life we just heard about.
But as verse 17 tells us, he must not eat the fruit of the other more ominous sounding tree.
If he does, there will be terrible consequences.
(10:30):
So you note here that God places a limit on the man's freedom, but the limit the divine command gives him is for his own good.
So it is with all God's commands, they're given in love,
but it's at this point that we come to verse 18, tellingly.
(10:52):
It's at this moment that God declares that something about this man's life in this garden is not good.
He's alone,
and it's important we understand this aloneness because it doesn't say he was lonely.
Verse 18 isn't primarily describing a subjective experience, one we know very well.
(11:13):
Loneliness.
No, it's describing an objective reality.
Adam was alone.
He was with God.
Yes, and that was wonderful.
But in terms of human companionship or society, he was on his own.
He was the only human.
(11:34):
This isn't an aloneness unlike anything you or I have ever experienced.
In fact, it's hard for us to even imagine it.
A number of years ago, I traveled to South Africa with my family, and while
we were there, we spent a day in a national park known as Ado Elephant Park.
It's basically a 1600 kilometer nature reserve.
(11:58):
We spent a magnificent day driving through it, saw all kinds of African animals up close.
It was fantastic.
Now, I want you to imagine for a moment that I got left behind in the park when the others drove home.
Imagine if the park then closed for the night.
And all the staff went home and imagine that for some reason the park was then closed for days and I was locked in and I couldn't get out.
(12:24):
So I was just left wandering through the park, and the only other living creature I might come into contact with was some kind of animal.
And now, if you can imagine that, in fact, that was the only life I'd ever known.
If you can begin to picture that, you can start to approach an understanding of what Adam's aloneness was like.
(12:45):
He was the only human in his world, and this is utterly unique in history.
So God's next step is to find for Adam something or someone that will bring his aloneness to an end.
In particular, God's gonna find him a helper.
(13:05):
And this word, too is very important to understand when God says that it's not
good for the man to be alone, does he mean that he seeks companionship for him?
Is it that the man is created for intimacy but he's without it unless he has a mate?
Is God simply observing that the man longs for a connection deep inside with another human being?
(13:26):
Well, there may be truth in all of those things, but I think it's actually very significant that God uses the word helper.
Because the search for a Heller for the man is not just about companionship or intimacy.
It's not primarily about the search for a soulmate.
This is a search for someone to share the work.
(13:48):
Remember, verse 15, God put the man in the garden not simply to enjoy its goodness, but to work it and take care of it.
And in verse 18, God identifies that he needs a partner in the fulfillment of that purpose.
God's not trying to find the man, someone he can simply come home at night and snuggle with.
God wants to find the man, someone who will go to work with him in the morning and labor with him through the day.
(14:12):
He doesn't just need a friend or a lover.
He needs a helper.
And once God articulates that it's not good for the man to be alone, the search for a
suitable helper is on, and God brings to the man all the animals he's made and he names them.
So the man's sitting there coming up with titles like Tyrannosaurus and Hippopotamus
(14:34):
and Aardvark and Yak, but none of them proved to be a suitable helper for him.
That's the conclusion we get to in verse 20, and so God creates again.
This time he takes one of Adam's ribs and from the rib he makes a woman, and so one becomes two.
Verse 22.
(14:55):
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he'd taken outta the man and he brought her to the man.
The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.
God presents the woman to the man as the answer to his need.
(15:17):
She's a gift to him and not the fruit of his own initiative.
God is the author of this good thing and the man is deeply satisfied.
Here we see God creating human fellowship and interaction for the first time.
(15:37):
What we're seeing here is God creating at the most fundamental level human community.
This is the beginning of all relationships.
At this point, we're introduced to the whole concept of society, of friendship, of family.
Here we see the germination of something that one day give birth to what we know as the church.
(16:03):
Adam is no longer alone.
But of course, the rest of the Bible does see this moment, not just as the beginnings of
human relationship, but as the very first instance of a particular kind of relationship.
It's the first instance of marriage.
Because into the drama of this scene, we have the insertion of verse 24.
(16:27):
We've just seen one human person become two.
Now the author tells us that the two become one.
Verse 24 stands out in the text because it, it does interrupt the flow of the story.
It's a verse which stops to reflect on this historic moment coming together of the first man and the first woman.
And the verse then looks forward to all future occasions like this.
(16:48):
It sees this moment as the first of many marriages that the world will know and it sees in this first marriage a pattern for all future marriages.
And verse 24, I think, tells us three key things about how God intended marriage to be.
Marriage would first involve a leaving.
The man will leave his father and mother and leave his family home.
(17:10):
Here, there's a clear break in the generations.
There's a fresh start where every new marriage begins, and I guess that in modern Western societies where fial
duties are often not given much attention, this may seem like a minor point to make, but in societies like
Ancient Israel and even in other cultures, today, we are honoring parents is one of the highest human obligations.
(17:33):
This leaving.
Is a significant challenge, but nonetheless, a necessity in God's eyes.
But there's also a uniting.
So the man doesn't simply leave his family behind.
He leaves his family in order to form a new one.
He's united to his wife and a new family unit has begun.
(17:53):
They will unite by sharing the same home.
They will unite sexually as well.
And as we saw earlier, if they're thinking rightly about their marriage,
they'll be united in their desire to fulfill their responsibilities before God.
And to help each other do that.
And then thirdly, they'll become one flesh, such as the power of their unity, that there's a very real sense in which they're no longer two, but one.
(18:23):
The word flesh must be at least partly sexual in connotation, but we'd be foolish, I think, to reduce it to only being a sexual thing.
The phrase one flesh is really an attempt to express a union that affects all of life, not just a sexual relationship.
Now, of course, all independent personality and life is not just sucked up into some completely indistinguishable oneness.
(18:49):
Nevertheless, there is a merging of lives to such a great extent here that an inseparable and permanent unity is established.
And so at the end of Genesis 2, that's how we find Adam no longer alone, no longer without help.
God has supplied his needs abundantly.
(19:11):
And verse 25 gives us a wonderful picture of all being well.
Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.
Sadly, uh, by the end of the next chapter, the very possibility of that kind of shameless vulnerability has vanished.
(19:31):
But here there is a very beautiful kind of openness and innocence, at least for a moment.
Now I wanna turn to teasing out some implications of this chapter, and I wanna do that in three parts.
Under three headings, you'll see them on your outline there.
First marriage, then singleness, and then the kingdom of God.
(19:56):
So firstly, marriage.
Let me say four things about marriage from Genesis 2.
Number one, we see here in Genesis 2 that marriage was part of the answer to Adam's aloneness.
Of course it is only part of the answer because the creation of the woman was not just
about the creation of marriage, but the creation of human relationships altogether.
(20:21):
So it is not only in marriage that God meets the need of human beings to have helpful companionship.
There are many other kinds of relationships too that are the fruit of this moment.
Genesis 2 describes, and yet it is significant that God doesn't create just another man.
He creates someone who is very much like Adam, but yet who is also different.
(20:44):
So Genesis 2 is saying something about the particular way in which relationships
between men and women meet our needs for partnership in the purposes of God.
And so Genesis 2 is most definitely saying something in particular about marriage.
It is true, it's, it's not good for people to be alone like Adam was alone and in order to satisfy
(21:06):
the human need for another or others, part of what God has provided is the gift of marriage.
So those of us who are married ought to be very thankful for this aspect of God's provision.
And that leads me to the second thing I wanna point out about marriage.
Here it is about complementarity.
(21:27):
God identifies not just that Adam needs a helper, but that he needs a helper fit for him, a suitable helper.
That's the word used in both verse 18 and verse 20.
What's being conveyed here is that Adam needs a helper who is both like him and unlike him.
In verse 23, Adam celebrates the way in which his wife is like him, but it's also clear
(21:50):
that in order for him to be suitably helped, he needs someone who will compliment him.
In his commentary on these verses, John Calvin calls the woman Adam's counterpart, and I quite like what that word captures.
Marriage is the coming together of two people who can help each other because they're not exactly the same as each other.
(22:14):
Thirdly, we see here that marriage is about an intimate unity.
When verse 24 describes the two becoming one flesh, something very profound is being said.
And when verse 25 tells us they were both shamelessly naked, we are hearing something
important about the kind of intimacy that God hoped would characterize marriage.
(22:36):
This intimate unity is what the Apostle Paul in Ephesians five calls a profound mystery, and it's a profound mystery
that's stitched together in God's purposes with another profound mystery, the intimate unity of Christ Jesus.
His bride, the church.
(22:57):
This is emerging of two lives in body and in purpose.
It's emerging, designed by God and accomplished by God, and it brings two people together into a united oneness.
That's so profound that Paul says you can't really explain it.
It's definitely something to be prized, certainly something to be protected.
(23:25):
The fourth point about marriage from Genesis, this is the one I particularly wanna stress tonight, is that it's not ultimate.
Whilst it is good, it is not theologically speaking, merely an end in itself.
It's not a good thing just to be enjoyed.
Rather, it's something to be used for God's purposes.
(23:48):
And this is why understanding the word helper here is so important because it will affect the way we end up thinking about what marriage is.
If we think that the creation of the woman for the man was just about his need for an intimate
companion, then we'll conclude that companionship and intimacy are the great purposes of marriage.
And so we will invest ourselves in producing and nurturing marriages where intimate companionship is the highest priority.
(24:17):
If on the other hand, we grasp that the creation of a woman for the man was about his need for a workmate in the fulfillment of
God-given responsibilities, then we will conclude that there is a purpose for a married couple that is beyond the couple themselves.
So then we'll invest ourselves in producing and nurturing marriages where the highest priority is the fulfillment of our God-given responsibilities.
(24:44):
And I think the distinction between those two outlooks makes quite a big difference on the ground.
This is a very important perspective for us on marriage.
I don't want you to mishear me.
I'm not saying God's not interested in companionship or intimacy.
It's obvious from Genesis 2 and from the rest of the Bible that we ought regard
intimacy, including sexual intimacy as a beautiful thing, a very precious gift from God.
(25:09):
There is companionship and intimacy to be enjoyed.
But we just mustn't reduce it to that as if that's all there is,
because it's not.
When chapter two, verse five described what the world was like before God created man, it said there was no one to work the ground.
(25:29):
And when God did make man and place him in the garden, verse 15 says He did so that he might work it and take care of it.
So when the woman comes along to help the man, Genesis 2 couldn't be clearer about what their partnership is for.
It's for doing the work that God's given them.
Together.
It's for obeying God together.
(25:51):
Adam's helper comes not just to be with him, to do life with him, but to assist him to live well, to partner him in living, to please God.
Now I'm well aware that this idea is actually quite a long way from how a lot of people naturally think, even amongst Christians.
(26:13):
I think there's a lot of confusion about this, and that's partly because we've been careless in our reading of the Bible.
But I think it's also because perhaps, largely because we're so strongly influenced by the culture we live in.
We live in a culture which so often does treat marriage, or at least partnering as if it's ultimate.
(26:42):
When I was a child, I used to read some of Richard Scarry's books.
I. If you're a similar vintage to me or perhaps older.
Yeah, you did too.
And uh, this is, this is one of his collection of stories.
It's called "The Best Storybook Ever".
Admittedly, that's a pretty big claim.
I'm gonna read you one of the stories from here.
It's called, "Is this the House of Mistress Mouse?" Uh, if you're sitting close to front, you might even be able to see the pictures.
(27:10):
This is the house of Mr Mouse.
He lived all alone and he was very lonely.
One day, he received a letter from Mistress Mouse.
The letter said, "Dear Mr Mouse, I'm very lonely too. Will you please come and visit me? Love and kisses, Mistress Mouse."
Mr Mouse said to himself, "I would like very much to visit Mrs. Mouse, but I don't know
(27:34):
where she lives. However, I'll just have to get into my little car and go look for her.
There's a house just ahead," said Mr Mouse.
"Perhaps that is where Mistress Mouse lives."
He knocked on the door.
"Is this the house of Mistress Mouse?" he asked.
Mr Mouse was very frightened for that was the house of Mr Cat!
(27:57):
"What a cute little mouse!" thought Mr Cat, as he watched him speed away in his car.
"I wonder why he was so frightened." But Mr Mouse knew better than to go into Mr Cat's house, didn't he?
Soon he came to a bright red barn.
He knocked on the barn door.
It was the house of Mrs Hen and her baby chicks.
"Please don't bother me. I'm teaching my chicks to scratch," she said.
(28:20):
And so Mr Mouse traveled on, until he came to a big castle house.
He knocked on the castle door.
It was the castle of Mr Lion.
He was in a very bad temper because he had a very bad toothache.
Mr Mouse raced away as fast as he could.
(28:40):
Finally, he came to a cute little house on a lovely country lane.
He knocked on the pretty little yellow door.
"Is this the house of Mistress Mouse?" he asked.
The door slowly opened.
Sure enough, this was the house of Mistress Mouse!
Mistress Mouse was so happy to see him.
(29:01):
Mr Mouse was so happy to see her.
"Will you marry me so that we'll never again be lonely?" asked Mr Mouse.
" Why yes," said Mistress Mouse.
And so they were married by Preacher Mole.
Mr Mouse gave Mistress Mouse a golden wedding ring with a bright diamond on top.
(29:22):
And from that day on, they were never lonely.
They went on picnics.
They took rides in the country.
They went rowing on the lake.
And then one night after they'd finished their supper, they heard something.
It was a tiny squeak, squeak, squeak coming from the bedroom.
(29:44):
What are you suppose it was that was squeaking ? It was their baby.
He wanted to be kissed.
Goodnight.
Good night, Daddy Mouse.
Good night, Mommy Mouse.
Good night, Baby Mouse.
Good night.
(30:08):
Now, I know that that's only a story for children.
I probably seems just kind of cutesy and harmless.
I do think this story is actually a really good example of the formative cultural narrative about marriage, which we imbibe.
We really do receive so many messages along these lines from popular culture.
Also, from our reading of literature and from the values of our families and friends, we see marriage and having babies as the ultimate achievements.
(30:40):
We see a fulfilling and happy marriage as the destination we want our lives to arrive at.
This is the soulmate happily ever after narrative about marriage, kind of marriage that Mr and Mistress Mouse had
in our culture Today, sex, marriage and family life are really valued with a kind of ultimacy.
(31:05):
That seems to be very seductive.
Our society does seem to believe that in one sense, at least, this is what life is all about.
A meaningful relationship, family leaving a legacy for the next generation.
But honestly, it's ludicrous.
(31:29):
It's so stupid.
I don't know where to start.
So many people have embraced this vision for life,
and so many Christians have bought into it too.
In fact, Christians have often endorsed it through their interpretation of pastors.
Like Genesis 2 story goes that Adam and Eve's marriage at the end of this chapter is the crescendo, the pinnacle of the creation accounts,
(31:55):
but you have to read Genesis 2 so carelessly to arrive at that conclusion.
Yes, it's true.
Adam and his wife come together in a complimentary way and in intimate unity.
Yes, it's true that their marriage is part of the answer God provides to the aloneness Adam previously experienced.
Yes, it's true that their marriage at the end of chapter two is a profound and beautiful thing, but it's not the ultimate thing.
(32:22):
Their marriage serves a purpose, a much bigger purpose than the enjoyment of their own relationship.
In God's wisdom, Adam and Eva brought together to help each other in the work
God has called them to they're married in order to serve God and obey God.
Our world may think that the defining moments of a marriage are when a couple are alone in their bedroom, but Genesis 2
(32:48):
suggests that the defining moments of every marriage are when husband and wife serve God together in the wider society.
Now what this means, of course, is that if your marriage, if you are married, and if your marriage is currently rich
and full of affection, then you mustn't let that lull you into some kind of dreamy confusion about what marriage is for.
(33:16):
Enjoy it.
Praise God for it by all means.
But remember that your marriage is a gift from God to be used in order that you may serve him.
Keep asking yourself, is my marriage oriented around the purposes of God?
And of course, this also means something if you are married.
(33:37):
But at the moment your marriage is disappointing or difficult,
it reassures you that a happy and an easy marriage is not the main point.
By all means, pray for better days ahead in your marriage.
And work hard to address issues that need to be addressed.
(34:01):
But don't put all your eggs for marriage in the intimacy basket.
Instead, get on with helping each other to serve Christ and His gospel however you can, and
delight in the ways that God is using your marriage to shape you and sanctify you for his purpose.
And of course, this also means something if you're single and desiring to be married.
(34:25):
It means you must work hard to understand what it is you seek.
Don't get sucked in by the Mr and Mrs. Mouse narrative about marriage.
If you get married, all your dreams won't come true.
You won't have found a soulmate who completes you.
(34:46):
You.
You won't have satisfied every longing God made you with.
If you think you're never gonna feel lonely again, you are seriously misguided.
If you think it's all diamond rings and picnics and tiny squeaks from the cute baby in the next bedroom, you are nuts.
If you're looking for something ultimate, if you're thinking this is what life is really all about, you will be deeply, deeply disappointed
(35:16):
or worse, you'll shipwreck your soul trying to create your own happiness.
When God offers you marriage, he's not offering you what the world we live in thinks marriage is.
God is offering you someone to come alongside you and to help you work for God and obey God.
If you want something other than that, marriage is not your answer.
(35:40):
But if on the other hand you want to spend your life in the service of Christ, then by all means pray for a spouse to help you.
And if that's what you want, you might also pray for singleness because it too has many advantages when it comes to serving God in his world.
(36:02):
So I next wanna reflect on what perspective Genesis 2 offers us on singleness as well.
And by single I mean anyone who's not married, whether never married or previously married and single again.
Now, let me suggest two things that Genesis 2 shows us.
Firstly, Genesis 2 reminds us that singleness is indeed the absence of a good thing.
(36:26):
It's very clear from this chapter that marriage is a gift from God, which is a blessing to a husband and wife.
It's part of God's answer to Adam's aloneness.
It does draw people into intimate unity with each other.
Does provide the married person with a like, but complimentary counterpart as they serve the Lord.
Together, these things are all good.
(36:47):
So Genesis 2 is a reminder that a person who is not married does not enjoy these blessings in the same way,
given some of the remarkably positive things the rest of the Bible says about singleness.
It might be possible for Christians to think that a single person isn't really missing out on anything.
(37:10):
It might be possible for some Christians to think that a person who grieves being single is making too much of it.
But I don't think the scriptures will allow us to draw that conclusion, rather, I
think Genesis 2 dignifies the grief of those who would love to be married but aren't.
(37:30):
If they grieve because they see what a good thing marriage is, and because they recognize within themselves a righteous
desire for a husband or a wife, then I think we'd have to say that their grief makes perfect sense in the light of God's word.
Ye yes.
There are also some other things.
God's word would urge them to think and feel about their singleness.
(37:51):
Things we find in passages like one Corinthians seven.
But for now at least, I wanna remind us that those who grieve not being married, grieve the absence
of something good and those who desire marriage desire a good thing that comes from the hand of God.
(38:13):
But there's also a second thing that Genesis 2 reminds us of when we're thinking about singleness.
That is, if marriage is only part of the answer to the aloneness Adam felt, then there must be other parts to that answer too.
Other provisions of God, which single people can enjoy.
And this all comes back, I think, to the point I made earlier about the unique nature of Adam's aloneness.
(38:36):
One of the dangers in reading this passage is that you might confuse Adam's aloneness with loneliness.
But so important to see here that loneliness, as we experienced it, was not the core of Adam's problem.
He was actually alone.
He was the only human like me, living with just the animals in ATO Elephant Park, none of us have ever experienced the aloneness of Adam.
(39:01):
In fact, Genesis 2 reminds us that none of us have ever been completely alone, precisely because of what God did here.
When God gave the woman to Adam, he was prefiguring marriage in a very real way, but at a more fundamental level.
He was creating human, community and friendship so that no human would ever again, ever again have to experience what Adam did.
(39:33):
I think it's correct to say that Genesis 2 is not just about marriage, but about what it means to be human.
Of course it is about marriage, but Genesis 2 is about something even more basic.
God saw that Adam was alone.
It wasn't good for Adam to be alone, and so God ensured that from the end of Genesis 2 onwards, human
(39:55):
beings would have the opportunity for relationships with other human beings, whether married or single.
Genesis 2 draws our attention not just to the blessings of marriage, but also to the blessings of family life.
Friendship of community, and in particular the blessings of community in Christ, family of God.
(40:18):
Genesis 2 celebrates all of these things, and it's a mistake when we treat it simply as if it's a celebration of marriage.
It's not.
Genesis 2 is a celebration of all that's good about human relationships.
Adam is so much more than a husband here.
By the end of chapter two, he's someone who has a suitable helper, but also looks
(40:40):
forward to the possibility of being a father, an uncle, maybe a grandfather, a friend.
And Eve is so much more than just a wife for Adam.
She too is a future friend and a future mother, and a future auntie and grandmother, indeed, she's literally the
one who, with her husband, will produce new humans in order to perpetuate the provision of God that we see here.
(41:06):
Hannah and Eve's relationship here is the origin of all kinds of relationships for every human being who comes after them.
So Genesis 2 reminds us that the choice between marriage and singleness is not a choice between intimacy and aloneness.
(41:29):
I really want you to hear me at this point.
The choice between marriage and singleness is not a choice between intimacy and aloneness
because Genesis 2 reminds us, for example, of the intimacy that can exist between friends precisely because of what God did in this moment.
As I've been saying, I think we have a terrible habit in our society these days of sexualizing everything.
(41:54):
It's now got to a stage where when two women enjoy a really intimate friendship, people start to wonder whether they're gay.
It's now got to a stage where when two men develop a deep affection for each other, we call it a bromance.
I. And it also seems we're at a point where a man and a woman claim to have a non-romantic friendship.
People suspect there's more to it than meets the eye, or at least it'll inevitably turn into something more.
(42:20):
These terrible instincts, Christians should have no part of them.
Our society has taught us to think like that, but we need to go back to the scriptures to be taught to think differently.
We must say no to that instinct, to sexualize everything.
It's possible for two women to be very close to each other without ever having a lesbian thought.
(42:42):
It's possible for two blokes to love each other deeply in an entirely non-romantic way.
That's not a romance, that's a friendship.
If we have to use a word which contains the word romance, then our category of friendship is too small.
Brothers and sisters, it's even possible for men and women to be friends without sexual desire getting in the way.
(43:03):
Of course, sexual desire is often used by Satan to undermine friendships.
So wisdom is needed, but we mustn't let the fear of that danger become the only thought we have about our friendships.
Friendships a beautiful thing, a great gift from God for us to enjoy.
Genesis 2 celebrates that provision.
(43:25):
I. And if that's true of friendship, how much more is that true of the church
family of God in Christ?
What a stunningly beautiful thing that is.
The relationships within the family of God are a very special gift from God for all to enjoy in the church.
Both single and married have eternal brothers and sisters.
(43:46):
They have mothers and fathers.
And within the family of God, there's also the possibility for both married and single to be spiritual parents through discipleship.
In Mark 10 verses 29 and 30, Jesus says this.
Truly, I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters, or mother or father, or children or
(44:08):
fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age, Holmes
brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields along with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.
That's a stunning promise.
One, I fear we so often fail to believe.
(44:30):
But it's a promise that would never have been possible from the lips of Jesus if it were not for what we read in Genesis 2.
So finally, what does Genesis 2 teach us about the kingdom of God?
Very simply, it reminds us that God's kingdom is the ultimate thing.
(44:53):
Marriage is not ultimate.
The enjoyment of friendship and community is not ultimate either.
All human relationships must look to a purpose beyond themselves, and that purpose is found in relating to God the king, and doing what he asks.
And we see three dimensions of that here in Genesis 2 that I wanna very briefly point out as we close.
(45:15):
Firstly, work
as we've already seen, what the earth lacked before man was created was someone to work the ground.
Verse five.
What God asked Adam to do in the garden when he was created was work it, take care of it.
God did not create humans without a purpose.
(45:36):
Yes, he made the world good and pleasing, and there was and is much for people to enjoy and the world God made.
But the enjoyment of the Earth's riches is not ultimately our purpose.
Our purpose as humans is to serve the God who made us.
And now that Christ has come, that purpose is deeply shaped by the gospel.
(45:57):
Our lives are all about doing the work in the world that God has called us to do.
And above all else, that means making disciples in our families, amongst our friends, in our churches, and throughout the world.
That is what life is for.
If we are married, this is what marriage is for.
(46:18):
But whether married or not, this is what God calls us to, to the work he's given us
to do, to bring people to know the Lord Jesus and to live their lives in his service.
Secondly, obedience.
'cause that's another thing.
Genesis 2 makes really clear about how the man and the woman must live their lives
(46:38):
there to live, recognizing the kingship of God and submitting themselves to it.
Did you notice in the middle of this chapter is a commandment?
You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the outset.
It establishes that men and women are made to listen to their maker.
Life will be best for them when they obey his word.
(47:02):
They don't know everything.
God knows far better than they do how to live in the world he's created and how to live well.
They must listen.
Trust his goodness and do exactly what he says, and that's as true now as it ever was.
(47:22):
Thirdly and finally, relationship.
'cause the man and the woman God created are not just asked to do the King's work and obey the king's word.
They actually invited to know the king and to be loved by him.
It's a striking thing here.
Don't you think that the Lord God talks to the man?
(47:43):
It's a striking thing here, that God makes the world, the man inhabits good and pleasing.
It's a striking thing here that God sees the man's deep need and he wants to meet it.
This is not a picture of a God who's.
Distant and disinterested.
This is a picture of a God who cares deeply for the people that he's made, and of course that hasn't changed either.
(48:11):
I wonder if I asked you what you think is the most intimate moment in Genesis 2, what you'd say?
I suspect our eyes would most likely drift towards the end of the chapter, and there is real intimacy there for sure.
But I've wondered as I've read this chapter again, whether in fact verse seven might contain the chapter's most intimate moment
(48:33):
in that verse, the Lord God forms a man with his own fingers,
and then he cradles the man's lifeless face in his hands and he kneels down, placing his lips over the man's nose.
And then he breathes.
(48:57):
He shares his own life with the man he's made, bringing him to life in the process.
It's a stunning moment.
Indescribably beautiful, and it stands in this chapter as an emblem of the kind of relationship with God that humans are created for.
(49:20):
As we well know in Christ Jesus, God offers us life and in a wonderfully predictive way.
This intimate moment in Genesis 2 is a sweet picture of what we have in Christ, God's life within us.
(49:40):
So Genesis 2 reminds us of what the gospel itself trumpets that God offers to people.
Single or married, a far greater joy than any human relationship can provide.
That's the ultimate thing,
sisters and brothers.
This is the gospel we proclaim, and it's the truth we live and experience every day.
(50:06):
The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Amen.
(50:27):
Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.
Our vision as a College is to see God glorified by men and women living for
and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy churches and reaching the lost.
We invite you to attend any of our upcoming events, including this one from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre.
(50:49):
The Priscilla & Aquila Centre aims to encourage the ministries of women in partnership with men.
It also promotes complementarianism, the view that men and women are created equal, but different.
In other words, complementary.
What do we really mean by complementarian?
What don't we mean by it?
What lessons can we learn from the history of this term?
(51:11):
Join us for the next Priscilla & Aquila evening seminar on Wednesday, 13th August 2025,
when author and theologian Claire Smith will share some of her wisdom on this topic.
To find out more and register, visit the Priscilla & Aquila website, paa.moore.edu.au.
(51:33):
That's paa.moore.edu.au.
You can find out more and register by going to the Moore College website (51:42):
moore.edu.au.
That's moore.edu.au.
If you have not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
through your favourite podcast platform so that you'll never miss an episode.
For past episodes, further resources and to make a tax deductible donation to support
(52:05):
the work of the College and its mission, please visit our website at moore.edu.au.
If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave a review on your platform of choice.
We always benefit from feedback from our listeners, so if you'd like to get in touch, you can email us at comms@moore.edu.au.
(52:30):
The Moore in the Word podcast was edited and produced by me, Karen Beilharz, and the Communications Team at Moore Theological College.
The music for our podcast was provided by MarkJuly from Pixabay.
Until next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.