Marriage: Life Taker or Life Giver (Genesis 2-3)

I hope you enjoyed our guest preacher, Eddie Thompson, over the last two Sundays. I have been very excited to see the vision of our North Carolina Baptist State Convention in hiring him on staff to facilitate a new marriage and family ministry which will assist churches in building strong, faithful families.

Eddie and Janet have been good friends since we started the Village Church and I appreciate their experience in counseling families. I am thankful they could bring that to the table before you and share from their experiences over the last few weeks.

Well, I would like to continue the next two weeks in this discussion on marriage and family. I want us to do something I feel is somewhat unique, I want us to take these two Sundays and look at some marriage relationships in the Bible. As I began to think about it, pastors often preach sermons on different passages which speak to marriage, but as I was reading through some marriage and family resources, I noticed that I have heard very few sermons that explore specific marriages in the Old or New Testament.

My intention for these next two weeks is to think about marriage in relation to three biblical underpinnings which we all share in common. No one is unaffected by these three realities:

1. Marriage is God’s idea.

2. We all struggle in our marriages.

3. There is hope for every marriage.

Don’t take my word for it; let’s look at God’s Word, the Bible, and specifically Genesis 2 & 3.

1- Genesis 2:18-25 = Marriage is God’s idea.

Adam was given supervision over the creation, but God declared that for him to live his life alone was not good. From the man’s rib God created a woman and presented her as a wife to Adam, climaxing His creative work. Eve was not an afterthought or happenstance but an indispensible part of God’s plan. Both Adam and Eve, made “in the image of God,” stood as His representation in the world to care for all he put under their dominion.

Marriage is God’s idea and no one else’s. This is important because if it is God’s idea then we need to let God define to us and shape our understanding of what exactly marriage is. We must resist the temptation to let anyone or anything else shape God’s ideal of marriage. Not an advocate group. Not a politician. Not a judge. Not our favorite prime time television show. Not the latest celebrity magazine. ONLY GOD.

Again, why is this important? Well, one reason is that we see a NT writer, Paul, teaching the believers at Ephesus that husband and wives are analogous of Christ and the Church. Note how many times church is mentioned in Ephesians 5:21-33 [6 times]. I feel that our understanding of ecclesiology [doctrine of the church] is affected by the way we live our marriages & vice-versa.

Since marriage is God’s plan, we see in v. 24 that every step toward intimacy between a man and women must be balanced by faithfulness and tenderness. Love develops as you simultaneously move in faithfulness toward an exclusive commitment and in tenderness toward a unique intimacy. When a person tries to short circuit this plan with sexual intimacy before the commitment of marriage, a vacuum of emptiness is inevitable.

And let’s not forget God’s design for marriage was a forever promise between these two. Remember when Jesus was confronted with the question on divorce in Mark 10, he first quotes the Genesis account in 2:24 and adds his own exclamation point by saying, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate.”

2- Genesis 3:16 = We all struggle in our marriages.

As we keep reading the Genesis account, we learn that purity and innocence were shattered when the serpent entered the scene. Eve chose to believe Satan’s lie. She was free to put her will above God’s will, and she did. When she offered the fruit to her husband, he, too, disobeyed. There is no excuse for Adam, it says in verse Genesis 3:6 he was “with her” and Paul mentions twice that Adam ate in full knowledge of wrongdoing.

Not only had they broken their relationship with God, but also they had broken their relationship with one another and with all the generations to come and even with the world and nature over which they were to rule.

We know this because of the many curses that God gave in vv. 14-19, but let us look specifically at v. 16, “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” She would resist his leadership just as his rule over her would be distorted. This verse tells us that we will all struggle to some degree in our marriages because sin’s result is a hardship in fulfilling our proper roles.

What roles? Genesis 2:15-17 teaches that there is a headship in the order of creation. Adam (or the husband) is vested with the ultimate responsibility to [1] provide (“tend the garden”); [2] protect (“keep” or “guard”); [3] lead, through decision making responsibilities (vv. 16-17).

Thus in simple terms, we see an order in the home set up even before sin enters the world. The man’s role in the relationship is to lead and the wife is to be a “helper comparable to him” or a “suitable helper.” This description teaches that she is the perfect counterpart to him. “Helper” points to the function of the wife, not to the worth of the wife. The bible teaches that men and women are equal in personhood or worth before God, but different in function.

Put in more summary fashion, our Baptist Faith and Message 2000 speaks to the family this way,

The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

What I am driving towards here is that God’s ideal for marriage was shattered when Adam and Eve choice their way over God’s way. As a result, sin is ever present and rampant in all our marriages and makes every marriage difficult.

Illustration: Let’s turn to 1 Kings 21 and look at an OT marriage that magnifies how sin has greatly distorted God’s intended purpose for marriage.

What was the downfall of this marriage?

· Self-centeredness

· Jealousy

· Anger

· Inactivity

· Self-pity

· Dominant Leadership by Jezebel

· Insensitivity to sin

Notice what marks their lives and their marriage; they have become life-takers rather than life-givers. A King’s marriage that had the potential to have a wide impact on God’s people was simply sinister.

Let’s be honest and admit, that even though we may have never framed someone and put out a hit on someone, our marriages still struggle with these sins. Remember, Jesus says in Matthew 5:22, that anger in the heart is enough to make one guilty of murder.

Can your marriage be described as life-giving or life-taking?