TEXT: Genesis 2:18-25
MESSAGE: “Beautiful Design”
“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more and more young adults are opting not to get married or partner up and a growing number are choosing not to have children, which down the road may mean a rise in so-called elder orphans — seniors with no spouse, children, or other immediate family.”
—Patrick Allan
- The Place of Marriage (v. 18a)
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone…”
“Marriage these days seems to be falling out of favor. Not only are young couples choosing marriage less today than ever before, the number of those who consider themselves happily married is also in decline. In his 2012 book You Can Be Right or You Can Be Married, Dana Adam Shapiro wrote that as few as 17 percent of couples are content in their partner. Vicki Larson, journalist and co-author of The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels, sites that six of every 10 are unhappily coupled and four out of 10 have considered leaving their partner. A study done by the National Opinion Research Center in 2014 revealed that the trend is getting worse, not better. People are becoming less and less happy in their marriages as time goes on.”
— Susan Pease Gadoua
“Once we realize what the religious solution did, we can see how modern man edged himself into an impossible situation. He still needed to feel heroic, to know that his life mattered in the scheme of things; he still had to be specially “good” for something truly special. Also, he still had to merge himself with some higher, self-absorbing meaning, in trust and in gratitude —what we saw as the universal motive of the Agape-merger. If he no longer had God, how was he to do this? One of the first ways that occurred to him, as Rank saw, was the “romantic solution”: he fixed his urge to cosmic heroism onto another person in the form of a love object. The self-glorification that he needed in his innermost nature he now looked for in the love partner. The love partner becomes the divine ideal within which to fulfill one’s life. All spiritual and moral needs now become focused in one individual. Spirituality, which once referred to another dimension of things, is now brought down to this earth and given form in another individual human being. Salvation itself is no longer referred to an abstraction like God but can be sought “in the beatification of the other.” — Earnest Becker
“…single people, you have to remember Christianity is the only major religion that was started by a single person…Traditional societies believe you’re nobody unless you’re somebody’s spouse, but our faith was started by a single man. Another one of the great founders of Christianity, Saint Paul, has an interesting place in 2 Corinthians where he says, “You want to be married? Great. You’re not married? Great.” That was unique in antiquity, because in ancient times and in traditional cultures, you’re nobody unless you’re married. But Paul says the relationship every single Christian has with God through Christ is so intimate and so great, and the relationship Christian brothers and sisters have inside the family of God is so great, no one who’s single should be seen as being a second-class person. You are fully human as a single person. After all, the person who saved us was single.” – Timothy Keller
John Newton once prayed, “save us from the wonderfulness of marriage.”
- The Test of Marriage (v. 18b-22)
“I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”
- The Covenant of Marriage (v. 22-25)
“And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
TAKEAWAYS:
*Be realistic
“Your marriage can’t bear your personal “happiness.” – Paul Tripp
*Understand the cost
*Seek God in every season (single, married, family)
*Trust in His plan