romantic words from the Old Testament in the Song of Solomon. And although throughout the years many have searched the Song of Solomon, this ancient love song, for hidden meanings, there is this temptation to spiritualize the Song of Solomon. I would say this morning that the lesson that God wants to teach us from this ancient lover's pledge is simple and is right on the surface. It's about marriage. The Song of Solomon is about marriage and it tells us that marriage is about, and this is an important word this morning, companionship. And marriage and the companionship that it tends to bring us and with it love and even romance were God's idea. And they were God's idea from the very beginning. And so this morning I want to talk about marriage in the beginning. And that idea beckons us to look back, I mean to look way back to where Alan was reading this morning and to think about the first groom, the first bride, and of course then the first wedding. So let's return there. Let's go back together to the beginning for just a couple of moments as you join me now in Genesis chapter 2. We're going to parachute into the middle of the context and look beginning in chapter 2 verse 18 down through the end of that. Genesis 2 and verse 18, then the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle and to all the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he, God, took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and 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, Eshah. because she was taken out of man-ish. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." Well, there are a lot of firsts in this familiar story this morning. The first bride, the first groom, but before that, the first lonely heart. The first fruitless love search. Have you ever been on one of those love searches that didn't turn up anything good? Been there and done that. The first matchmaking though. The first wedding song. And as I like to say, this is the first marriage made in heaven. But you know, to begin with, Adam's life was incomplete. Something was missing for Adam. And so what we're going to see this morning is that God completes Adam's puzzle. God completes Adam's puzzle. We're going to talk about a search, the side, and the song. We're going to talk about Adam's search in verses 18 through 20. And then we're going to move from his search to his side. Adam's side of all things in verses 21 and 22. And we're going to end by hearing Adam's song in verses 23 through the end of the text. His search, his side, and his song. Well, the first thing is, about Adam's search that is, that at first he didn't even know that something was missing. And not something small. Something vital. So let's reread beginning in verse 18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him." Well, you know, things had been good, or at least God said they were good, but now God says something is not good. I read that and I go, huh? Not good? I mean, think about where we are. Think about the circumstances. We're in the garden. We're in the garden before sin. That means Adam has fellowship with God. And in that fellowship, Adam enjoys fruitful labor. I'm doubting that Adam thought that anything much was missing. But God identified a problem because something was missing. God intended to provide man with a companion. And the idea, more specifically there in verse 18, is of a suitable or a fitting companion. And that's what that interesting term in the King James Bible means, the idea of your help meet. What is your help meet? It's a compound word, help and meet. And the old English term meet here does not refer to something in your sandwich. To be meet simply meant to be fitting or to be suitable. So God said that Adam needed a suitable, a complimenting companion. I've heard it explained kind of like a puzzle. Puzzle might have a thousand pieces. But there is only one way to complete the picture, and you've got to have every piece. God planned the exact, essential, unique piece that would complete Adam's picture. And so, the search for the missing puzzle piece was on. Now, at first, you saw it there in verses 19 and 20, At first, God brought animals to the man. The man named them, but none of them were suitable to complete him, not even Rover, man's best friend. But why this little love story detour? I mean, why didn't we just skip from verse 18 down to verse 21 where God provides a solution to Adam's need? It's not just a cute little detour. The Bible is teaching us a lesson and it's doing it in a gentle and a loving way. Sometimes loneliness or fear or sin urge us to search for a companion our way instead of according to God's standards. Now sometimes by the grace of God that might turn out okay, but many times not so much. So maybe this little detour is to convince the man that only God can provide somebody uniquely prepared to completely compliment him. So let's stop with that thought and let me propose a marriage principle from Adam's search. And my principle is this and it's simple. God made marriage. God made marriage. Marriage was God's plan, and therefore God's design from the beginning. And he did it with a purpose. In fact, God designed marriage with several purposes, or you could say a multifaceted purpose. God made marriage for a reason. That reason begins in Genesis 1, chapter, yeah, verse 28. Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth. and every tree which has fruit yielding its seed, it shall be food for you. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. Well, the reasons begin to pop out of those verses. Genesis 1 and verse 28, God's reason for marriage is to multiply. It's to populate the planet. and then having populated the planet again in verse 128 to therefore to tame the planet and therefore in verses 28 and 29 having populated the planet and tamed the planet to then rule over the planet and to enjoy its fruit. Populating and taming and ruling and enjoying are all understood as being under God's direction. We're going to do those things God's way, not our way. And therefore, that makes us stewards of God's creation. And marriage promotes our stewardship mission. But your Bible has more reasons for marriage. We've paged on through the Old Testament, Proverbs chapter 5. This is just an example. This is everywhere in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that is that marriage provides a righteous context for physical intimacy for the purpose simply of pleasure. Now, that pleasure then is intended to super glue a man and wife together and to strengthen the bonds of holy matrimony. Have you ever accidentally glued yourself to something you didn't want to be glued to? It's not good. It's not good. Do you know physical intimacy glues people together? And so if you engage in physical intimacy outside of God's design, marriage, you could go gluing yourself to somebody that God never intended for you to be glued to? So marriage is protection and its power is a warning. And again, similarly, marriage is intended to be a safeguard against sexual temptation and sin. But the New Testament reveals another purpose for marriage. Ephesians chapter 5, we talked about it last year. Marriage is to illustrate, and this wasn't revealed until New Testament times, Jesus' love for His bride, the Church. Let's think about why we say that. When you turned to Jesus, and when you trusted God's promise that His death paid for all of your sins, and His resurrection from the grave proved that that payment was accepted and that forgiveness is possible. Then, in that moment, as you trusted Christ, you were born again and you became a part of Christ's bride, His church. The New Testament says your marriage pictures that moment. And so, ladies, your love and your submission to your husband picture Christ's relationship, excuse me, picture the church's relationship to the Lord. And men, your love and your sacrificial treatment of your wife picture Jesus' love for his bride, all of which requires, in order to paint that picture for the world around us, that we be born again through faith alone in Christ alone and thus be spirit-filled and live together in holy matrimony, in companionship, in love, in sacrifice, and in cherishing. Your marriage is a picture of Jesus' love for the church. But back to Genesis and my final and favorite purpose for marriage. The purpose for marriage pictured here in particular in such lovely detail in the wedding story of Genesis 2 is this. You are married for companionship. Lifelong companionship. Beloved God invented marriage and provided blessed companionship in that context for a man and a woman. So I think Solomon nailed it when he said, I am my beloved's and my beloved's is mine. But back in Genesis, something or someone is still missing. The man's named Rover, but he hasn't found a wife. This guy needs some help. Ladies, you ever say that about your man under your breath? This guy needs some help. Well, that brings us to some interesting stuff. Some stuff. from Adam's side. I'll pick up the story in verse 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. Well, now that the man could clearly see that he needs a uniquely created companion, God steps in and provides the solution. Now, if you think about it, what we just saw in verses 19 and 20, the man was very involved in the search for the wife to begin with, but he is only passively involved in what's about to happen next. And about that rib, Henry Morris, kind of a modern expert on Genesis, his book, The Genesis Record, offers that the term that we usually translate, I know my Bible does, translate as rib there in verse 21 was actually intended to think about more than just Adam's rib. And so the predominant idea is a little more general. It's the idea of Adam's side. So God took from Adam's side, which probably implies that he took more than just the bone more than just the rib from the side. He took the bone, but he took with it flesh and blood. I like to say he just took stuff from the side of Adam. And then having taken the stuff from Adam's side, God fashions it literally in the Hebrew. He builds the man's companion from the man's stuff and brings it to him, brings her to him. Now think about that with me. Think about that detail. Don't just rush past it. God could have made the woman in exactly the same way that he fashioned the man, but instead he did it in a completely different way. Now, what am I talking about? Look back with me at chapter 2 and verse 7. Referring to the creation of man, then the Lord God formed man out of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life And man became a living thing. But that's not how he does it here in verses 20 and 21. Excuse me, 21 and 22. He does it differently. And the point here in doing it differently is not to showcase God's multifaceted ability in creating. I mean, we know that that's true, but that's not the point. But rather, by using Adam's side, he emphasizes the intended one fleshness in marriage of a man and a woman. God created her directly from him, and thus they are one flesh. Oh, by the way, this text that we are reading this morning, this text is very hard on theistic evolutionists. You know what a theistic evolutionist is? Theistic evolution is the word God, the idea of evolution. Theistic evolution is an attempt to explain the creation accounts here in Genesis through the lens of modern evolutionary thought. And so theistic evolution would explain the text that we read this morning by saying that there is a God somewhere, somehow, that he set things in motion, like the evolving of the species, over a long period of time and he generally just stepped back and allowed it to happen through what we would call natural means. This text is a real struggle for somebody who wants to hold to that view. According to Genesis chapter 2, the woman was made after the man. and derived from the man but fashioned differently than the man was fashioned and in that was formed directly by God and all in a short sequence of time. Beloved, that is an order of events and a set of claims that are difficult to square with evolutionary thought. And some would hear that argument and they would counter that Genesis 2 is simply a poetic story. It's not intended to be taken as literal truth. But if you want a hold to that explanation, you can't miss this. The New Testament consistently accepts the historicity of Genesis 2 and its marriage account and all that surrounds it. For example, Jesus in Matthew 19 simply assumed that this was true. Paul in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy simply assumed that this was true. And in the book of Hebrews we read, and this is very important in understanding beginning and first things, by faith. The Christian understands informed by his word, but by faith that God made what is out of nothing. And that begins with faith. Well, let's stop. Come more closely back to the story in Genesis 2 and let's define a second marriage principle taken from Adam's side and Adam's stuff. God went to all of this trouble because God cares about who you marry. God cares about who you marry. He made that first man. He intentionally and deliberately and uniquely made the first woman and he put them together with the first wedding. And we'll talk about that in a moment. God cares about who you marry. I mean, Adam went on the search, but it was God who provided the perfect solution. So God carefully and uniquely built woman out of the basic stuff of man. Let's just call it Adam's side and understand that God cares about who we marry. Men, have you ever sung to your wife? When God brought the first bride to the first groom, I think the guy began to sing. And he had to have a pretty nice set of pipes. Because this was all before the fall, before sin ruined everything. And so I think here in verse 23, He sang to her. Isn't that romantic? It's another week on my man card. Well, at the risk of being labeled as unromantic this morning, I would like us to pause for a moment and analyze Adam's wedding song. The man said, I know it says he said, but this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. The big idea in Adam's verse seems to be that a woman is derived from and thus fashioned for her man. She is at last and truly the missing piece of his puzzle, the companion that God says is suitable for him. So it's suitability, but there is a second theme that flows through Adam's brief song. It's the idea of headship. Companionship and headship. The woman comes from man. The woman is brought to man. Woman, the Hebrew is ishah, is named by man. It's the masculine form ish. And then as we move on to verse 24, Moses, the divinely inspired author of Genesis, stops and explains Adam's one verse wedding hymn. For this reason, this is Adam, excuse me, this is Moses commenting on Adam's song. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. The explanation is this, marriage takes precedence over all other human relationships. Marriage with a relationship and family that it established is the fundamental building block of society. It is society's basic form of organization. It is the most basic form of government. And so marriage is vital to society. Marriage is essential not only to society, but specifically marriage is essential to the church. The point is, beloved, when you mess with the Bible's definition of marriage, you are messing with God's blueprint. God invented marriage. God designed it for a man and a woman, and beloved, I gotta tell you, God still holds the patent on marriage. Beware of substitutes. The one flesh idea in marriage, verse 24, is much more than its physical implications, although intimacy is certainly implied here in Adam's song. God's goal for Adam and Eve and for you and your beloved is oneness. Oneness, yes, in physical relationships, but with that oneness in emotion, oneness in intellect, and oneness, as we've seen already, in mission. And so a husband must not let career or hobbies or ministry become a substitute for his wife. A wife must not let her children, not even her children, or the home, or even service in the church become a substitute for her husband. And nor should the weaknesses, which he has, nor the flaws, which yes, she has, nor should those things be excuses for separating us, for prying us apart from this oneness that God has intended for us. I mean, do you understand what God is really saying with this idea of one flesh? One flesh here anticipates one inseparably shared life. Again, it all boils down to marriage is about companionship. And with that, to be one flesh also implies God's intent of permanence in marriage. Marriage is meant to be faithful and permanent. But think of our society's eroding regard for biblical marriage. I mean, that is evident everywhere. You don't have to go far to see that. But so let's take, for example, this morning, the idea of cyber relationships. There are websites for bypassing the blessings of marriage. Just go online and hook up. There are websites for cheating on your marriage, and those have been in the news quite a bit the last couple of years. Just remember that God warns, the steps of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and that your sins will find you out. And now, in the news, There is a website for quickly ending your marriage, Cyber Divorce. Get this, www.ItsOverEasy.com. I mean, I laugh too, but it is a sad indicator of where we've come. God designed marriage to be permanent. So whether it starts online or by sinning the good old-fashioned way, maybe not the good old-fashioned way, but the old-fashioned way, a spouse that isn't faithful, a marriage that fails, is the result of someone's sin. It doesn't have to be both, but it's someone's sin. Marriage requires openness and holiness. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now maybe that doesn't sound like a very holy verse to you to begin with, but let me assure you that it is. The point of verse 25 is not with respect to physical intimacy, although God is all for that, but this verse is meant to suggest a completely honest and open relationship where nothing therein can be marred by sin and shame. Complete honesty and openness. Nothing that brings shame in the relationship between the husband and the wife. So here from verse 25, I'm going to derive my third and final marriage principle from the first wedding. Strong marriages are built on honesty and openness and strong faith. Strong marriages are built on honesty and openness and strong faith. So friends, whether you have been married for 60 years, or 20 years, or you're just looking forward to that date somewhere on the calendar not very far away. If you want a good marriage, guard and grow your faith. Because I warn you, sin has the power to pry apart just about any relationship if you let it in. I am my beloved's. My beloved is mine. You know, I've really enjoyed all of these happy pictures carefully arranged on our wall of fame. And part of the pleasure is after looking at those pictures, then looking around and seeing how those happy beginnings have blossomed over the years. Christian marriage is about lasting companionship between a man and a woman who are both filled with the Spirit and follow their Lord together. So let me remind you again of my three wedding principles as we begin to wrap up. Number one, God made marriage. It's His deal. God cares about who you marry. And strong marriages are built on strong faith. all of which remind us that biblical marriage is a fundamental part of God's plan and God's blessing from the very beginning. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord God, for marriage and for family, beloved spouse, children, grandchildren, Father, this day we ask that you would protect and strengthen our marriages, our families, our church. In that, Lord, may your Holy Spirit fill us and guide us. We ask this in the name of our husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.