The text for this morning is in Genesis chapter two. This is where I'm going to begin an extended treatment on the topic of marriage. And here in our text, we're gonna begin where God sees something that's not good, and that is a man who is all alone. Genesis chapter two. And beginning in verse 18. And we'll read all the way through verse 25. Genesis 2 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, to all the birds of the sky, to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused the 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. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. 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. Let's pray that the Lord would bless the preaching of his word here this morning. Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven. Your faithfulness continues throughout all generations. From beginning to end, you have given us your revelation, you have showed us the right way that we are to order our lives, you have shown us the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ and through him alone. We ask this morning that you would open our hearts and minds to your word, that you would teach us, that you would give us understanding, and that we would live lives that are to your glory and to your honor, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Someone told me once that if you want to make a church big or build your church or grow your church, the best way to do that is to preach on one of two topics, marriage and eschatology. And because I'm preaching on Revelation in the evenings, I expect we'll have to buy a new building sooner rather than later. So get out your pocketbooks. We'll take an extra offering after the sermon. I think that that might work. If you're a dispensationalist and your marriage series is all about practical ways to improve your marriage through certain steps that this culture and society finds acceptable in and of themselves, probably what's going to happen is that most of us are going to be challenged in our thinking about what marriage is, how we should live out marriage, and what God has to say about marriage. The problems that we face primarily in our marriages I don't think are from a lack of steps that we need to learn, things that we need to put down as rules and regulations in our marriage. In fact, I think Much of what evangelicalism, even in the conservative side, has done is give us so many rules and regulations in our marriages that it has just incited us towards sin, and we can't see this grand picture of marriage that God has given to us and live with any hope in our marriages because we're so concerned about keeping the various rules and regulations. The problem is due to the fact, I think, we don't really understand what marriage is and what marriage looks like in a godly marriage. In ethics, there's a saying that if you ever take Christian ethics, you'll hear this saying, every ought implies an is. And just think on that for a moment because it's very important. What I'm saying is that an ethical statement implies something about reality. If I say you ought to do this, implied in that ought is a standard. You gotta have a reason for doing that thing. We can't just make up rules and think that we're gonna have a well-ordered society in any way. And it's really important to grasp because the opposite isn't true. And is does not imply an ought. In other words, just because something is a particular way does not mean that's how it ought to be. Much of what we hear about marriage and much of what is written about marriage is from the perspective of the fallen world. Here's how marriage is, and so here's how we ought to respond as a result of how marriage is due to all the sinfulness in the world. We don't hear a whole lot on what marriage ought to be according to what God says marriage is. And that's the big difference. What's popular, even for preachers, is to get a list of things that we talk about. Here's how you make your marriage better. And when we get really conservative, we say, okay, marriage centers on two things. Leadership and submission. And then we give you 10 sermons on leadership, and we give the women 10 sermons on submission, and then we walk away and say, your marriage should be fixed. And yet it never is. Never in my experience has just pounding somebody with the law ever fixed anything for them. You ought to strive for a godly marriage because A godly marriage implies that there is a godly standard for marriage, that there is something that God wants out of marriage, and you should see what that is, is all about, and have that goal in front of you. Now further, along that ethical standard, every ought implies also that you can. You can. God's not giving us commandments that we cannot ever keep in any sort of way. We can't keep the law in its fullness. But the standard in marriage that God gives to us is pictured to us in such a way that God wants us to enjoy that beautiful picture in our marriages. But that goal has to be met, or rather not met, but established. We have to know what it is in order to try to meet it. We have to see marriage pictured as God would have it. And that means that we're emphasizing its beauty, its splendor, It's joy and ultimately the purpose that marriage was designed to illustrate Jesus Christ and his church. The whole telos, the whole end of marriage wasn't just marriage in and of itself, but that marriage would be this picture that shows us what the relationship between Jesus Christ and his church is all about. And you know this passage. In fact, I repeated it often at our wedding service not long ago, but it bears repeating. In Ephesians chapter five, in verse 32, this mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Paul's saying the whole point of marriage is that it stands as this picture in society of the beauty of Christ and his bride. Christ in the church. But then he says, nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. So there is an ought implied there, but you see the is. The is is ultimately the picture of Jesus and his church, and our marriages are to point to that. there to be an analogy that shows us the beauty of Christ and his church. In fact, you get to the end of the book, I'll throw some eschatology in here and people will start knocking the doors down. Revelation 21, verses one and two says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth passed away, there is no longer any sea, and I saw the holy city. New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. Now that's interesting because you're getting to the end of the Bible there, and then we just read passages from the very beginning of the Bible. From beginning to end, the Bible is presenting to us marriage. Human marriage between one man and one woman, and the ultimate marriage that is between the church of Jesus Christ and Jesus. Now, in order to do this right, we're going to have to deal with the uncomfortable issues. So let me give you a little preview of where we're going. We're going to start with foundations. Genesis 1 and 2 are obviously giving us a foundation. And it's what we're going to call the Edenic ideal. The Edenic ideal. The picture for marriage that is the ideal for every marriage that follows. And it's of vast importance that we grasp this because although marriage is ultimately pointing to Christ and his church, you're going to go home today with your spouse and you're going to have to deal with marriage. And that's the Edenic ideal. How do we relate to one another in marriage? And then how does marriage point to Christ and his church? So the Edenic ideal is first, this is the picture of marriage God gives us that says, here's the ideal, and that's found in Genesis one and two. It provides the is for all the oughts that follow from here. But then we have a problem. Because the Edenic ideal is great, and we would all love to have the Edenic ideal, but Genesis three introduces a problem, and that problem is sin. The ideal gets shattered, it gets marred, it gets torn to pieces, and now we deal with sin. And sin changes everything. Further, as we move through this process, we're gonna deal with some other topics. We've been reading through the Exodus. If I wouldn't have gotten sick, we would have hit those perfectly in time for this series. But if you go back and read some of those passages from Exodus 22 and 21 even, you see all these case laws in the Old Testament. Now, what a lot of people will do is say, well, in order to get our marriages right, we just need to look to the Bible and see what the Bible says about marriage. Well, what in the world are you going to do with Exodus chapter 22? Where you have things going on there. Heavy, heavy patriarchy. You have polygamy. You have rules for divorce. You have a very clear oppression of women. How in the world are we supposed to understand those texts in light of our marriages today? And that becomes a very important part in understanding how the shattered ideal is moving forward in a redemptive progress back towards that ideal that we need to get to. And in order to get to that ideal, in the Old Testament sense, we have to go to one of the most neglected books of the Bible, which is the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is frankly not preached or taught really anywhere anymore. But it is the centerpiece really of this series and it is one of the centerpieces of the biblical perspective of marriage. I want you to think about it. It's a book where if you read through it, what do you find? You find two lovers in a garden. Two lovers in a garden after the fall. And what it's doing is it's showing us there is the possibility of a joyful, intimate marriage relationship, that they are real, that they are possible, that you can have this again even in a fallen world. And ultimately again, the book is pointing us to the beautiful intimacy between Christ and his church. But it starts with the analogy and then it goes to what's being pictured. So we're gonna look at the Song of Songs here in probably five or six weeks. What it's telling us and why it's so important, it's saying you can go back to the garden in your marriage and you can experience something of the Edenic ideal. You can have something of that in your marriage. And then finally, what we'll do is we'll look at the household codes in the New Testament And we're going to see how the redemptive progress of the Edenic ideal or the movement back towards the Edenic ideal becomes summarized in this whole idea of what it means for a husband to love his wife as Christ loves the church and for a wife to respect her husband. One of the questions that you could ask is why would you ever do a series on marriage like this? This'll take quite a while, probably five months. And you know you've made it when you start quoting yourself. Here's something that I wrote somewhere a long time ago, and I think it's pertinent today. It says this, the difficulty of many passages regarding marriage are how they speak to us today in our particular culture. Asking how the redemptive movement of scriptures meet us in our current situation is always a trying task. Christopher Ash remarks that people change their marriage partner faster than they change their brand of washing machine. A newspaper reports on an American entrepreneur who offers wedding rings to rent to save wasting money on buying one for a marriage that may not last long. The problems in marriage are due to the fact that two sinners have joined together. This creates tension and hostility when the couple labors under the delusion that marriage as an institution will suddenly make these problems disappear. Martin Luther complained, nowadays one has more to do with marriage relations than with all other matters. Because of them we can hardly read, preach, or study. And so by utilizing the scriptures in our preaching and demonstrating this redemptive movement for marriage ethics, we are working to deal with issues that are pressing needs in the church. In a culture where shattered marriages are the norm, the congregation needs to hear that the Bible shows a pathway to a hopeful, satisfying, and exciting matrimonial experience. Tremper Longman states, marriage partners either call order and beauty out of chaos or intensify the chaos. The chaos of two sinners joined together as one must be opposed by the reality of two image bearers striving for the ideal. And the Song of Songs works to open the eyes of the reader to the possibility of something better than merely surrendering to the inevitable chaos of competing desires. Ian Proven remarks, the Song of Songs in this sense presents us with the story of love redeemed, which contrasts with the more common human tale of love gone awry. In presenting us with this story, it calls us to shape our own story in its light. This is the powerful application of a much neglected book of the Bible as it speaks a redemptive word in the midst of chaos that calls marriage back to the ordered ideal of the Garden of Eden. So if you're expecting a to-do list, you're going to be sorely disappointed. I want to build up to this ideal. I want to work our way to that ideal so that you have a picture of what you're actually going for. Now, when we watch this ideal fall in sin, we're going to see how terribly sin has marred what is good. And then from there, I want to show you that that ideal in the Song of Songs and in the New Testament is still, even now, a possibility in the midst of sin. So really what I want to do is have the is of God's ideal motivate you to the oughts of how to live out that ideal. So, we begin in Genesis. Genesis chapter two and verse 18 starts, and I have one point. I had a long introduction with tons of points, but one point for the sermon. Marriage is good. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. The first thing you need to notice in this passage is who is at the very center of marriage. God is at the very center of marriage. Now, immediately, marriage is framed in a context where God defines what it is, God defines how it is to function, and God defines why he made it. So again, every ought implying an is. We ought to want what God wants from our marriage. A marriage where God is at the center of our marriage is a marriage that is built on the proper is. God's designs. God's reasons, God's laws regarding marriage are all far more important than what you think or I think I want my marriage to be or what I think it should be. When we put God at the center of our marriage, it's going to turn everything upside down. It's going to take some getting used to. In fact, it's going to be a little bit miserable at first because we're so used to striving for our own ideal, our own picture of what we think marriage ought to be and what it should be supplying for us. Christopher Ash said, sometimes in churches, we get the impression that God exists to help me do better in life. I come to God because he can help me with my marriage. He's my lifestyle coach, and with a bit of luck and a favorable wind, and if I pay him enough with prayer and a bit of well-chosen religious activity, then he will line up his energies behind my goals. He will help me achieve what I want. In marriage, he will help me to be happy and satisfied. He says that truth is the exact opposite. You and I, he writes, need to ask God what he wants and then line up our goals behind his rather than expecting him to line up his goals behind ours. That's first and foremost. That's the very first thing. Now, we will all get wound up over the homosexual marriage issue, and what will we say? Well, God didn't make Adam and Steve, but Adam and Eve, and we have this whole thing. Well, you know, God defines marriage. He tells us what it's all about, but yet, in the midst of our marriage, what do we say to God? You need to make my spouse do the things I want them to do. You need to make my marriage more satisfying. Suddenly, in the midst of this whole ethical dilemma of what do we do with marriage and who defines it, we start defining it by our own wicked hearts. And so the first big step is that God didn't just make the institution of marriage and sort of walk away and say, kind of let it work out however you want it to work out. Rather, he's saying, I have a purpose in marriage. I have goals in marriage. I've defined it and made it the way I've made it because it matters. And so what we need to be asking God is what is your will in my marriage? God must be at the center of your marriage. If God is not at the center of your marriage, you're at the center of your marriage. And you're no longer in a one flesh union in the sense that you're being in opposition to the one that you're supposed to be at one with. God is the one who brings the man and the woman together. God is the one who keeps them together in unity. As we obey God's will and seek God's will for our marriage, our marriages begin to become something different. They become beautiful. We begin to cherish one another and love one another. So here we are in Genesis 2, and we're skipping ahead a bit because we're on the sixth day of creation. The man is standing there in the garden. And in chapter one, you get this refrain, you know, after every creative work of God, God saw that it was good, God saw that it was good, over and over, God saw that it was good, after he made all these different things. And then here in chapter two, what's happening is we're moving away from kind of the narrative outline of chapter one into more of a poetic idea of what's going on on that sixth day. We're zeroing in on what's happening. And it's before the woman was made. And as the man stands there in the garden, on the sixth day, God looks at him, at his creation, and he says something that is astounding. It was not good. Something's wrong with the creation. Now this should shake us up a little bit, because here's God in his creative work, and we find God looking at the perfection of his creation and saying, nope, we're not there. It's not good. You know, the world has often lent its voice to the disparagement of the institution of marriage. And the reasons abound for calling it an old, worn-out institution, something that you shouldn't waste your time on. Just skip it. You don't need it. It doesn't bring anything. Christians often regret their marriage. They wish there was a way to get out of it. We don't want to be in the midst of it because we think it's not good. And yet here's God in the garden saying, it was not good for the man to be alone. It was not good for society to not have this marriage institution. In fact, the danger's not just from the world. The danger's right here in the church. Because for centuries, The church is held to this idea that it's more spiritual to not get married. That if you stay in celibacy your whole life, you're gonna get closer to God, more intimate with God, things are going to get better. It was really a badge of honor. It was a requirement in the Roman Catholic Church to serve in the priestly office. But God sees man alone in the garden and says, this is not a good deal. This isn't good. And again, God at the center of marriage says marriage is good. And that's something the church needs to hear. Surprisingly enough, the whole argument for celibacy is coming back up again, not in the Roman Catholic Church, but in the Evangelical Church. where we're telling people if you struggle with lust and all that, you know what, you should probably not get married because you're gonna bring in all kinds of problems into your marriage. You should stay away from marriage. You need to get right with God first. And some of that may be true, but there's an increasing push that it's more spiritual to stay celibate and to stay out of marriage than it is to be single. God says it's good. God says marriage is good. And if you're married, do not doubt, God brought your marriage together because he determined it was not good for you to be alone. That's why Jesus says, what God therefore has joined together, let not man separate. It's not good for the man to be alone. Now, I can't balance everything in one sermon, so don't expect me to do that. We do have biblical precedence for singleness. When that singleness is being done in order to further the kingdom of God, or just providential hindrances in general. But what I'm emphasizing here is not singleness, that's for a whole nother sermon. What I'm emphasizing here is that God says it wasn't good for Adam to be alone. And what we extrapolate from that is obviously marriage is a good thing. It's a good institution, it's not a bad thing. And so God has this solution. I will make a helper suitable for him. I'm going to fix what is yet lacking and causing the creation to be in this state of not good. I'm gonna make it good by doing something. I'll make a helper suitable for him. Now, here's where, just pause for a moment. Why did God go through the effort of having this put down and inscripturated? Did God need to tell us any of this? I mean, he could have just made the man and the woman of the same, we could have just ended chapter one and just gone on to chapter three and into the fall. but the importance of emphasizing the goodness of marriage causes the Holy Spirit to say, in a sense, anthropomorphically here, we need to make another chapter that is emphasizing what's happening on that sixth day and the importance of marriage in the society. He didn't just end at chapter one and leave it at that. He's telling us in what is almost a poetic description of the creation of humankind, marriage is not just good, it's essential. It's essential, and I would argue again, it's essential because of the ultimate picture, the ultimate analogy of Christ and his church. We learn so much about Christ and his church from our marriages. We learn about perseverance, We learn about forgiveness. We learn about love and kindness and graciousness. All of these things are learned in our marriages and they transfer immediately into how do I function in the church? How do I function in my relationship to Jesus Christ? How does Jesus treat me? and loving kindness and mercy and in grace. Bruce Waltke says the phrase lotav is highly emphatic. Lotav is this idea of not good. Essentially, he writes, it is bad for Adam to be alone. An emphatic statement in the Hebrew here doesn't mean that it's just like, you know, this just isn't good and we need to try to make it better. The emphatic is emphasizing this is bad. It's a bad deal for Adam. God intends marriage, he writes, which entails intimacy and sexual relationship. Relationship is modeled after God who does not exist in isolation, but is a trinity surrounded by a heavenly court. This sort of intimacy, this sort of relationship that's found in marriage, if it didn't exist, it would be bad. Not just not good, but actually bad. God sees this, this isn't good, we gotta change things. And again, this is the goodness of marriage. God at the center, determining the highest of human relationships, and bringing his creation into the proper order. Because right now, on day six, before the creation of the woman, it's not in proper order. It's not functioning right. Now, let me just say this as an aside. If you're married currently, it's because God determined that it's not good for you to be alone. That's why you're married. In that same sense, I believe every single marriage, even the bad marriages in the world that are not Christian marriages at all, I believe God brings those people together. I believe it's a creation ordinance that involves the entire creation, all the people of the world. God brings them together in this amazing gift of grace and common grace to everyone. With God at the center, we can cast off the idea that we've all had, the thought we've all thought, I might be better off alone. I might be better off out of this relationship. And again, every ought implies an is. The is here is if you're married, God sovereignly orchestrated and ordained that marriage to be, and he says it's good because it's not good for you to be alone. And so there's a sense in which immediately we have to submit to what God says as best. Again, the idea for us is, well, if I can get God on my side to promote my values and my goals and my ambitions and my desires, then I'll get what I want. And we're asking the wrong questions. We need to want what God wants for us. What is God's will for my life? Not what I think is best. Because unfortunately, sometimes we think what we think is best is not what's best at all. We all struggle with selfishness in our marriages and we all struggle with the idea of maybe I'd be better off if I would have never gotten married. Now if you're single, if you're single it's because God wants you to be focused on him. God wants you to be looking to him. He wants to secure that relationship that you have with him, and it can be hard, and it can be lonely to be single, but God knows what he's doing. And again, there's a sense of submission to that, that God knows what's best, and that he is sufficient for all of my needs. So verse 19 goes on. Adam starts naming animals here. 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 the living creature, that was its name. Now, before we dig into verse 19, which we won't dig too far into it, the whole point of verse 19 rests on what was said in verse 18 at the very end, that God would make him a helper suitable for him. Now, I really hate that English translation. I used to be okay with it until I learned Hebrew. When I learned Hebrew, I thought, boy, this is really, really freighted with a lot of cultural ideas in it, and we could make this better. What we see, when we see the word helper, we think of a butler. We think of a servant. And what we think here as we read this, we go, oh, Adam had so much to do. He had so much going on intending the garden that God had to create this other person to come in and do his laundry and his dishes and just his general house chores, whatever he needs done that Adam couldn't get to on his own. That's what the woman's for. But that word ezer in the Hebrew, it does mean helper, but it does not mean a subordinate helper. And this is really important as we move forward from here. You miss the Edenic ideal, you're gonna miss everything that follows. That word, ezer, is used 16 out of 19 times in the Old Testament to speak of God. God as a helper for his people. Now, if you think God is our helper in a subordinate sort of way coming in to kind of clean up the messes that we can't really get to in our busy lives with all of our activity, then again, we've got God at the wrong place. God is our helper not in the sense that he is subordinate to us at all. God is our helper in the sense that he comes in as an ally. He's our ally. Literally, he brings us over to his side and he says, I am with you, I'll be your helper, I'll be your strength, I'll cause you both to will and to do. Together, you can fulfill God's plan to live for his glory by the power of God working in you. We've just seen all of this in Romans chapter eight. It shouldn't be much of a surprise to us. What's being signified here is the woman's essential contribution. Not that Adam had some sort of inadequacy in his life and he needed somebody to come along and kind of fill up the inadequacy, but really what's being shown here is Adam couldn't do it without the woman. This is why it's not good for him to be alone. He can't pull it off. Nothing can happen. Adam is an utter and total failure in that garden apart from his wife. She is absolutely essential to the work. So I think the best word would be ally. An ally corresponding to him. suitable for him. I don't know why in the world we translate it like that, but really it's an ally that is like him, who is absolutely essential for this task of keeping the garden, expanding the borders, filling it with image bearers so that the whole kingdom of God would grow throughout the earth. In fact, if you look at Genesis 1 there in verse 26, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. That's an ally. That's not a servant. And in our culture, that's certainly not a helper as we would define it. That mandate is given to them because Adam can't do it alone. He has to have this ally. Without this ally, he's a failure. There's no point in even trying. It's synonymous to the Christian life. Without the Spirit helping us, we can't live the Christian life. There's no point in even trying. Without the Spirit's work in us, we can't will and we can't work. We can do nothing. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing. The two of them, the man and the woman, will have to work together and go to war, to go to war against the chaos in order to subject it, to bring it into order, to take that chaos and form it into something orderly and something good. And they can't do it by themselves, they can't do it alone, they must do it together. beginning in the garden we have this picture of marriage that is the ideal which God blessed his human creation to enjoy as his image bearers. Waltke says, the first marriage set in the sacred garden temple and designed by God signifies the holy and ideal state of marriage. God plays the role of attendant to the bride. He gives the man his wife. And it's right here that we see that marriage is God-ordained And thus, its institution in the garden is ideal, but most of all, that it's good. It's good out of necessity. God didn't just make it so, okay, you guys work together and get this done. He made it into a beautiful thing. He made it into an enjoyable thing. You're all gonna blush a lot during this series, so we'll just get some of that over. Why do you think God made sex? Just do you think God couldn't, he just created all the beasts of the field, just popped them up. He made it for enjoyment. Intimate enjoyment. And if you're not enjoying it, well, I don't know what time we do counseling sessions, we'll have to have them though. But the point is, God didn't just want marriage to be this thing that happens for utilitarian purposes, but rather a good thing. as joint allies fight against the chaos of the world to bring it together and they enjoy it. They enjoy their time together. To prove to the man, to prove to all of us that marriage forms the very heart of society, that society doesn't exist without this marriage. God makes all these animals. and then he parades them in front of Adam. They all pass by him, every single one of them, and Adam names these animals. And what he's doing is he's showing Adam something. You're totally alone. You're without a companion. There is no one corresponding to you. Kent Hughes says the six joyous refrains, and God saw that it was good. capped by the satisfied perfection of the seventh refrain, and it was very good, leaves the first-time reader unprepared for the not good of this section. This startles us. Not good is strong language. It indicates not only the absence of something good, but a substantial deficiency. And that's what's happening when these animals come before Adam. The animals don't cut it, not even a perfect dog. cuts it for Adam. He knows it's not gonna make it. Verse 20, the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky, to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found an ally corresponding to him. Literally like an opposite to him, or according to his opposites, another way you could say it. He needs a corresponding counterpart. Someone who shares his very nature, one who is made like him in the very image of God, but one who is different, one who corresponds as his opposite. One who has his matching opposite would supply exactly what was lacking in him so that their task could actually be completed. And so what does God do? He declares to Adam, help is on its way. There's going to be one both like him and unlike him. One corresponding, whose corresponding differences would make man complete for the work that God had given him to do. The woman. would make it possible for mankind to do what mankind could not do alone. Something very good will now come in and fill the man's aloneness. It'll change everything. So as Adam names these animals, I want you to understand he's not just whimsically like guessing at names. Oh, that's a zebra, that's a giraffe, that's a bear, that's a this, that's a that. He's not just throwing out names. He's naming them according to their nature. And in doing so, he is feeling the reality that he is alone, that he can't do what he was made to do because he's missing someone corresponding to him. And what God is doing here on this sixth day of creation and having Adam name these animals is not so that we could have names for animals. He is preparing Adam to love, to appreciate, to adore, and to forever cherish his future ally. He's making him feel that he is alone in order that when he brings the woman to him, he can have all of those feelings and take joy in it. The world and Satan have a message for us. Don't get tied down, don't get trapped, stay single, stay free, leave your spouse, pursue what you desire, do what you think is best. And when God's not at the center of your marriage, those voices will penetrate and you'll often act on them. God created marriage, he called marriage very good, and if we want to fulfill our chief end to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, we would do well to combat the voices of the world and Satan with the word of the very living God. The first three chapters of the Bible tell us this dramatic story. It's a story of a perfect creation. It is the offer of inconceivable joy. It's this wild meeting of two people. The two people who were one, or rather who were two, now become one. And then they split up in Genesis three. We have this devastating fall into sin. And then we have a divine rescue. And then we have a provision for restoration. And so what we're doing here is just taking this whole idea of marriage, seeing what it is in light of the ideal, seeing what it is in light of the fallenness of the world, and then looking at the possibility. Can my marriage be something like what Adam and Eve had in that garden? Can it in some way, can I get back to that Edenic ideal where we have this whole idea of the two people who were two and they became one and then they longed to be in union with each other who stood in front of each other naked and unashamed and had this beautiful connection. Can I have that? Every ought implies an is and every ought means that you can. And that's what the Bible is telling us about marriage. You can have that. So next week. We'll look at the creation of the woman, the ally corresponding to Adam. We'll see his sleep, the picture in that, the union in that, and we'll keep pressing forward. So let's close in prayer. Our Lord in heaven, we're grateful for your word. We thank you that it informs us in our minds, but also in our hearts. I pray that this would go deep into our hearts, that you would implant in us a true picture of marriage. that we would see it as both good and joyful, something that we should delight in, that you would be glorified in our marriages, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.