Well, the storyline of Genesis 1 and 2 and its description of mankind communicates a number of important realities regarding men, women, and their relationship to each other in the institution of marriage. Now, over the last few weeks, we have taken the opportunity to look at man's creation. And we looked at man's commissioning. well this morning I want to investigate with you man's climax man's climax the climax of the creation story appears in Genesis chapter 2 verses 22 through 25 in these verses We have the joining together of man and woman resulting from God's creation and His presentation of the woman to the man. In fact, in these verses this morning, we're going to see four very important principles about mankind, womanhood, manhood, and marriage. Please look at the text with me this morning. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. And 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 cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. The first principle that we are presented with from this text is the principle of distinction. The principle of distinction. You might remember a few weeks ago that when we examined the account of man's creation earlier in this series that we noted that man and woman were created differently. Well, this reality of the difference in our creation is again affirmed in this particular section of the creation account. You see, men and women are not interchangeable blank slates who can simply be switched out one with another with no effect or consequence. God has designed the two members of the human race in such a way that we are biologically and psychologically distinct from one another. The reality of this hits us straight in the face in chapter 2, verse 22. Because notice that the text says that the Lord God fashioned the woman. Fashioned the woman. However, if you turn back to chapter 2 verse 7, you'll see that God formed the man. God formed the man. God fashioned the woman, but he formed the man. Now, these two terms are very distinct from each other. In fact, they come from two separate contexts. The word formed is the Hebrew word that was used to describe the potter. And you know what the potter did? The potter took a clump of clay, a lump of clay, and the potter would put that on his wheel, and he would form a vase or some type of receptacle for liquid. And the potter worked on clay, on ground. And he used his skill and his abilities to form an object. And you know from chapter 2, verse 8, excuse me, chapter 2, verse 7, that man was formed from the clay, from the dust, God, the great potter, and we, the clay, formed us from the ground. The word fashioned, however, is completely distinct from formed. The word fashion comes from the context of the master craftsman, the master architect, the builder, the one who constructs great works. In fact, one Bible scholar has called Eve a living work of art. That's the essence of this term. She, unlike Adam, was formed. She's a living work of art. If man is the supreme example of what God can do in his creation, then woman is the greatest example of what man can do using man. That man cannot hold a candle to a woman. She is constructed, she is fashioned in a way that man does not even comprehend. Adam was formed, but she was fashioned. In fact, Paul picks up on this idea in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 7, because there he says that the man is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man. Now the thoughtfulness and the purposefulness of God's creation of Adam and Eve can't be understood unless we face the challenges that God faced. Let's look at the challenges that faced God. The challenge was that God had to create a being completely and absolutely equal to the man, yet completely and absolutely distinct from him. That was the challenge. You see, the woman could not be inferior to the man. Because if she was inferior, then she would be nothing more than one of the animals that Adam ruled over. But she couldn't be superior to the man either. Because if she was superior to the man, she would not fit the bill of a helper suitable for him. God had a challenge on his hands. A challenge to make a being completely and absolutely equal to the man. Yet distinctively and completely distinctively different than the man. Notice the phrase used in chapter 2 verse 18 to describe this being. The text says that God needed to, that Adam, excuse me, needed a helper suitable for him. In fact, some translations say a help meat for him. Now, the phrase a helper suitable for him is translated from two Hebrew words. The first word, helper, means to support, assist, or aid. Now, do not look at that term as a demeaning term. In fact, biblically, the person who's called the helper the most is God. Exodus 18, 4. Deuteronomy 33, 26 through 29. Psalm 121, verses 1 and 2. Psalm 146, verse 5. Hosea 13, 9 through 10. And we can replicate passage after passage after passage in which God himself is called a helper. That's not a demeaning term. In fact, Dr. Alan P. Ross, a noted Hebrew scholar, summarizes this term as follows. The word essentially describes one who provides what is lacking in the man who can do what the man alone cannot do. You see, there were some things that Adam was unable to do. He could not do because he was not created to do them. Now, the natural question is, well, what is it that he couldn't do? Why was the woman created? What was the need that she was to fulfill that he could not fulfill himself? Well, the first question you really have to ask yourself is, why was Adam created? Go back to chapter two, verses five and six and seven, and what you're gonna see is that Adam was created because the ground needed cultivation. Adam was going to cultivate the ground and through the cultivation of the ground the ground would produce the the plants of the field and when the plants of the field were produced Adam could eat. He was created to cultivate the ground and make provision. The man does not need a help to work and make provision. That is why He was created. He was created for that purpose. It makes no sense that God would create Him for that purpose and He'd be unable to do it. He was created for the purpose of work and provision. Well, what is it that He couldn't do? Well, as you read on in chapter 1 of Genesis, you find that God had a plan. and that plan included the replication of humanity through offspring and the development of that offspring. Adam could not reproduce himself. Impossible. Impossible. And if Adam was out cultivating the ground like he was created to do, and making provision like he was created to do, he couldn't develop offspring even if he could produce them. So Adam was in need. He was in need of someone special to meet a particular need that he had. He had a need for a helper, somebody who could be involved both in the cultivation of the family and children for the replication of humanity around the world. Now the text says also that not only does he need a helper, he needed a helper suitable for him. A helper suitable for him. This tells us the type of helper that Adam was in need of. He was in need of a helper suitable for him. The idea of suitable is the idea of to correspond to or to approximate. to correspond to or to approximate. Now, when it says that he needed somebody suitable that corresponded and approximated him, that's very important. He needed somebody who was approximately a man. Approximately a man. You say, well, how can you be approximately a man? the helper couldn't be a man because if the helper was a man the helper would be a male and Adam did not need help cultivating the ground that's what he was that's what he was created if if the helper was more than approximately a man meaning a male the help would be a male that's not what God wanted for Adam so the helper had to approximately be a male a man however Not only did the helper have to approximately be a man, the helper had to correspond to a man. In other words, not only did he need somebody like him, approximately him, they had to have the same qualities of humanity that he had. They had to correspond. They had to be on the same level. Remember what's happening here. Adam is attached to the physical world because just like the animals he has bone and flesh. But he needed more than somebody with bone and flesh. Because just having somebody with bone and flesh would not guarantee that that somebody was on his level. the same intellect, the same capabilities, the same faculties, the same abilities. He needed somebody who was approximately like him, yet corresponded to him. In other words, they had to be different than he was, yet they had to be on the same plane of existence that he was on. God had a very unique challenge ahead of him. So what did God do? Well, the master builder went to work. And the very first part of his work was not to create the helper. The very first thing was he didn't create the helper. No, no, no. That wasn't the first thing he did. The first thing he did was he generated in the mind of Adam the idea that he lacked and needed something. He generated that concept in his mind. What did he do? He created all the animals. And after he created all the animals, he took the animals to Adam and said, Adam, name every single one of the animals. And after Adam named every single one of the animals, something struck Adam at the end of verse 20. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him. Now God already knew that verse 18, but after Adam named all the animals, Mr. Cow, Mrs. Cow, Mr. Lamb, Mrs. Lamb, Mr. Dog, Mrs. Dog, Mr. Crocodile, Mrs. Crocodile, Something struck Adam. There's something about this situation that doesn't seem quite right. And into Adam's mind, God interjects a situation that Adam becomes uncomfortable with. Now keep that in the back of your mind, because we're going to come back to that in just a minute. What was God's response after this? Well, God's response was He repeated the same methodology He used in creating Adam to create Eve. Same methodology, but distinctive. Remember what happened when He created Adam. Verse 5 of chapter 2 says, There was no man to cultivate the ground. So what God did was He extracted a portion of the ground that had the need. Remember, the need was in the ground. He extracted a portion of the ground. And then He took that portion of the ground, the need that He had just extracted a portion from, and He formed that ground into a man and breathed into the man the breath of life. And then He took the man back to the ground for which he was created. That same methodology, just as God extracted a piece of the ground, He extracted a piece of Adam. And just like He took the piece of the ground that He had extracted and made a man out of it, He took the rib that He had extracted from Adam and He made a woman into it. And then it says that he took the woman to the man. Now I want you to notice something here. Please notice this with me. The ground was in need of somebody to cultivate it. The man was in need for someone to be an intimate companion and a cultivator of family and children. And what God did was God created the woman. And the woman is the climax of God's creation. Just as God had used a particular methodology to bring Adam into existence, He also used a particular methodology to bring Eve into existence that paralleled it and showed both of them what their purpose was to be. each of them have skills and capabilities that match their purpose. What's Adam's purpose? Adam's purpose is to cultivate the ground and he is given skills and capabilities geared for his purpose. What's the purpose of the woman? The purpose of the woman is to be an intimate companion and a cultivator of family and children and she is given skills and capabilities that match her purpose. both of them are given the abilities necessary to fulfill the purpose given to them and each of them is created distinctly from each other. We weren't created the same way. God used the same methodology, but rather than create Eve directly from the ground, He created Eve through Adam. The biblical reality of the distinction of the sexes is the death nail of modern feminism. You see, feminism says this. Feminism says that we are all the same. And in fact, the only reason, the only reason that men and women are different is because society trains us differently. And if society ever trained us the same way, we would turn out exactly the same. But if it is true that God created us distinctively different from one another, then feminism can't work. Now, if that's true, why is it that so many modern Christians are so enamored and captivated by feminism. Because that should buck against everything that makes you a Christian. I was reading a chapter in the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Raymond Ortland And Raymond Ortland was pondering the exact same question. Why is it if feminism is so contrary to scripture, are so many Christians enamored with it? Listen to what he writes. Why then do so many godly people resist this teaching that males and females are distinct in function and authority? Why do they resist it so energetically? One reason is a smothering male domination asserted in the name of male headship. When truth is abused, a rival thought, in this case feminism, that lacks logically compelling power can take on psychologically compelling power, but male domination is a personal, moral failure, not a biblical doctrine. If we define ourselves out of a reaction to bad experiences, we will forever be translating our pain in the past into new pain for ourselves and others in the present. We must define ourselves not by personal injury, not by fashionable hysteria, not even by personal variation and diversity, but by the super personal pattern of sexual understanding taught here in the Holy Scriptures. In other words, we cannot allow the fact that some men are crazy and rather than lead their spouses, dominate their spouses, we cannot allow that reality to pervert what we know to be biblically true. Just because a man or a family fails morally to uphold the biblical realities of equality and distinction, does not mean that the Bible is in error. You gotta be careful. You see, men and women were purposely designed differently. But there is a little hope. In recent years, there has been what I call a ray of light that has been projected into this present darkness. You see, science has finally come to its senses. Science has finally come to its senses. Science at one time, an enemy of Christianity, has finally come to its senses. It's interesting. I was reading a Time Magazine article from January 20th, 1992. And the article was called, Sizing Up the Sexes. Listen to what this article said. I found it intriguing. And I found it intriguing because this article was actually trying to deal with, well, why are men and women different from each other anyway? Listen to what they said. This is Time Magazine. During the feminist revolution of the 1970s, talk of inborn differences in the behavior of men and women was distinctly unfashionable, even taboo. Men dominated fields like architecture and engineering. It was argued because of social, not hormonal pressures. Women did the vast majority of culture's child rearing because few other options were available to them. Once sexism was done away with, so the argument ran, the world would become a perfectly equitable place aside from a few details. But biology has a funny way of confounding expectations. Rather than disappear, the evidence for innate sexual differences only began to mount. You see, Saints, what has happened over the last few years is this. Science and scientific study has finally begun to align itself with the truth of Scripture. What we have seen take place is this. Science has finally begun to acknowledge what you and I as Christians have understood forever, and that is that there is an innate difference between men and women. I found another article, and I know I'm reading a lot of quotes today, but I want you to see that there's a shift going on in our culture, and then I'm going to apply it to you and I in just a second. But listen to this quote that I found in one book I was reading. And this book is written by a PhD in genetics named Anne Moua. Now, the reason I'm quoting you this is because this is written by a non-Christian secular evolutionist. Listen to what this woman has to say about this issue of difference. And I quote from her introduction. Men are different from women. They are equal only in their common membership of the same species, humankind. To maintain that they are the same in aptitude, skill, or behavior is to build a society based on a biological and scientific lie. The sexes are different because their brains are different. The brain, the chief administrative emotional organ of life, is differently constructed in men and women. It processes information in a different way, which results in different perceptions, priorities, and behavior. In the past 10 years, there has been an explosion of scientific research into what makes the sexes different. Doctors, scientists, psychiatrists, Psychologists and sociologists, working apart, have produced a body of findings which, taken together, paint a remarkably consistent picture. And the picture is one of startling sexual asymmetry, not symmetry. Listen to this last statement. It is time to explode the social myth that men and women are virtually interchangeable, all things being equal, all things are not equal. Now the reason I read that to you was this. It is a shame when you have unsaved secularists, people who believe in evolution rather than creation, who argue for the distinction and the difference between men and women, and we as Christians shuck and jive on that truth and don't affirm the realities of what that means in our families and in societies, and we have the truth. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. The unsaved world recognizes that we are different. They're beginning to finally click in and it seems like it's taken the church forever to understand that you cannot treat men and women the same way because we are different. We are not women and women are not men. We are distinct from each other and God created us distinctively for different purposes. fail to recognize that things and you fail to recognize that biblical reality men and women are not interchangeable their functions are not exchangeable each of us is designed differently and for a different purpose fail to understand that and you fail to understand the Bible but not only are we distinct from each other we are also equal to each other We are distinct but we're also equal. In fact, God created Eve in such a way that man would clearly see the equality of the woman to himself and that equality was recognized by her mate. Now, God guarantees the equality because, remember, the woman is created from a rib. She is made of the same substance, she's made of the same material that Adam is made from, thereby indicating that she is equal to him. But her equality to him is not just part of her creation, it's recognized by her mate. Adam recognized Eve's equality. Let me return again to chapter 2 of Genesis. And I want to go over the sequencing of this one more time. Follow me closely. Adam is created and placed in the garden. And he's placed in the garden to fulfill the purpose for his creation, which was cultivating the ground. Unbeknownst to him, he needs assistance in something that God hasn't informed him of yet, because God has not told him yet that he is to reproduce. So he's working in the garden. And as he's working in the garden, God creates all the animals and then brings each animal to Adam in order that, as the Bible says, that God would see what he would call them. God and the man are working in perfect harmony by God relinquishing His direct authority over His creation and placing that authority in the hands of the man He's just created. Now how do we know that? We know that God has turned the authority over the man for the creation because chapter 2 verse 19 says that whatever name the man called the living creature, that was his name. In other words, God refers to all of the creatures he's made not by names God has come up with, but names Adam has come up with. And God uses Adam's names as a reference point to the names of the animals that God Himself created. So God turns over to Adam the authority of the animals and Adam names the animals. After he's finished naming the animals, something happens to Adam. Adam finds out, I have a need for a helper who's suitable for me. That's at the end of verse 20. It says, For Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. Now, could it be that in the mind of Adam there was a twinge of loneliness, of sorrow? Could the friendly confines of the garden now seem to be a little incomplete? Well, notice what God does. God puts Adam to sleep. And then after putting him to sleep, He does surgery on him. And then he creates the woman. The very, now watch this, the very last part of God's creation, the very last piece of his handiwork, the climax and the zenith of God's creative activity is the woman. The very last thing that God creates, the very last being he creates, that absolute climax of what he does is the creation of the woman. Now, the text says that He brought her to the man. But don't just read over that. Remember, Adam has been in a deep sleep. Deep sleep, knocked out cold. So that God could open him up, take a rib, and close it back up again. Adam is knocked out, dead asleep. So the first thing God has to do after He creates Eve is He's got to put her somewhere where He can't see her. Then he goes and wakes Adam up. And he says, Adam, I got one more creature for you to name. One more. You haven't gotten them all in. Now, obviously, Adam's deep sleep would not have led him to not remember what he's just been doing. He's just been naming all the animals before God put him to sleep. So he recognized, well, I'm in the midst of doing this function. There's nobody out there for me. Let me name this one more animal you got me to name, and then I'm going back to sleep again. Okay, he was in a dead sleep, so God wakes him up. And then what he does is he brings her to the man, the very last creature to name. What does the man do? He blurts out in joy, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. I don't know if you understand the significance of what's being said here. Isn't it fitting that the first time we hear man speak in the Bible, he's speaking in light of the joy of God's provision. Isn't it interesting that the first interaction between the sexes is one of praise and honor? Isn't it fitting that the first spoken words given in the Bible by a man or a woman are in Hebrew poetry? Beautiful, poignant, and expressive. Notice the joy and the rapture in Adam's words. Adam says, this is now. Now, this phrase, this is now, is really a Hebrew idiom. We could translate it, this is at last. This one is at last. Now he's not saying at last because he's exhausted from naming the animals. That's not why he's saying at last. He's saying at last because finally he has somebody who matches up with him perfectly. This one at last Adam says, now watch this, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Adam recognizes instantly and intuitively that she is absolutely equal with him. And then notice he gives her a name. He says, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. The Hebrew word for man is ish. The Hebrew word for woman is isha. Adam says, she was extracted from me. Therefore she's made of the same things I'm made of. Therefore, she's absolutely equal with me. Therefore, I'm going to give her a name that corresponds perfectly to my name. I'm Ish. She's Isha. You see, Adam recognizes that the woman shares with him all the qualities of humanity. She shares with him all of the distinctives of humanity. She is just like him. But not only do we see equality here, we also see a third principle, and that principle is headship. Although Adam and Eve are created equal, Adam is responsible for Eve. What we see in this text is male headship, male headship. God has granted to the male in the relationship the position of authority. Now, how do we know this to be true? How do we know this to be true? Well, it's clear from Scripture that naming in the Bible was very, very important. When you named something, you were exercising authority over that thing which was named. For example, we see that when God named Jerusalem as the place of His presence, that He placed His name on Jerusalem. God placed His name on the nation of Israel. God placed His name on the temple. Wherever God puts His name, that thing becomes His. We see Jesus changing the name of Cephas into Peter. We see God change the name of Abram into Abraham. We see throughout scripture that naming tells us that the person doing the naming has authority over the one named. That's a biblical reality. It's obvious from scripture. Well, here we see that when God brings the woman to the man, that the man instinctively names her. And the naming of her is an evidence of his authority over her in their relationship with each other. Now, it's very interesting in this text. Throughout the Bible, from this point on throughout scripture, The name that God uses to describe the female of the species is the name Adam came up with. Not his own. God didn't name her. Adam named her. What that indicates is that not only does Adam have headship in the relationship, God respects his headship, God recognizes his headship, and God looks at Eve now in the way that Adam has named Eve. What's the point here? God created a woman with a certain identity which the man both identifies and communicates to her and she graciously accepts that recognition. Eve gets her identity, now follow me here, Eve gets her identity from her husband. Eve gets her identity from Adam. Eve knows nothing. God has not communicated to Eve who she is. God brings Eve to her husband, to Adam, and Adam communicates who she is. That communication gives us the idea, the concept in scripture that the husband is the head of the relationship. She is responsible to submit to him just as Adam is responsible to submit to God. Who's Adam's head? God is. God created Adam directly from the ground. Who is the woman's head? Adam is the woman's head. God created Eve through Adam. There is a hierarchy in the universe. God is the head of Adam. Adam is the head of his wife. There is a hierarchy that God has created into the universe. And when we ignore that hierarchy, we disregard God's authority in our lives. Now it's important. Keep following me here. It's important. Recognize also that Genesis chapter 2 verses 18 through 23 precedes Genesis 1, 28 through 30. It precedes it. Now why is that important? It's important because of this reality. In Genesis 1, 28-30, God tells Adam and Eve together that they are to exercise dominion. That they are to rule over the world. Well, the natural question is, how do they relate to each other as they rule? Well, this text clearly explains it to us. Even before Eve existed, Adam was already exercising authority over the world because he named the animals. When Eve comes on the scene, he also exercises authority over Eve. So what we see here is this. God is the king of the universe. The man is God's vice-regent on earth. In other words, the man rules on earth not according to his will, but according to God's will. The woman rules on behalf of the man, not executing her will, but executing the man's will as the man executes God's will. They execute the will of God together, but they do it in a particular relationship, the man being the leader in the relationship, the woman submitting to that leadership, and then working together to accomplish God's will. Her rule is not the same as the man's rule, but it is no less important than the man's rule. They rule together under God. And saints, this is the way it was before the fall. This is the way it was before the fall. The fall doesn't happen until Genesis chapter three. Even in a perfect environment, God's expectations was that the relationship between men and women would happen exactly in this manner. Equal yet distinct. Equal yet male headship. And then the fourth principle we see here is oneness, oneness. We've seen distinctiveness. We've seen equality. We've seen male headship. But finally, oneness. Notice what verse 24 says. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This is not Adam speaking here. Adam finished his speech in verse 23. This is the word of the Lord given to Moses that Moses is recording. What Adam has just said in verse 23, what he has just claimed in verse 23, is the backdrop to the significance and nature of marriage. Because of the realities of verse 23, the realities of marriage is the next thing that Moses talks to us about in verse 24. This 24th verse is made up of three declarations. And the first two declarations climax in the third one. The first declaration is this, a man shall leave his father and his mother. Now when you read that, be very careful. Be very careful. Do not read your modern Western culture into this text. Don't do that. This text to be understood must be understood in the context it was given. The word leave could be better translated forsake or abandon. What God is saying here is very clear. The man must abandon or forsake his parents. Now, how does that strike you? It should strike you in a particular way. He's not so much talking about physically this text too. In Israel, if you were a son, you inherited the family land. They were farmers. And you know that God did not allow them to sell the land. God required them to pass the land on to their sons. So if you were a son and you got married, you would be farming your property still. So you would not move away from the physical location of your parents. Sometimes in the ancient world, you inherited the family business. Well, if you inherited the family business, you would not move away from that physical location. We get stuck on physical location, and physical location's got very little to do with it. In fact, in the ancient world, what usually happened was the woman left the physical location of her person and came to the man. That's Genesis chapter 24. So physical location in the issue here. Don't get lost in physical location. It's not the issue. The point here is this. Before marriage, the primary responsibility of a man next to God was the welfare and care of his parents. When marriage occurs, he is required by God to abandon, as the dominating, driving reality of his life, the care of his parents, and he's to substitute that with the care and welfare of his wife. He is to abandon as the primary focus of his life, his parents, and he is to substitute that in that place, his wife. I like the way Gordon Wenham summarized this. He's a Hebrew scholar. Listen to what he writes. This is fascinating. In modern Western societies where filial duties are often ignored, that is care of one's parents are often ignored, this may seem to be a minor point. But in traditional societies like Israel, where honoring parents is the highest human obligation next to honoring God, this remark about forsaking them is very striking. You see, this was mind-boggling to the average Jew who read this passage. But what God is saying is this, and you must understand this. Before marriage, there is a particular chain of responsibility. God first, parents second, others next, then myself. When you get married, what you're saying, gentlemen, is this. God first, my wife second, my parents third, others fourth, and myself fifth. God is saying for the man that he must abandon and forsake as the primary focus of his life, his parents, and substitute in the place his wife. Now, I want to explain this further, but we don't have time to really do this justice. But let me give you just a few key statements on how to manage this area, how to synthesize this. Number one, in-laws can never take precedence over one's spouse in decisions. Number two, couples, and this is learning from experience. 2. Couples should communicate the priority of their spouse over their parents definitely in their actions and, if necessary, in actual verbal communication. 3. Information drawn from one's in-laws should be communicated as such to one's spouse to avoid unconscious changing of the biblical priority structure. Don't paint it as yours if it's not yours. Number four, actions carried out on behalf of or towards one's in-laws should be agreed upon and supported by both spouses. Now, that's all we're going to do for now. We're gonna come back to this area. So I'm just I'm just wetting your palette a little bit But those four principles are principles you must have in mind when you think of what God is saying here to the man He must leave the text says forsake abandon But the thing about this word that's so intriguing to me is this in the Hebrew it's an incomplete word and In other words, it's an incomplete action. This is part of a process. He is to leave, but the completion is not the leaving. You haven't completed what you're supposed to do just by leaving. The text says he has to cleave. That is a completed action. In other words, he leaves to cleave. He leaves because cleaving mandates leaving. You can't cleave if you don't leave. If you don't forsake, if you don't abandon, you're not going to be able to cleave. That's the point of this text. Now, cleaving here is very important. In the Hebrew language, it was also used for welding or soldering, to weld or to solder something. When you solder something, what you do is this. You take two objects that are metal, usually, and you join them. After joining them, you melt some metal into a molten state, and you put the two objects into that molten metal. And then when the molten metal dries, guess what happens? The two become one. you have effectively soldered together two different objects into one object. What God is saying here is that a man forsakes his parents so that he might be welded to his wife in such a way that they become in reality one. Now If it hasn't struck you yet, it needs to. Notice in this text, who is the one doing the leaving and who is the one doing the cleaving? The man. What is the woman supposed to be doing? Does that mean that she doesn't have to forsake? Does that mean that she doesn't have to cleave? Understand the text. God has clearly demonstrated up to this point that the man is the head of the relationship. The man has the responsibility to initiate the forsaking, to initiate the welding together. As he initiates that, the wife responds to that. As he forsakes, she forsakes. As he welds, she welds. They come together, but he initiates in the process. He's called to lead. If you're not married this morning and you want to know the essence of what he's saying here, even if you're married and want to know the essence of what he's saying here, understand what's taking place. This is not a union. This is a reunion. It's not a union. This is a reunion. Remember Adam and Eve at one time were one. They were separated by God. They are united in marriage. and they are back to their original state. What was their original state? A state in which their goals, desires, purposes, aspirations, commitments, intentions, thoughts, actions are all united. This is not just talking about physical union here. Most of the time when you read this, people think, oh, well, it's talking about a physical union. The physical is just an example of the emotional, the spiritual, the intellectual, the psychological joining together of two people into one. A reunion. where that which was not normally separated was separated by God is brought back together in now in where the goals, desires, purposes, aspirations, commitments, intentions, thoughts, and actions are united in one. The two are made into one. And saints, Notice that this is a reflection of man and woman as they were meant to be in their in a perfect condition Notice what the text says and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed In perfect harmony with God under God's perfect rule now sin has made this difficult, but we must take on this challenge and In our homes, in our marriages, we must ask ourselves some questions. Husbands, are we recognizing the equality of our spouse? Are we recognizing the equality of our wives? Do they understand themselves to be equal to us, or do we treat them as second-class citizens? Wives, do we recognize the headship of our husbands? Do we recognize that they are responsible for the relationship and do we submit to their leadership or do we resist their leadership? Are we evidencing the oneness in which God created us to live in? If we're not, we need to confess that sin. and pursue the oneness that God has created us for. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, your word is very clear. You have created us to be one. You've made us distinct from each other as men and women. You have made us differently, Lord God, with different skills and abilities. Yet although we're different, You have made us equal to each other. Lord God, we are not second-class citizens. Women are not second-class citizens. We are equal under God. And although we're equal under you, Lord God, we must recognize that you have given the males in the church and in our homes the leadership responsibilities, the headship responsibilities. You have created them to be the leaders in their households, in the church. Lord God, I pray that you would help us to recognize your truth and then to submit ourselves to it. Lord God, if there are any renegade husbands here this morning, I pray to God that you would convict them of what they're doing in their household, not taking the leadership, not treating their wives as equal to them. Lord God, convict them of their sin and change them, Lord God, please. And then Heavenly Father, if we have any renegade wives in the here this morning, women who refuse to recognize their husband's headship, refuse to submit to his leadership. Lord God, convict them of their sin this morning and change their hearts and their minds and their lives. Lord God, help us in our marriages to be the one that you would have us to be. And then, Lord God, I cannot stop praying unless I pray for the singles in our church. Lord God, those men and women who are looking forward to marriage, who are anticipating you bringing a mate into their lives. Lord God, help them to make the right decisions. Lord God, for the young men in our church, if they see that the woman is unable to properly respond to his leadership, Lord God, don't allow them to make the mistake of marrying her anyway. Lord God, give them wisdom in the application of this text. For our young ladies, Lord God, If they see men who are not leading as they ought to lead, who are not respecting them as they ought to be respected, Lord God, help them not to make the wrong decision and marry them anyway. Lord God, for our singles, please help them to make the right decisions, the right choices. We pray to God you would provide for them, their mates. Lord God, we want to submit to your word today. Create in us an obedient heart that we might submit and do your will. It's in Jesus' name I do pray. Amen.