Well, good morning. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to our service this morning. We're so grateful to have each and every one of you here with us today. I hope your heart has been encouraged already by the singing and hearing the music by the worship team. So grateful for them as always. Do always take this opportunity right before we look into scripture to welcome those of you to our service that might perhaps be here for the very first time. We're grateful to have you here with us today. And before you leave, if you would be so kind as to fill out our guest card, it's actually a digital card. You can access it by scanning the QR code that is printed on the small card in the pew in front of you. It looks exactly like the one that's on the screen right now behind me. And when you scan that card, it'll take you to a place where you can tell us a little bit about yourself, contact information. If there's a question that you would like for us to follow up with you about, you can use that QR code. And you can also, again, submit any questions about any of the ministries that you heard about, maybe about the Wednesday night classes or Kids for Truth. Anything of that nature, you can submit those through that same QR code. If you are a long-time guest or a long-time member, part of our church family, you can use that same QR code and get ahold of us about any questions that you may have about the ministry as well. We are today, this morning, as you can see, we are going to be observing the Lord's Supper this morning. And before we get to that, I just want to take a brief moment and just explain to you maybe the Lord's Supper is new to you, or maybe this is your first time here at our church when you've been here for the Lord's Supper, or maybe this is your first time here with us at all. And we always want to just take a brief moment and explain to you what the Lord's Supper is and why we do it. The Lord's Supper is given to us as a New Testament church as an opportunity to remember what Jesus did on the cross of Calvary for us. We do not believe that participating in the Lord's Supper saves anyone. It's not how you earn your way to heaven. It's not a means of grace, so to speak. It is simply a remembrance of what Jesus did for us on the cross of Calvary. The New Testament teaches that to participate in the Lord's Supper, you have to be a believer in Christ. That means there has to be a time and a place when you've repented of your sin and you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior. If you're here today and you have made that decision at one time in your life and you profess Christ as your Savior, you're living Obediently to Him, not perfectly, none of us would fall into that category, but you're living obediently to Christ and you are a first-time guest here with us today. We would invite you to participate with us this morning, but again, making sure that your relationship with Christ is first and foremost that you have been truly born again through the blood of Christ. And we'll get to that in just a little bit of time. We're going to look into Scripture in just a moment, and we're back in our study of Genesis, and we'll get to that in just a couple of moments. You know, this past week I was preparing for this sermon the section of scripture that we find in Genesis Chapter 2. And we are going to be looking at a very special occasion in which God does something miraculous as he's been doing all the way through Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And where we left off is that Adam was in the garden and Adam had been enjoying the creation that God had created for him. But we're going to learn in this next text of scripture that there is something missing. this text. There was something that Adam needed and we're going to be looking at that this morning in just a moment. But this text got me to thinking about my wife actually. And I was thinking about the fact that my wife and I went to high school together. I'm older than she is. We did not actually know each other in high school. We knew of each other. but we never really knew one another. Ironically, I had a lot of close friends that were in her friend group, but I had never met her. formally, and I was a freshman at the University of Delaware, won't bore you with all that, but I went away to college, and while I was away, there was times that I would come home for the weekend, and I would often go back to my high school to see an athletic event. I would go to a football game, or I would go see a basketball game, or something like that, and this one night, I showed up at our high school for a basketball game, and I was standing in the lobby, And Michelle was a basketball cheerleader. And I was standing in the lobby, and there she was. And I thought, she is so beautiful. I still think that, by the way. I remember thinking to myself, wow, I'm going to walk over, and I'm going to introduce myself to her. Again, we had met, I think, a couple of times, very briefly, but didn't really know each other. So I was going to walk over and introduce myself, and I'm walking across the lobby. And this very handsome young man walks up and puts his arm around Michelle. I know, heartbreak, right? So at some point later, Michelle is much better at timelines than I am. Sometime later, I was home again for a football game. And my high school was playing my nephew's high school, Cesar Rodney High School. Pam Ramsey, our third grade teacher, a graduate of CR High School. We don't hold that against her. But our team, where we went to high school, was playing CR. My nephew had played for CR. So we went to the game. And Michelle and I were formally introduced by a mutual friend by the name of Esther. And I think back to those moments when the first time that I began to interact with Michelle and the notion that out of everybody I'd ever met at that young, relatively young age of life, she was the first person that there was this connection with that it was almost like we had known each other for our whole lives. And today, we are reaching the place when Adam is going to, for the very first time, lay eyes on the woman who's going to become his wife, and what that means for us in this day and age in which we live. And so, I invite you to find Genesis chapter 2. And we're going to be looking at verses 18 down through verse 25. We're going to take it a section at a time. And for right now, I'm just going to begin by reading verses 18, 19, and 20. And then we'll take a look at the latter part in just a minute. But notice what the scripture tells us. It says, then God, then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for Him. Let's pray. Father, as we turn our attention to this text this morning, we are reminded of Your power and Your sovereignty over all of creation. As we look at this very special occasion and moment in creation history, God, I pray that our hearts would be encouraged today in understanding what this text means, how it applies to us living in our current time. And may You be honored today in our time around Your Word, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So the theme of God's provision for creation, particularly for humankind, we studied that at length and we talked about the garden, but it continues all the way through the end part of chapter 2 of Genesis. This is a profoundly important text. In fact, the New Testament, and we'll get to this more next week, but the New Testament draws very heavily from the final verses of Genesis chapter 2. Much of the New Testament, when we get there and do the course next week, much of the New Testament teaching about the relationship of men and women and how they are to interact is based on these verses. And it's something that we have to understand culturally at this moment in time that, according to the cultural opinion, this is an outdated idea. These are old-fashioned ideas. This text is completely irrelevant to our current cultural moment. It's important, however. to note that these verses are given to us during the creation account. This is when God is still laying the foundation of the world. We are before the fall. We are also before the giving of the Mosaic Law. It is also clear that Jesus himself thought these verses were still relevant, as did the rest of the New Testament writers. But clearly, Jesus drew from these verses and related, referenced rather, to these verses as well. Ever since what we call the Enlightenment, humankind has considered ourselves often smarter than God and capable of redesigning the world according to our own wisdom and according to a way that would honor Him. Now, this morning, I want to I'll probably say this maybe a couple of times up front. We live in a soundbite culture. Okay, what I mean by a soundbite culture is we take a statement that is ripped out of its context. And we play it all over the place to make somebody sound like they said something that they never actually said. They might have said the words, but it was ripped out of the overall context. And so today I hope to do justice to this text because it is challenging to communicate Today in a culture that is attacking the idea of biblical masculinity and biblical femininity without being misunderstood, canceled, or demonized. So I hope that through this text we see the beauty of this picture. the wonder of what God had created and what God was doing through our first two people of Adam and Eve. So we're going to look at this in two sections. The first section we just read, and we're going to look at the fact that for the first time, God declares something to be not good. Up until this point, everything had been good or it had been very good. And so for the first time, God himself says that something about creation is not complete. Adam was alone. Now, the words not good is an emphatic statement. Humanity was created as social beings. We are social by nature. Relationships are necessary for people. It's modeled by even God himself and his triunity. We see this idea of relationship. Now, it's very interesting to me that when you read through verse 18, then God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper for him. It is interesting that there's no record here yet that Adam was sitting there thinking to himself, man, I sure am lonely. There's no complaint given by Adam to God. You know, God, this garden is pretty boring. I keep trying to talk to the hippos and they don't quite know what I'm saying. They can't communicate. God, I would like somebody to talk to. We have no record of that. It is God who declares that something was not good. By declaring that it was not good for Adam to be alone, he is highlighting and underscoring the idea that humanity was created for supportive relationships, to live within a sense of community because we are by nature social, and it's not good to live isolated from others. Tempting maybe, but not good. In fact, as time goes on and we get into later on into the Old Testament, Proverbs 17, 17 says, a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity. Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite Old Testament books, In chapter four, Solomon writes this, two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will help up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has no other to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are kept warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Now, from the very beginning of creation, isolation was not God's intention for humanity. And he makes it clear with this statement that there was something that was not good. Well, what was it that was not good? Adam was alone. Notice what God says at the end of verse 18. He says, then I will make a helper fit for him. Now, remembering that Adam, at this point in time, living in a perfect environment, he's living in a garden that is supplied with everything that he needs physically. There's food to eat. He's enjoying the garden. He is fulfilling his purpose of subduing the earth, of caring for the garden, naming the animals. He's going through this process. But God says there was not a helper that was fit for him. Now, the first word we need to carefully examine is the word helper. What does that mean? Well, it comes from a Hebrew word, as you probably can guess. It is the word ezer. It means one who helps in the sense of aid and support. Now, listen carefully. There is no sense in this word that would indicate in any way, shape, or form that a woman is of—the woman here—is of less value in her God-given role She is not less valuable than Adam, but she is created in a way in which she is going to complete him. It does not imply, this word ezer, does not imply that men are superior over women. Instead, it highlights that women are essential to the contribution of creation, not an inferior one, not an inadequate one, but a much needed one, and certainly not a slave. That is not the picture of helper. In fact, in the Old Testament, this word easer is used 19 times. It is used 16 times to refer to God. In Psalm 12, I lift my eyes up to the hills for where does my help, ezer, come from? My help, ezer, comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. We find this word again. Again, this is just a couple of examples. Psalm 124, our help, ezer, is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and the earth. This is a strong word. This is a powerful word to describe, in these two cases, the help that God gives his people. Here, it is to describe the sense of urgency that man, Adam, needed a woman's help. He needed a helper that was suited for him. This is not a derogatory term. It is not a demeaning term. It is used to describe someone that is given to another because they lack something. Something that they cannot do in and on their own. This will include the idea that God had already commanded to fill and multiply and fill the earth. Obviously, Adam can't do that alone. He can't have children alone. But it's not limited to that. This isn't simply saying that, well, life has to go on, humanity has to have kids, so he needs a wife to just have children with. That is not the point. The point is that in Adam's aloneness there was something about him that he was in desperate need of someone that would complete him. The picture is an indispensable partner. Someone that was commissioned by God, that was given equal responsibility to assist in subduing and stewarding the world. One writer, R. Kent Hughes, said this, he said, and I'm quoting him, he said, man's helper would be no weak sister by any stretch of a misogynist imagination. This woman is strong and powerful, capable of being a steward, capable of subduing the earth alongside of her soon-to-be husband. Humankind, both men and women. are afforded the authority of God over creation. And God delegated this dominion of caring for the world to Adam and to Eve. Women are given to complement men as an integral part of the world as God created it. What Adam lacked, Eve completed. Now, it's possible, obviously, we don't know, but in verse 19, it says, Now, I would imagine, in my sanctified imagination, I think about what this must have looked like. Adam is watching the animals come to him and he's naming them, he's offering what he's going to offer as their name, and as he goes along, obviously he had to study them at some degree, he had to observe their behavior to some degree, but I wonder at what point did Adam start to think to himself, this is weird, why is there, male and female of everything else, and I just have me. I was watching a little preseason football yesterday, and I was flipping, you know, going down the thing to find a game or whatever, and the old movie Castaway was on. I didn't watch it, but I just saw it go by. If you're not familiar, the 2000s, Tom Hanks, he's living on this island. And his best friend is a what? A volleyball named Wilson. And he's sitting there, and he's, I haven't seen the movie since probably 2000, but he's sitting there, and he's talking to it, he's engaging with it, and Wilson, he goes out to sea once, he has to swim out and rescue this volleyball. Okay, that's weird, but at the same time, you get the sense of saying, that's humanity, right? There's something in us that longs for this kind of connection. And to state the obvious, volleyballs can't provide that. Dogs can't even, dogs are selfish. They only interact with you on their terms, which usually requires food and petting, that's it. There's no theological conversation, at least with the dogs we've had, none. There's no talk about politics, praise the Lord for that. But Adam, as I envision it, he's seeing these animals go by. thinking to himself, maybe he didn't fully understand what being alone meant, but I could just sense this perhaps God-given reality that something's not right. I love Bruce Walkie. He's a scholar, Old Testament scholar. He said it perfectly. I want to quote him here. He says, rather than squandering his most precious gift on one who is unappreciative, God waits until Adam is prepared to appreciate the gift of woman. I like that. That Adam had this sense. Something's missing. Notice the other impersonal word. So, easer, helper. Don't read that and think weak, slave, unimportant. Please don't read that word that way. This is a word of great importance. But the other word that we want to focus on is the word suitable. Okay, it says at the end of verse 20, it says, but for Adam there was not, I found a helper, there's that word again, fit for him or suitable for him. What does that word mean? It means literally like what is in front of him. In other words, there was no one that mirrored him. The focus is on the equality of these two individuals. Their basic constitution was alike in every way possible. The woman was going to be the same in personhood, the same in value. Obviously, there's biological differences, clearly. but they're made from the same essence. By the way, it's also curious that when Adam is watching and naming the animals, he didn't see an animal go by and say, hey, it's Uncle Joe. He just hasn't evolved yet. I used to hang out with that gorilla. We were old buddies until I evolved into a greater sense of reality. None of that nonsense. But woman was different. She was like him. She was created in a way that was similar to Him, yet different than Him. And the animals, like Adam, they had been formed from the ground, but Eve was going to be created in a very different way. that God is going to do something miraculous and unique when it came to creating Eve, which brings us now to verse 21. As we see this pronouncement that there is something not good, well, now watch what happens in verse 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, now these words are often read with a sense of somberness. I think that's the wrong way to read this. I think this is a sense of excitement, exuberance. This at last, his bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man." Now what is interesting is, remember back last week, Adam. can be termed Adam as in the formal name, but it's also a word to reflect Adam as in people. Adam, Adamae. Adam was made from the ground in Hebrew. Adam, Adama. Here, it is man is Ish. Woman is Isha. In this picture of highlighting their essence, she is called woman, Isha. Now, the problem that Adam faced obviously required a miraculous work by God, and the intimacy of this, or the dignity of this, is seen when God says, I will make a helper suitable to him. Derek Kinder wrote this, he said, he, being Adam, will not live. until he loves, giving himself away to another one on his level, so the woman is presented wholly as his partner and counterpart." What's interesting to me is Adam isn't even conscious when this happens. That Adam is asleep and the woman is taken from the man's side, possibly, as it's translated in the ESV, referencing a rib. To again, highlight their same essence, that they came from the same stuff. They had a common source. By the way, the ultimate source was God. Augustine, commenting on this, had a beautiful comment in the book City of God. He said, the fact that a woman was made for the first man from his own side shows us clearly how affectionate should be the union of a man and wife. The commentator, Matthew Henry, has kind of a famous comment that he made that's quoted by a lot of different scholars, but he said this, he said, woman is not made out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. With the creation of Eve, Paradise is now complete. This is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. We think about that statement each time that Adam would see Eve. He would remember, she came from my flesh. She's part of who I am. And every time that Eve would see Adam, she would remember that he gave a portion of his body for her. You know, you think about the statements that we make in marriages. We'll talk about marriage next week. When we think about how a marriage ceremony goes, that you shall leave your father and mother, and the two shall become One flesh. That statement, for us, is not literal. But Adam and Eve, it was literal. They were literally one flesh. And when a husband and wife join in matrimony, the picture is that they are taking on the idea that they are one. Yes, they are different. Yes, they have different roles and functions. Yes, they bring different perspectives to the marriage. But that's by God's design. That's by God's wondrous creation. It's interesting to me that when Adam is naming the animals, we don't have a single word that Adam said. Not one. But the moment that God brings Eve to him, he has something to say. This is Like me, she's similar to me. The kind of connection that a man and a woman have, obviously, within here, the context of marriage, has the absolute intimacy and knowledge of one another, unlike any other human relationship. Alan P. Ross said this, he said, the point of this jubilant cry, talking about Adam's words, is that the creation of humankind has reached its goal in the complementary partnership of man and woman. So what do these verses teach us? Well, number one, they teach us and highlight for us the dignity of women. They emphasize that both men and women were created in the image of God. It is an essential part of God's created order that He made maleness and femaleness. Now, I know in our culture that would love to erase gender and erase gender distinction. My dear friend, this is rooted. Male and female, man and woman is rooted. in God's creative order. Not one is better than the other. The two genders, the two sexes were not made for competition. They were made to complement one another. Yes, they fulfill different roles. They fulfill different roles within the home. Okay, let me state the obvious. Men cannot bear children. Now, in our culture, we talk about pregnant people. Only women have the capability of delivering a child and nursing a baby. That is a beautiful thing. That is a wonderful thing. That is an honorable thing. It's not something that makes a woman less. They're different by God's glorious design. Equal in dignity, equal in value. We don't have to become famous, wealthy, desired, or influential to find dignity, value, and meaning. It's in our DNA because we are created in the image of God. I love what Wayne Grudem said. He said, the fact that both men and women are said by scripture to be in the image of God should exclude all feelings of pride or inferiority and any idea that one sex is better or worse than the other. So true. In fact, Kenneth Matthews adds this, we cannot exchange the roles of the man and the woman as though they were equal without undoing the narrative's distinctions or texture. So the sameness is true. The dignity is true. But yes, there are absolute differences between men and women. Now, next week, we'll talk more about marriage and how that fits. We'll save that for next week. But we also know that in this In this creation of man and woman, as we'll see even in chapter three, when Adam and Eve sin, the sin of that, the responsibility of that, is placed on Adam. It's placed on him. It's placed on his shoulders for his actions and his responsibility for committing what we call the first sin that caused humanity to fall into sin. I want to leave us today, before we turn our hearts to the Lord's Supper, to just one final aspect of what does gender, man and woman, mean on the three primary relationships in society? Family, church, and society. I won't spend tons of time on any of these. We'll come back to family next week. But I wanted to end with this today. What does this mean for the family? Well, the New Testament, and I'll read a text in just a moment when we observe the Lord's Supper, the New Testament presents the husband as the loving leader in the home. That is misunderstood by our culture. It is demonized by our culture. But let me state this by saying what this is not. There are two, in my opinion, two sinful misrepresentations of what God has called husbands to be in the home. A loving, servant, sacrificial leader. There are two major ways. That has been completely distorted. By the way, sometimes in the name of Christianity, One sinful misrepresentation of this truth is when men lord over their wives in a domineering, controlling, demeaning, cruel, and abusive manner. This teaching leaves no place for a woman to be mistreated, demeaned, controlled, domineered by a cruel man. If a man is treating you like that and you're a single young lady and you're dating and he's treating you like that while you are dating, run as fast as you can because it won't get better. That is not biblical leadership. That is not biblical manhood. That is not remotely close to what Jesus calls husbands to be in the home. In fact, when you look at the life of Jesus, He treated women with great dignity and great respect, which was completely counter-cultural in his time, by the way. It's interesting that women were the first ones to serve as witnesses to the resurrection of Christ. Women weren't even allowed to be witnesses in a court during the time of what Jesus was living, and so he highlighted women and elevated them culturally and in society. That is... Someone who is domineering, controlling, lording over their husband in the name of Christianity is a liar. That was never God's intention. Number two, a second sinful misrepresentation of this truth is that some men fail to lead because they are too passive, too indifferent, too withdrawn, and quite frankly, too self-centered to lovingly lead their homes in a humble, Christ-like manner. So when we talk next week, leaving and cleaving and all that that means and what that brings, yes, God designed for the husband to be the leader in the home, but not a dictator. In fact, I'd say this to most husbands, we would be wise to listen to our wives more often than we do. Michelle will bring up stuff like, oh, I never thought of that. Wow. Often. Perspective, we need that. Number two, very quickly, the New Testament presents men as those who would hold the ultimate position of authority within the church. We don't have time to unpack that today, but in the New Testament, it seems that the weight of evidence presents that men were within the church to take positions of spiritual authority. Now, what about within culture? What about in society? I would suggest to you that I don't see a limitation on the role of a woman in regard to managing and subduing the earth, the roles in society, roles in the marketplace, role in government. However, whatever role is fulfilled by both men and women, they have to be modeling biblical masculinity, biblical femininity, so that we are salt and light into the world in which we live. A wife does not occupy an inferior position in the marriage, in the church. By the way, I think the church has generally disregarded women to a fault and not allowed women to serve appropriately at times. But it doesn't mean inferior in the home, in society, In the church, men and women are co-heirs of God's kingdom, equally created in the image of God, worthy of all dignity, respect, and honor. You know, we're living in dubious times. Somehow, the idea of male and female has become a volatile conversation. Sometimes making statements of distinctions between men and women, you can be easily misrepresented or worse. But I urge us, please, we must maintain a biblical perspective on what God created. Adam was incomplete without Eve. Therefore, God provided for him a companion who would complete him. God created men and women to enjoy creation in relational harmony, fulfilling the commandments of subduing the earth, stewarding the world's resources, marrying, and being fruitful. As creation comes to an end, we are introduced to Eve, the first woman, God's glorious, powerful, and magnificent creation.