The Problem of Loneliness and the Provision of Fellowship
Download MP3Hey. If you all wanna go ahead and get your bibles out and turn to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis 2. This is always like the gimme, when it comes to like Bible sword drill. I mean, first first book of the Bible, you can find your way there.
Jeffrey Heine:Genesis chapter 2. This is our 3rd week in this Genesis series, And the 1st week, we looked at creation. And then we moved and and looked more specifically at the creation of man and and some of the charges, the imago Dei, the image of God in man. And and now we're going to be looking at kind of the zoomed in version of the creation of man and woman. In a sense, creation of man as both male and female.
Jeffrey Heine:And so that's what we're going to be looking at tonight, starting with verse 15, Genesis chapter 2. And if you would, as as we've already said earlier tonight, listen carefully because this is the word of god. Genesis 2:15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden, to work it and keep it. And the lord god commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
Jeffrey Heine:Then the lord god said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. So out of the ground, the Lord God 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 the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
Jeffrey Heine:But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. 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. And then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken of man.
Jeffrey Heine:Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become 1 flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Holy god, I am always stunned after reading your word, especially kind of these iconic words, these words that almost become legendary in our culture. I'm amazed when I read that and then turn to you in prayer and to know that all of us in this room, as we pray to you, you are the God that created all that is seen and unseen. The earth we stand on, the land we fight for, all of this came from you. Every person in this room, once a baby in a woman's stomach, was knit together in the womb by you. Lord, we should all be taken aback by this truth of your creative power.
Jeffrey Heine:And so it's my prayer that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart would honor you tonight and that you would speak to us and challenge us and confront us the very way we view the world. You would confront us with your truth And that some of us might leave stunned by your truth, not by my words. Because my words, as Joel always prays, my words are death And no one needs those. At best, at best, it's good advice. But we don't need advice.
Jeffrey Heine:We need your truth tonight. So that's what we ask for in this time. We pray these things, not simply for ourselves, but that you would transform us, us, that we would go into the world preaching your gospel. So we pray these things in the name of Christ and for the name of Christ. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, if you're getting married here at at Redeemer, there's a good chance that if you sign up for premarital counseling, you will get to spend 6 to 7 sessions with me, which is fun for the most part. What's really imperative, I mean something from the start, a crucial thing that we have to deal with in that premarital counseling is the emphasis of the fundamental truth that marriage in our world, in our culture, is one sinner marrying another sinner in a sinful world. That's that's where we have to start off. What's interesting, you know, as we try to really present that, sometimes there's this hesitancy like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get this sinful world. Yeah, sometimes we make mistakes and everything, but it's a stark reality that it is one sinner marrying another sinner, and that the need for grace to be communicated one to another is so vital, that's that can be a startling truth.
Jeffrey Heine:But that's not what we're talking about tonight. Tonight in Genesis 2, sin has not entered into the world. The need for redemption is not present. The earth is not groaning, as Paul will later say. Man is not wandering.
Jeffrey Heine:Unity is not fractured. God is creating and what he is creating is good. And so tonight, we take our minds back, back to the garden, to understand what God created and intended when he created man as male and female and what his design for marriage was in the beginning. Jesus is confronted with the issue of divorce and, and he talks about, he points to the beginning. See, yes, we do have this fallen world and we do need to talk about and have conversations about and probably counseling about the fallenness of this world and our marriages in it and our relationships in it, But it's fundamental to look back and see what was intended in the beginning.
Jeffrey Heine:The reason is because what we think God desires for marriage radically changes what we think marriage is. Our presuppositions, a quote that's on the front of your worship god, that our presuppositions, subconscious, things that we don't even think about, those presuppositions have a power over us. They influence us in the way that we act and react in this world in our relationships. And so we're going to go back and see what god created and what he intended in that creation. Now a quick word about sin and marriage before we go further.
Jeffrey Heine:If our emotional baggage was literal baggage, we probably couldn't all fit in here with it. We all have experienced the fractures of sin in our relationships. Maybe it was your your parents or a relationship that you have been in, Divorce has affected everyone in here in some manner. It has to. Like if there's only one person in here, I could still say though, well, with the number of people in here, it's safe to assume that divorce has impacted someone's life.
Jeffrey Heine:Even if I was in here by myself, I could say that because we have all felt the influence of that in our lives. And so I want to acknowledge that at the start, and that god is sovereign over those who marry and those who don't. And he will be found sufficient in marriage and in singleness. He knows your wounds. He knows your baggage.
Jeffrey Heine:A parent's divorce, your divorce. Parent's infidelity, your infidelity. He knows your struggles and he is always with you. So hear that at the start. Second thing, the way that we view our own relationships, marriage and otherwise, Karl Barth points this out in his great work, dogmatics that the relationships, all the relationships that we have come out of this central relationship that we see at the beginning with Adam and Eve.
Jeffrey Heine:That that can be considered the center of relationships, the human relationships that we all experience, that we all come from a woman. I mean, the the these are central things that everyone in here was a baby. Like, that's that's pretty wild, you know? I mean, that 50, 60 years ago, like, none of us existed, like, at all. Like, no one in this room was here.
Jeffrey Heine:I I've got a a penny in my pocket that's older than all of us. Like, this is this is we are fresh on the scene here. Okay? So what what we have to realize is that this this has a deep root. And so if you think marriage, I'm I'm never going to get married, I'm I'm called to a life of singleness, that still see that how you view marriage has a significant power over you in the way that you view all the relationships that you interact in.
Jeffrey Heine:So we often see 1 and 2, chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, as the story of creation. The story of creation, and we can get really wrapped up in the details of that creation. We're going to talk about some of those details tonight, but but we can get so focused on the creation itself that we miss the fact that, really, these two chapters of the creation account are primarily primarily about the creator and his character. The creation account is not simply, Well, what day was this made, and what day was that made and could this actually be 24 hours? How is that even possible?
Jeffrey Heine:Those are things that we can talk about and we have brought a lot of those things up in this Genesis study already, but ultimately this is about the creator, that there is a creator and that he does this creation. And so we will be looking at this really interesting starting point that Moses has where before in chapter 1, he talks about the creation of man as male and female, created in God's image and this charge to be fruitful and multiply and all of that in that long poem. But he starts again and says, in the beginning of in the generations of the heavens and the earth, and he gives a detailed account of what happened when god created man, both male and female. And so we're going to look in on that zeroed in account, but we have to recognize that there are three contexts here. As we zero in, there's the garden, there's the desert where Moses is telling this and writing this and that audience, and then there's today, our experiences.
Jeffrey Heine:And in the in in the garden where sin had not entered in yet, there's a certain purity that we really have to stretch our minds to even fathom. Because in the context of the desert, in the context of tonight, sin is all around us. Sin is in us. And so it it will be a stretch for us to think on these things. But tonight, we're gonna look at the garden where God makes man male and female and performs the first wedding.
Jeffrey Heine:He acts as the minister of the wedding, he acts as the father of the bride in presenting Eve. He also functions in this strange way of, a pre arranged marriage. How did Adam know that Eve was the one? Because she was the only one. He didn't say, well, you know, that I see that we have a lot of similarities and everything, but I just don't know if it's gonna last.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, it was he he was presented with Eve, and and and that was all, and he knew it, and it was good. And so we're gonna look at that. The problem of loneliness. Why is it bad for Adam to be alone? And the provision of fellowship.
Jeffrey Heine:What is god giving Adam and Eve? I'll say those again. The problem of loneliness and the provision of fellowship. God has created all of the earth, and he is filling the earth. And Moses begins this section with the creation of Adam from the ground, out of the ground.
Jeffrey Heine:The ground is said repeatedly throughout chapter 1 and chapter 2. Out of the ground. Hebrew, adamah, the ground, the earth. Adamah. And from the earth, the soil, he makes adam, Adam.
Jeffrey Heine:That's like in in our language where we would say that out of the soil of the earth he made an earthling. That's that's the play of the language there, this adam from Adamah. God forms man and he forms him and he breathes life into him. And he takes him and he places him in a garden. And he instructs him to he instructs him to keep it and to serve it.
Jeffrey Heine:To tend to the garden that he had given him, to eat of the fruits, to enjoy the garden. Look at verse 18. God declares something in all of creation that he had not declared before. Verse 18. Then the lord god said, it is not good that the man should be alone.
Jeffrey Heine:Lo tov. Tov, good, is said over and over and over again, 7 times in the first chapter. Good, good, good, very good. And now for the first time, not good. Lo tov.
Jeffrey Heine:God has declared that his creation is good, but something about Adam's aloneness is not good. He says it is not good for man to be alone. The problem, the not good that He created is the loneliness. And it's important here to note that God didn't fail in making Adam alone. But if you take the syllogism, God made Adam alone, it's not good to be alone, then god made not good.
Jeffrey Heine:Unless unless god is not finished making adam. Unless He's not finished with man. He has made man male, but he is not finished. But what is so bad about being alone? God created Adam to need food.
Jeffrey Heine:He created him, to need air, these basic things. He created Adam to have needs, but he also supplied a provision for that need. And so what about this? God created a very significant need for Adam, the need for fellowship. And we see that this need isn't something that Adam just generated, this need was created by god.
Jeffrey Heine:Today, in our context, a great sin that we face is the sin of selfishness. And selfishness really is us trying to get back to this need, this problem in the beginning of being alone. See, we don't always process it like that, that our selfishness is really trying to get to aloneness. But when it becomes the betterment of me, the advancement of me, the centeredness of me, it makes us alone. Selfishness leads us back to this initial problem of being alone.
Jeffrey Heine:This loneliness, selfishness leads us back to the aloneness of Adam, The development of self, personal pleasure, personal achievement, personal growth, all at the expense of serving and loving. And might step on some toes. Have you heard anyone, recently that got out of a relationship and and everyone, they they they talk about, you know, it's just so much better for me now. Like, my friends tell me that, like, I'm I'm, you know, just I'm more fun and just I don't have as many worries, and it's just like not as much pressure on me and all these things. I'm not saying that you didn't need to get out of that relationship or your friend didn't need to get out of that relationship, but we had this, Oh, if I could just get off by myself, if I could just pursue me for a little while, then then I can really become the best me.
Jeffrey Heine:That is the pursuit of aloneness. Now, in this sin today of alonenesses, it pushes us back to the loneliness God said was not good, the development of me. He declares that that selfishness and that aloneness is not good and that he will provide. He makes a promise. He says, I will make for him a helper, a helper fit for him.
Jeffrey Heine:Verse 18, that second part there. After he says that it's not good, he says, right after that, after he acknowledges Adam does not acknowledge. He doesn't say, I'm lonely. God acknowledges the problem and immediately says, the promise that He will provide. I will make a helper fit for him.
Jeffrey Heine:It's important that we know that the word helper, ezer in Hebrew, is used 19 times in the Old Testament, and 16 of those refer to God himself. Usually in those circumstances, it's when a battle is being waged, and those people are losing, and they need reinforcements, and god shows up. God shows up as the strong helper. See, this is not this, I just need someone to, like, hold the tools while I work kind of thing, or like when a little kid wants to help, like, cut the grass and you're like, I do no. You just sit on the porch and you can be my helper by watching.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, it's not that kind of a thing. It really is come and help. Be the strong reinforcement. And God, as Tim Keller says, has the audacity to use this word for woman. What a wonderful thing and a wonderful picture.
Jeffrey Heine:But in that, he also says God is saying that he will create a helper fit for him, and this is all difficult to translate stuff, but and throughout the generations they've done their very best that we would have a good sense of this, so fit for him. But that this would be a a sameness and a difference, That they would be like, but also opposite in 1. This is a bizarre divine unity that God is working. God acknowledges the great need of man, and then he says that he will meet that name that need and he will make it good. God knows it.
Jeffrey Heine:Even if Adam doesn't recognize it, god knows the need, and he will provide. Just as he did with Adam, so he says, It's not good. I will provide a helper fit for him, and he makes this declaration. He goes back to the ground. Adamah.
Jeffrey Heine:He goes back to the ground, to the soil, and he starts to form life. He provides beasts and birds. What an interesting thing. He goes from, I declare, like, I see this need, I created that need, and I will provide. I will do something about that, so I will make cows.
Jeffrey Heine:And he starts this animal parade, like, for for for Adam. And he's sitting there and like all these animals, they start making their way through and he's giving them names. And in all of the animals, in all of the beasts and the birds, it says no one was found no one was found to be a helper fit for him. Verse 20. But for Adam, there was not a helper found for him.
Jeffrey Heine:This is no surprise to god, and remember this is about him, like he's, he's doing something intentional here. No helper was found. God didn't ordain any of those things to be Adam's helper. He didn't plan on the beast or the bird, and then it just didn't work out. He knew what he was doing.
Jeffrey Heine:So he causes something very different. He he does a creative action that he has not done before, not out of adamah, from the ground, not from the dirt, but from adam. So he had spoken things into existence. He had gone to the dirt and formed something, man, beast, bird. But now he does a creative action that he had not done previously.
Jeffrey Heine:He goes to Adam and causes this sleep, and he takes from him. Now what exactly, I mean, we go to rib, I mean, kind of like we go to apples later, like, an organ. He takes from his vitals and he forms. In the Hebrew, he builds woman out of man. So the lord caused this deep sleep in verse 22, and the rib that the lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Jeffrey Heine:And listen to this, these are the first words of man recorded in the scriptures. The very first word. And and the very first words are poetry. He stands there and Eve is brought to him, and he says, this one, at last, bone from my bone, flesh from my flesh, this one shall be called woman. For from man she was taken.
Jeffrey Heine:That at last, it's such a beautiful phrase there. He's seen all these beasts and birds. He has seen bone not of his bone. He has seen flesh not of his flesh, and he has longed. And here before him, finally, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.
Jeffrey Heine:The Hebrew in this is beautiful. You can look see if you can find it online. I I easily found it earlier this afternoon. Someone reading in Hebrew chapter 2. Listen to the poetry.
Jeffrey Heine:This at last, the first words of man, she shall be called Ishshah, for she came from Ish. This extension of man himself. You see, before he was named according to the ground, he was adam, And now he is named in in accordance with woman, Ish and Ish shah. The perfect complement. In this, as he says, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, he's recognizing the equality, he's recognizing sameness.
Jeffrey Heine:Bone of my bone, same. Flesh of my flesh, same. She is woman, for she came out of man, difference. We cannot neglect the sameness and the differences between the man and the woman. If we forsake 1, we we lose sight of what God has ordained from the beginning.
Jeffrey Heine:Sameness and differences. This is a divine plan. Not like the beasts and the birds, but same and different, wonderfully so. Verse 25, and they were naked and not ashamed. They were purely and perfectly in fellowship.
Jeffrey Heine:Their nudity represented what today's nudity cannot achieve. You see, we think that by obtaining the nudity, then we somehow get the unity, that we achieve that. God creates the unity and their nudity was representative of that fellowship. And we work that backwards in our culture day in day out. And then Mo, Moses's aside in verse 24, for this reason, man will leave his father and mother, and he will cling to, he will cleave to a wife, and the 2 will become 1 flesh.
Jeffrey Heine:The 1 fleshness, this one flesh that that Moses is talking about here, that God continues today His divine creation in marriages today in Christ, that he forms 2 people together, the way he made unity with Adam and Eve, that that creative work, that divine work is not finished. He continues it in our lives amongst us today. He does that, and that that oneness of flesh testifies to the unity of the trinity, and that we can have an image of that today. And so marriage provides not only a remedy to the loneliness, because if that was it, then, like, when he got to the dog in the parade of animals, I'd been like, that's cool. We'll be buddies.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's go. No. This isn't this isn't merely a companion. This this is a deep unity that God is establishing and it is an image of more. See, the unity of 1 flesh in marriage, even in this first marriage, points to the greatest need of man, the greatest problem of loneliness, and that is separation from god himself.
Jeffrey Heine:And in that, god declares his great promise and his great provision. See, our great need for a redeemer. And he provides the provision of the flesh of Christ. And that we might join, all of us, married, single, divorced, wherever you land in that, that you would join in that flesh and that all the rest of this is a mere image pointing to that union in Christ. God sees the greatest need of man as redemption and declares, just as he did with Adam, that he, out of his own divine work, and not our own, not us, but his work that he will provide and meet our greatest need in Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:In this, all relationships, parent to child, friendships in the church, marriages, all point to fellowship reconciled with God through the provision of Christ's flesh. The hope of marriage and the hope of all relationships is grace and God gave humility and the the good gift of marriage that we could live in this forum of grace, what Paul Tripp calls the crucible of holiness, where we can know that we are not alone. Marriage is not just a provision that provides a helper and even community here, but that we would actually join in the fellowship with God himself. God promises in chapter 3, which we're going to look at next week in in the fall, that one would come. 1 would come and he would provide.
Jeffrey Heine:And so after kings and prophets, spouses, jobs, politicians, money, children, all of these things paraded in front of us, and a helper could not be found. So he had to send 1 bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and that flesh came and dwelt among us. And through that flesh, we have not only been reconciled and redeemed, but we have been as a community betrothed. That we are engaged, that our ultimate helpmate is promised to us. So for those of you that are single and long for the fellowship that God has ordained in marriage, or for those of you that struggle hard to glorify God in your marriage and seek to honor him in your love, for those of you that have experienced the pain of divorce in your own relationships, or your parents, or for those of you that have experienced the fracturedness that comes from the sin in your own sexuality, for you who are lonely, all of us who are lonely, your bridegroom awaits to share in the pure and perfect fellowship.
Jeffrey Heine:This awaits all of us who are in Christ. Our greatest need for fellowship that god created in us is met fully in Christ. That none of us would be found deficient as Adam was not found deficient because god promises and he provides. This is our ultimate union. What god began in the garden was the provision for our deepest need.
Jeffrey Heine:Before the fall even happened, he gives us this provision of the image, the vision for fellowship in husband and wife. The fall hasn't occurred yet, and yet he is already providing for us this image of unity with God through Christ. Before the brokenness began, he set in motion the beauty of holy marriage to show us his provision, the perfect helper who would be bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And he shall be called Emmanuel, for he is god with us. Let's pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Creator God, I ask that you would stir in our hearts repentance. That you would give our hearts a vision of Christ and grace. That perhaps as our own selfishness or sinfulness was brought to our eyes as we hear your word, that that we could trust fully in the flesh of Christ. That we could let out deep sighs of relief because of the the beauty of Christ on the cross and Christ resurrected and Christ ascended, that we have hope And that You are a sovereign god over our lives and that we can know You and that we can trust in you. And that in this relationship where we have seen so many people in our lives leave us, so many people in our lives, so many relationships fractured and splintered by sin, that in all of that, that we would see a love that will not let us go, a marriage that will not end.
Jeffrey Heine:For in every marriage today, we we have to close all of our deep promises with till death do us part. But in Christ, neither life nor death, nor height nor depth, nor angels, Nothing can separate us from the love of god in Christ. Nothing will separate us from that great helper, our bridegroom. Teach us to hope in your truth and to delight and treasure Christ all the more. We pray this in his name.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen.
