Sermon Transcript
Thanks, Thanks, Carrie. Genesis 2:18-25. 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.
But whatever the man called every living creature 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. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed its place with flesh. 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, And God said, this, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
One of my favorite things about living in California is the opportunity to visit giant ancient trees, the redwoods and the sequoias. They are— they’re really only here, Pacific Northwest. They don’t exist anywhere else in the world. According to one park guide and some quick internet fact-checking on my part, these massive trees used to live in other places around the globe in the Northern Hemisphere across Europe and Asia, but over time they slowly retreated from those areas and now they are exclusively here, though there is a shorter variety of redwood that still lives in China. I first saw these trees when I was 10 years old.
My family took a trip to California and we visited visited Sequoia National Park and Yosemite, and since then every time I have visited these old-growth forests, as they call them, each time is still special. I have never been desensitized. They are still majestic. The size, the beauty, the smell, the age. I’m always captivated.
Some of those giants have been on the planet for thousands of years. They were here when Jesus was here. They saw world wars. They saw the advancement of human transportation from horse to train to car to spaceship. They saw the Industrial Revolution.
They saw empires come and go. And through it all, they remained. They’ve lived through everything in much of recorded history. Now, every time I visit them, it brings to mind 2 different fictional stories. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
Lord of the Rings because in Lord of the Rings there’s a species of tree that walks around and talks, but they’re trees, they’re called Ents, and they date back in the story to the First Age of Middle-earth. And they, like our ancient redwoods and sequoias, Ents have also seen everything. They’ve seen kingdoms come and go, and therefore Ents never worry about too much. No matter how scary the world might be, they know this too shall pass because everything else always has. In Star Wars there are no Ents, but in Return of the Jedi there is the moon of Endor where the Ewoks live.
And the Ewoks have built entire villages up in the branches of very tall trees. And to film the Ewok forest and the Ewok villages, George Lucas took his camera crew to redwood forests in California. For me, there’s something special about those stories, something special about those trees, those forests. It resonates with something deep within me. I feel like this is what a tree is supposed to look like.
This is what the world is supposed to look like. It captivates me. It is my picture of paradise. You may have a different picture of paradise. For you, maybe it’s the mountains or a ski slope or palm trees or a beach or a rainforest, or maybe put all of those together.
If you’re dreaming, why not have a beach, rainforest, redwood grove where you can also ski? Go for it. But whatever your picture of paradise is, as you’re picturing that, as you’re thinking about that place, ask yourself this: what if you could live in your ideal version of the world. Ski, swim, forest, beach. And what if while living there you had all the food you could ever need?
You had a comfortable place to rest and sleep. You had fun activities to occupy your day. You never got bored for some reason because there was always more to explore, new things to see, always. What if you had work to do? We’ll talk about work next week, but what if your work was never grueling, work was always rewarding?
Rewarding, work filled your need to be creative and productive without ever feeling stressful. And what if, even to bring the spiritual realm into it, what if God was there with you in your paradise? You had unlimited access and conversation with the Creator of the universe who spoke stars into existence. What if you had all of that and you could live there forever Forever, with no death, but one catch: there were no other people. You would be the only other human you ever saw.
That’s not a bad idea for a dystopian novel if anybody wants to write one, a human in paradise forever with no other humans. It would be a horror story actually. Now, I realize some of us might think, we would love to be by ourselves, that sounds great. The only thing that could ever ruin total perfect paradise is other people. And we can kind of laugh about that, and of course there are times that all of us need alone time.
But if all time is alone time, it is a horror story. Because at the beginning of the world when man was on earth, in paradise, probably surrounded by sequoias. And man had all the vine-ripened produce he could eat, and he had rewarding work and interesting activities and comfort and beauty and could walk with God every day. When man was there and had all that, God said, it is not good for man to be alone. Something is missing.
Someone is missing. So I’m going to make woman and I’m going to put woman and man together and call it marriage. We’ve been in a series studying the creation of the world, when God made everything, how he made everything good. And today we’re studying when God made marriage, human companionship, when he put man and woman together. So, as we look at our passage, we will see the problem of being alone, the help of marriage, what about single people, and then the only perfect spouse.
The problem of being alone, the help of marriage, what about single people, and then the only perfect spouse. So, first, the problem of being alone is that we require higher companionship. Um, it should strike us that in all of God’s good creation, everything God made, he said was good. After each day, he looked at what he made and declared it good. And then when he got to the end, when everything was completed, he looked around and said, everything is exceedingly good.
He was so pleased with every inch of this place. It’s like if you’ve ever made something which you were particularly proud of, you know, you painted something, you built something, You just, you bought new furniture for your room and put it all together, and when you finished, you thought, wow, I did it! Look at this, it’s amazing! If you’ve ever felt anything like that, you can relate to how God felt about creation. He thought, it’s just wonderful!
But as God looked at the brilliance of creation, this wonderful spectacle, He sees man alone and he says, that’s not good. I need to do something about that. Creation isn’t complete yet. This person needs a person, which tells us at least we cannot live in isolation. We were made in a way that requires connection.
It is not optional. You may or may not be aware, but just last month, right next door, San Mateo County, County declared loneliness a public health emergency.
They certainly aren’t the first ones to ever notice the crisis of loneliness. The UK for many years has had a Minister of Loneliness. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an 80— you can find it online— 81-page advisory on the epidemic of loneliness. Why?
Why are public health officials paying attention to Because the more we study it, the more we realize people need people. Loneliness will actually kill you at higher rates than obesity or cigarettes. Loneliness leads to dementia and other health disorders. And especially since the pandemic, loneliness has just skyrocketed, so public health officials are sounding the alarm. People have to have people.
And somehow for many of us, we’ve lost one We’re wired to connect with one another. There’s a professor down at UCLA, he’s a neuroscientist, Matthew Lieberman. His book is Social: How Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Lieberman says friendship is found in a number of species, but friendship is nearly universal in humans. In other words, friendship is part of what makes us human, being in relationship with others.
Others, such to the extent our brains actually prioritize relationships so much that brain imaging shows our pleasure centers light up when others get a benefit. Not just when we get a benefit, but when others get a benefit, our brain gives us a reward. But even more striking, if someone doesn’t have something and then we see them get that thing, our brains register it as a higher reward than if we who already had that thing got a little more. In other words, we are wired to be more altruistic than selfish. More and more and more for ourselves does not yield as much reward in our brains than seeing someone without get what they don’t have.
It means we’re wired for each other. We’re wired to celebrate one another. Another. It’s part of how we are made. We are not meant to be alone.
It is not good when we are. So if we somehow were on earth by ourselves and we had endless amounts of everything but zero other people, it would be detrimental to us. That’s the problem of being alone. We require companionship. Now, Second, the help of marriage.
Men and women complete one another. God tells the man, I will make a helper suitable for you. So he makes woman to be that helper and he puts man and woman together in marriage. The question is, what does helper mean?
Frankly, some of us might be a little triggered weird when we hear the word helper in reference to the first woman because we might jump to old gender stereotypes and we might even hear people who used to say offensive statements about women that are similar to statements that are sometimes still made about children, right? Things like, they can’t really do anything on their own, they can only assist those who do the real work. Like children help their parents work on a project. You know, hold this flashlight for me, child, even though I could do it myself. It’s nice for you to be here with me and for you to feel like you have something to do, so here’s a little job to give you an illusion of importance, but really you aren’t needed.
You’re just here to look cute holding a flashlight. Best case scenario, maybe you learn something in the process. When you hear the word helper, our minds might go there. But of course, that’s not how the Bible uses the term helper at all. And that’s often not even what helper means in our language.
Probably more often when we use the word helper even today, we mean someone who can add essential knowledge or skills or experience that is not present in the other person or the rest of the team. Like when a mechanic helps you with your car, car or a teacher helps a student with homework. We mean the mechanic and the teacher have knowledge, skills, or experience that we don’t have or the student doesn’t have. The helper fills in the gap. We wouldn’t be complete without the helper.
And that’s the way the word helper is used with woman. The term is not condescending whatsoever. It’s elevating because without her the man has a problem he can’t solve. Just like a student would never get the right answer on a test without the help of a teacher. Further, probably the clearest indicator that shows the term helper is an elevating term and not a derogatory term, the clearest indicator is because the Bible uses the same word helper when it speaks of God himself.
It’s the Hebrew word ezer, and sorry for the American accent for anyone who speaks Hebrew here, but the term ezer in the Bible is in fact, most often used of God himself. It’s places like Exodus 18:4, it’s the name of one of Moses’ sons, God is my help because God was my help who delivered me from Pharaoh. Psalm 33:20, wait on the Lord, he is our help, ezer, and shield. So if the term is most often used of God himself, it cannot mean the one giving the help is somehow lesser than the one receiving the help. It can’t mean that.
Instead, ezer must mean there’s something the helper has that the one who needs help doesn’t have. There’s something the woman has that without it man is not complete. He needs her. They need each other. In fact, they complete one another.
The immediate context of the verse of completing one another is that they solve the problem of loneliness for each other. That’s the most basic help they give one another. You can see how Scripture teaches that they provide for each other’s relational needs later on in the passage when it says man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. The picture is man detaches from one type of relational connection with his father and mother. Obviously, this is every other man after the first man.
But man detaches from his father and mother and makes a new type of relational connection with his wife. In other words, when we leave one, we need to go to another. There should never be a time in our lives without such a close relational connection. It is not leave your father and mother and strike out on your own, be a lone wolf. Can’t do that.
Why would he say that? Because it’s not good for us to be alone and marriage is one of the ways the problem can be solved. It’s not the only way, we’ll talk about that in a minute, but it is one way. Marriage really helps. Did you know that even today the data backs up the claim of Genesis that marriage helps?
That committing to someone else in a way that you can’t back out of it, that is lifelong, irreversible. I’m with you no matter what. The marriage commitment improves our lives. As the University of Virginia, they sponsor something called the National Marriage Project. That— so it’s totally secular university doing research on marriage.
Although, full disclosure, the director of the National Marriage Project, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, he happens to be a Christian, but the project isn’t in any way Christian. They study people of all backgrounds, income levels, ethnicities, spiritual beliefs. Their research is peer-reviewed and it shows married people are happier than single people. Married people have more money than singles do. Married people have more intimate time than single people.
And if married people stay committed in a marriage even when they are unhappy, if they stick with it, if they work on it, it leads to more happiness later on than people who bail on their commitment to one another when they are unhappy. In other words, marriage still works. Man and woman were made for each other. Man and woman complete each other. Man and woman need each other.
It’s part of how God designed us all the way back at the beginning. So if that’s the case, case. What are the single people supposed to do? Because when single people hear that kind of data, it might be alarming. They might think, I knew it!
I knew I needed to be married in order to be happy. I knew there’s no hope for me. It could be easy to feel that way.
But even with the Bible’s high view of marriage, it never implies anything like that. Because the Bible actually also takes an extremely high view of singleness. The Bible takes a much higher view of singleness than any other ancient view. Scripture celebrates singleness, prefers singles in some ways even. So let’s look at this, what does the Bible say about the problem of being alone when you are single?
The biblical— what’s the biblical answer to loneliness as a single? It’s the church.
The church. The biblical answer to the problem of being alone when you are single, and actually even in some ways once you get married, is the church. So yes, on the one hand it’s true, God solved man’s problem of being alone in the garden by creating marriage and giving man and woman to each other in lifelong commitment. That was the answer then. I mean, if for no other reason, at least only because they were the only 2 humans on the planet planet.
But marriage is not the only way the Bible addresses the problem of being alone. And in fact, when we get to the New Testament, marriage is not even always the preferred way. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, explaining that when you are married and you have a family, of course, if that’s your scenario, then your primary focus is on your spouse and your family. And it should be. They are your primary ministry.
Like, you’re most concerned with providing, protecting, supporting them, doing what’s best for the family in every decision you make. And you need to do that. That’s how it works once you’re married and have a family. You live in the place that’s best for them. You spend your time and activities doing what’s best for the members of your family, not for yourself.
You maximize work-life balance in a way that’s best for your family, not for yourself. Most of the sacrifices you make in your life are for their benefit. If you have a family, they are your primary ministry. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But Paul says that means for people who are single, they are much more freed up for other types of ministry.
They don’t need to spend evenings worrying about if the kids have done their homework. They don’t need to think about planning a date night with a spouse or checking in on everyone’s emotions in the home, and they can relocate any anywhere in the world without considering if it is best for those in their family. They can just do it. They can take any job. They can balance work and life in ways that don’t have to account for spouse and children whatsoever.
And therefore, Paul says single people can be much more engaged in other types of ministry. And Paul should know because he was a single when he wrote that. He even says singleness is preferable to marriage. Because of how much freedom it gives you to serve in other ways. So never is there a concept of living for ourselves as followers of Christ.
It’s always our time, our energy is to be used for other people. The only question is, is it for immediate family or is it for a broader area of ministry? And Paul says if you’re single you have this broader possibility. So he calls singleness a gift. He wrote that to a culture that essentially didn’t have any single people, especially women.
They had to be married to have much of any status at all. The only single women in that culture were widows who became beggars and prostitutes. The culture was totally anti-singleness. But Paul comes in, he cuts against the grain and says singleness is fantastic. Fantastic because all the energy that married people need to pour into marriage relationship and maybe kids, all that energy, single people can pour that into serving God in other ways.
Paul’s hyperfocused on God’s mission in the world and he understands because he’s lived it. He knows single people have opportunities to advance God’s mission in ways that married people just don’t. So, he celebrates singleness. Now, he hedges. He says you don’t need to be single.
You know, it’s not a command, be single. If you’re married, stay married. But he says if you are single, take advantage of it. It is a gift. To which single people might want to ask, but what do I get out of it?
If I’m prioritizing serving God’s mission in the world with the same amount of energy that married people prioritize their marriage and families. If I’m doing that, it just sounds like work. And married people work too, of course, but at least they get something in return for all their effort. They get this sense of belonging. They get to be part of a family.
What do I get?
The idea is that single people would get an even bigger family. The New Testament teaches that being part of the church is meant to be— it’s meant to be every bit as relationally rewarding, maybe even more so than being part of a nuclear family. The New Testament says the church can be more of a family than a family, and it really happened in the first century. In the first century, it was not a stigma to be single in the church, even when it was very much a stigma out in the world. Orphans and widows were given a home in the church.
Out in the world they would have had to become beggars or worse, but the church gave them status, honor, respect, cared for them. The church strived to— I mean, they have commands about this. They’re called the one another commands. They loved every one of their members. Encourage everyone.
Support everyone in the faith family. Be vulnerable with one another. That’s confess your sins. Know what’s going on in each other’s life. Correct when necessary.
Forgive live always, wait on one another, prioritize each other. All the things that families at least ought to do for each other, the church did. They did it. It happened. The term for the communal belonging, the togetherness that people receive for being in the church, the term in the New Testament is koinonia.
We don’t usually do much Greek and Hebrew in here. If this is your first time, we’ve done a launch it today just because it seems important, but koinonia is usually translated in our Bibles as fellowship. In Scripture, the term koinonia is always, without any exceptions, only used for relationships between believers in the church or God’s relationship with us. That’s the only way koinonia is used in Scripture. But commentators note that in the broader Roman culture at the time, the term koinonia would often be used to describe, quote, the type of mutuality that takes place in a marriage.
So the type of togetherness, the sense of belonging, of prioritizing each other, of forgiving one another always, of correcting when necessary, the vulnerability of knowing what’s going on with each other, all the stuff that happens or is supposed to happen in a marriage, the koinonia. First century Christians used that term for what it’s like to be part of a church. The church is a family, that’s the idea. It’s one of the things Jesus was hinting at in Mark 10 when he says, anyone who has left fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers for his sake will receive back a hundredfold in this life. Jesus uses the same language as Genesis.
He says man will leave his father and mother, will leave one relational connection, and then be united to— Genesis says, Genesis says, will be united to his wife. But Jesus changes it. Jesus says when man leaves father and mother, he will find— he doesn’t say wife. Jesus says he will receive back a hundredfold. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, referring to the church.
That doesn’t mean when we become part of a church we are in no longer contact with our biological families. Just like when we get married, we don’t lose contact with our biological families. We can be part of both simultaneously, right? But it does mean the relational fulfillment that Genesis says comes from a marriage Jesus and other New Testament authors like Paul claim that type of fulfillment and belonging can come from the church. So our epidemic of loneliness, the public health emergency that all these civic leaders are trying to solve, the church already has the answer.
The church is the answer. You know, San Mateo County sees this problem and they’re trying to help, which is great. They’re trying to come up with ideas of what can we do, and some of their proposals are like more walkable neighborhoods so people are out and about and see each other more other than just staying in your houses, or they try to think of ways to encourage people to increase volunteerism, or maybe the city can sponsor social events like a bingo night or something. They see the problem of loneliness, they’re trying to figure out what are we going to do about it, and they’re coming up with some ideas. And I applaud all those efforts, but those are not going to fill our relational needs.
What we need is koinonia. We need people who know what’s going on in our lives and encourage us, people who challenge us, forgive us, welcome us, act excited when they see us, love us, right? It’s not a program that a city can run. It’s relationships, and it’s meant, it’s meant to be the church. Not that the church always gets that right.
We don’t. We fail a lot. We fail to see people, to love people, to encourage people, to challenge people, to forgive people. The church will always be working more and more toward the ideal of perfect koinonia. We will always be in process of becoming more like Jesus, of becoming more like the one who did and does and always will love the church perfectly.
Jesus is the ultimate combination of challenge, encouragement, redemption, forgiveness. Jesus is the perfect spouse. He’s the only perfect spouse. Jesus’ heart is bound up with us as a husband’s heart is meant to be bound up with his bride. Marriage is an image of how deeply Jesus loves and is committed to us.
That image is actually all the way throughout the Bible. Even in the Old Testament, God says he relates to his people like a husband relates to a bride. And then in the New Testament, Jesus is described as a bridegroom pursuing his beloved. And at the end of the story, at the end of time, when we are finally with him again in eternity, there will be a celebration that looks like a marriage or wedding banquet. Like pull out all the stops, spare no expense, bring out the best wine, the best everything, this is the biggest deal that will ever happen type of celebration when we are with Him again.
The picture is we are His bride in a sense. He cherishes us like a husband cherishes a bride. He defends us. He protects us, he prioritizes us, he adores us, we are the apple of his eye, we’re the bounce in his step, and he never fails. He never fails, ever.
Unlike the man and woman in the garden and all of us who eventually have failed each other, right? In the garden they didn’t protect, defend, prioritize, sacrifice, serve each other. They went with what felt good, looks good, sounded good, but Jesus is not like that. Jesus stays true. He faces all the same temptations we do.
He faced the same tempter as the man and woman faced in the garden, but he didn’t fall. He never gave up, and he never will. Even when everyone abandoned him, even when he knew he was going to experience the ultimate loneliness on the cross, he said, I will endure it. I will take that abandonment. I will take all their blame.
I will carry whatever is needed so that I can get to the day when we will have that wedding feast together. He’s the husband who loves us no matter what. He’s the husband who pays all our debts. He’s the husband who defends us even when we’re guilty. He’s the husband who died to redeem and restore us.
We will never be totally satisfied in this world until we have him, the one to whom we are meant to be betrothed. Until we see Him, we see that He is for us even when everyone else has failed us.
If you don’t know Him, may you see Him today. I pray you see Him as a spouse that your heart has always longed for, always. Let’s pray. Jesus, You are good. You made us for You, and You made us for each other, and You don’t want us to be without either.
And so You’ve provided a way for us to have both, Lord. You provided a way for us back to You through the cross, and You provided a way for us to be together through the church. I pray we would embrace both. May we latch onto both. May we serve both.
May we hope in both and find deeper and deeper intimacy with You. You and with those around us. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
