Princeton Presbyterian Church

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1670

January 26, 2025

Genesis 2.15-25       Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“Making Woman”

 

¹⁵The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷but of 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.”

¹⁸Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹Now 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. ²⁰The 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. ²¹So 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. ²²And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³Then 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 out of Man.” ²⁴Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

 

 

• Tending the Garden

 

To this point in the book of Genesis, God has created everything in heaven and earth and has revealed the details of creating Adam on the sixth day. Now we come to the more detailed account of the making of the woman. But first, we see that God has placed Adam in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Working and keeping are a part of the responsibility of Adam and thus of all humanity. We have been charged to work and keep creation since God has placed us as rulers over what God has created. I would image that the work was a little bit easier than what we have today. Those of us who garden, especially growing vegetables, know the work it takes to get a decent crop. We have to deal with the soil, with weather, with pests, with animals that love to eat everything. In our area we deal with a shorter growing season that limits what we can grow. Some of that is because the garden of Eden is not in our back yard. We have inherited a yard tainted by sin. That story, of sin, is soon to come in Genesis. For now, Adam is gardening in Eden. What did he have to do? God has already planted everything, probably no weeds to deal with. All he had to do was go in and pluck a fruit from all the trees he was allowed to eat and just avoid one of those trees!

God tells Adam to eat up, but, one tree is off limits. What is it about our nature that we most desire that which is not allowed? Tell a child not to touch something and you set off something within that child as he becomes utterly determined to touch it. We tend to want more than anything that we cannot have. Maybe that is why God sets out to make a suitable helper, because Adam needs help to resist the temptation to eat of the one forbidden tree.

 

 

 

 

 

• In Need of a Helper

   

There are several reasons why God makes a helper for the man. First is that it was not good that man should be alone. No other creature was a suitable companion for Adam. That is the second reason, companionship. Man needed woman as a companion for the task that God had given to man. Third, God gave Eve for the sake of multiplying the earth and in that role, to help in the dominion of the earth. Adam has the primary responsibility and Eve shares in the commands from God as the helper to man. The roles that are assigned to man and woman do not convey superiority or inferiority in either, but complementary roles to fulfill God’s commands and desires for creation and for humanity. We must remember that in Genesis 1 male and female are both made in the image of God. Both have equal dignity and honor as God’s own, we simply differ in the roles we are assigned in the created order of things.

I find it interesting to note that everything in creation is deemed as good and even very good after the creation of the man and woman in Genesis 1, and yet, here is something that is not good. It is not good that man is alone. Three reasons we have already seen: not good to be alone, needs a companion, and to multiply and subdue the earth. But it is also a part of what it means to be a people of community. We need the communion of others. We need the community of a relationship with God. We need the community of church, of neighbor, of co-worker, of teammate, whatever the situation is, we are people designed for community. Not everyone will have a husband or wife, but there are other ways of “not being alone”. Genesis indicates that the ideal might be marriage, but we know that not all will marry, but all can find communion - with God, with the body of Christ, or in some other biblical manner.

The role of helper is one who comes alongside. It is a partnership. Yes, the man is the leader in this divine design of creation, but the woman is created to be a suitable helper. The design order signifies the order of authority as God – man – woman. Man is to lead and care for his wife and together fulfill the charge given them to rule over all creation. The roles cannot and should not be reversed. In our culture, these roles are totally confused by the ideologies of toxic masculinity and transgenderism and homosexuality and feminism. All of these cultural “ideologies”, or perhaps “idiot-ologies”, seek to destroy the beauty of God’s design for men to be men and women to be women. Much of what has damaged society is that men have failed to take on the responsibilities God has ordained for them and women have had to assume roles that those men have forsaken. I know that just saying this is an affront to what we see in the world today and may offend believer and non-believer alike. But the church must assert, certainly in our church culture, the truth of God’s divine design for men and women.

The role of helper might imply, to some, a sense of inferiority. What does “helper” mean? Some women might assume that men are here to help them! The Hebrew term ezer is used for the woman and it is also used in the Old Testament for God from time to time. God comes alongside to help for a period of time. The woman’s role as helper is a permanent role, but the fact that it is also used with God speaks volumes to the importance of the role. But we cannot assume that the term ezer is totally comparable between God and woman. God helps in different ways and by different means than the role of woman as helper. The only point we need to observe here is that woman as helper does not indicate inferior, but shows a valuable role in God’s design. Actually, men and women need one another in the charge to be fruitful and multiply! Neither can do that alone.

 

 

 

 

• Making Woman

 

The making of Eve demonstrates a harmonious relationship for male and female. “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” There is no indication in the creation narrative that one is above the other in the sense of superiority, only that each has sufficient roles to complete the work they have been charged to do. Adam is given the ultimate responsibility to lead and Eve to help. They work together, in partnership, all the while enjoying one another as God intended. When I counsel couples who are to marry, we talk about how the marriage relationship is a reflection of the joy of covenant in marriage including a reflection of the covenant we share with God.

Woman is made from man. God caused a deep sleep, the first anesthesia, so that God could take a rib and from that rib make the woman. “Wake up Adam, I have a helper for you!” Adam somehow knows right away, 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 out of Man.” Adam had just been naming all the animals and when he wakes up from this sleep he sees something he has never seen before. Voddie Baucham, when describing this text, says that the man saw the woman and said, “Um um um!” Adam must have thought all those animals were really cool, but this one, wow! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, something super special here. Why would Adam say, “this at last”? He has been tirelessly naming all the animals, none found to be a sufficient helper for him. None were compatible. None were pleasing for the purpose of companion. Then the woman is before him, from him, like him, and yet unlike him. Suitable, helper, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh and therefore he shall hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. “This at last!” God’s design. God’s order of things. This will have implications throughout history to this day.

When Jesus is asked about divorce in the New Testament, he quotes this passage in both accounts in Matthew and Mark. In Mark 10.2-9 we read, And Pharisees came up and in order to test [Jesus] asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” I raise this not to change the topic to divorce, but to note that Jesus quotes this passage in reference to how God has created human beings and how they are to relate in marriage. God made them male and female and in marriage they are no longer two but one flesh. Jesus could have used this same text for any topic on human sexuality that we are seeing today. It is all right here to clarify for the twisted assumptions in our culture and society: only two genders, marriage defined as between a man and a woman, God ordained (joined together). We cannot redefine what God has created lest we deny God’s created order and God’s sovereignty over all that He has created.

In our Confession, the Westminster Confession of Faith, we read this about creation:

After God had made all the other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasoning, immortal souls. He endowed them with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness in His own image and wrote His law in their hearts. God also gave them the ability to obey His Law and the potential to disobey it; i.e., He gave them freedom of their own will, which could change. In addition to this Law written in their hearts, they were commanded not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. As long as they obeyed God’s Law and kept this Commandment, they were happy in fellowship with God and had dominion over the other creatures. (Chapter 4.2)

This paragraph is not limited to our Genesis reading for today but includes references all through Genesis, from Ecclesiastes, Luke, Matthew, Psalms, Ephesians, Romans, and Colossians. Our confessional stance is one that acknowledges God’s divine design from the beginning of creation. This is one of the calls we have as a people of Christian faith, to call others to know Jesus Christ and to come to know the design that God has given for men and women to flourish and fulfill their roles as God has ordained. We are to submit ourselves to God’s way and we can only do that by repenting of our sin and trusting solely in God’s Word, obeying the commands He has given us for life and for life eternal. Christ died and rose from the tomb so that we might see clearly what God has done from the very beginning of time and space and matter. God has a design for us, roles for us, order for us. May we joyfully seek to do what is pleasing in His sight and fulfill the call to serve Him as the men and women He has created us to be. Amen.