Genesis 2:18-25, Forming Oneness in Marriage

 

Genesis 2:18-25, Forming Oneness in Marriage

I must be honest with you Church this is not how I saw this happening when I moved from California just a few months ago I never thought in a million years that I would be preaching my first sermon to a

 completely empty room aside from James Pastor James and John so this is that this is blowing my mind right now and second I never thought that my first sermon would be on the topic that we are covering this

 morning I never thought that I would be standing here not before you all but standing here and teaching on the topic of intimacy and money as John mentioned we we've been going through this renewed series a marriage series and focusing on the biblical understanding of oneness and this morning we are honing in and focusing in on the formation of oneness so pastor Gino covered the biblical understanding of oneness last week Pastor Chris covered the the

 maintenance of oneness and today we are talking about the formation of oneness and now I do want to before we get started I do want to give a couple quick disclaimer zhh for this morning's message for those with kids and you you value the opportunity to have your kids sit and watch the big service this this may not be the the right one for

 them to watch we we will be covering some topics that are that are fairly sensitive and and while my intention this morning is to be real and to be honest and blunt I don't want to be rude or crass my second disclaimer is for those that are single now I know that for many of you who are single you are

 watching this marriage series and and quite honestly I get it and for some of you it's a great a marriage series one more thing to remind me that I'm single here's the thing don't check out this is my plea to you to those that are single watching this live string please do not check out during this sermon or any of them if you've tuned out I

 encourage you to please go back and watch the previous sermons for those that are single because there's two types of single people there's are there's the people that are single and desire to be married this is all good information before you go into marriage and for those of you that are choosing to be celibate and single and

 remain single for the duration of your life this applies to you as well because you have friends and family that are married and by understanding and gaining this information you are able to empathize with them and through maybe their struggles just because you are celibate doesn't mean that you don't have money or don't understand the use of money so we so this series and this this sermon this morning is applicable so I

 encourage you to please stay tuned in third disclaimer this is not a fully comprehensive study on sex and money if we took an entire half of the year an entire six months we

 would only be able to scratch the surface of what the Bible teaches about sex and money I only have one Sunday and approximately about 40 minutes so let's dive into our text this morning let's pray and get started if you would open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 2 verse 18 and it says this and the Lord God said it is not good that man should be alone I

 will make him a helper comparable to him and out of the ground the Lord God formed beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them and whatever Adam called each living creature that was its name and

 so Adam gave names to all the cattle to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field but for Adam here this but for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him

 and the Lord God caused a deep sleep on to a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the

 flesh in its place then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man and Adam said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman

 because she was taken out of man therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they should become one flesh and they were both naked the man and his wife and were not ashamed let's

 pray Lord we want to come before you and we want to first acknowledge that your word is powerful and we know God that you have created us in a very specific way we know God that you've created us to operate in a

 very specific way and God I and not am not naive to know that this this topic these two topics are incredibly sensitive and need an incredible amount of grace and truth spoken and love and so Holy Spirit would you please speak through me with that grace and with that love and Lord wipe I just pray that you

 would do a mighty work and the restoration of the marriages in our church God we know that you desire oneness we know that you are a God who's in the business of

 restoration and so Lord we just pray for your leading and guiding this morning planets in Jesus name Amen well one of my favorite things to do is to listen to music as a musician it's it's part of my job to listen to music but even more than that one of my

 favorite things to do is to listen to music and to try to understand what the writer is trying to say you see a good songwriter is able to convey his or her message in every detail of the song they are writing from lyric choice word choice to the choice of of the chords

 that they use or how the instruments work together to produce an emotion or pull out an emotion from their listeners you know they can choose a major chord which has a little bit more of a happier effect to bring out a certain emotion and they can use minor

 scales to bring out more of a a somber effect or feel out of out of the song and sometimes when we're listening these songs sometimes we can be a little bit confused on what the artist is actually trying to say or maybe

 you've seen a painting where you're it it's a beautiful painting but we're not quite sure what the artist is trying to convey and sometimes we need to ask or we need to read up on the meaning behind certain songs or pieces of art lucky for us through

 his word God has given us the blueprints to understanding his creation personally I'm of the opinion that most if not all of the Bible is founded or can be traced back to the first three pages or chapters of the Bible which is why I'm choosing to start here now this may come as a shock to you but hear me when I

 say this God created sex God has created sex and the different things that we consider to be worth something to use to buy or to treat or to trade but he did this and he made these things he created these things for a specific

 purpose and intention and if we believe that God created sex and money then that means that he has ownership over it much like the writer of a song has ownership over the

 lyrics in the chords that combined to make his piece of art a part of setting the earth

 into motion was the creation of reproduction and pleasure part of setting the earth into motion was a human race that was intended to work together and to help to provide for one another and God even uses

 sex and money to establish the early church the early early church history shows us that the early church baffled the culture in that in the way that they were liberal with their giving and their money but conservative

 with their marriage bed this was a complete opposite way of life for the culture that was around them a culture that said you could sleep with whoever you want do whatever you want but hold on to your money and

 build up your own wealth and status God

 has created and given us the gift of sex and money for the purpose of formation and that's what we're talking about today that's what that's our intention that is our focus that is our goal is that sex and money was created by God to form us and form us in the marriage covenant form us into one this is a powerful and profound truth Church and

 what makes this so powerful and profound is that even when it is done in the wrong way it still accomplishes the purposes that it was intended to which is why it is so

 important for us to know the following three things and these things will these three things will be my points for this morning number one what God in what what are

 God's intentions for sex and money how humanity has meddled with and perverted God's design and number three how Christ has redeemed sex and money so let's jump into number one what is God's intention for sex and money God's intention for the creation and gift of sex and money is to

 formulate a unity of body soul in mind between a husband and wife let's begin in our text in verses 18 through 20 that says

 and the Lord God said it is not good that man should be alone I will make him a helper comparable to him out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them

 to Adam to see what he would call them and whatever Adam called each living creature that was its name and so Adam gave names to all the cattle to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him

 we see in this text that God sees the needs of Adam up until this point everything that God had created was good and very good he created light he created the earth he created the trees and the birds and the and the

 animals and and and all of that was good but then he created man and from that we see in our we see in scriptures that God says that this is very good but he recognizes not a flaw in his plan but an opportunity for the continuation of it we see that our text

 reiterates that both man and beast of the field and birds of the air are created from the earth and dust just as Adam was created and I think God is showing Adam something really specific here but let's let's continue to read in verse 21 and it says in the Lord God

 caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and he took one of the ribs and closed up the flesh in its place the question that I have is why did God see Adam's need but

 then send him animals I think what God was showing Adam is that there is nothing else in this world that will be the kind of helper that he needed other than a woman this phrase help her comparable in the Greek is as there another way that this

 phrase is translated is help meat this is where this is the this is a term that we hear a lot within the churches that a woman is a man's help meat and I've never understood what that what that fully means but this is

 what it means that God gave Eve to Adam or women to men because let's be honest men we need help right can I get an amen from your homes we need help and God knew this and so he gave us our wives but God took it a step further and creates Eve or women to

 also meet the social and reproductive needs that humanity needed to flourish women bring an another level or another part of God's image to our lives another important thing to notice is in verse 21 and 22 we see God do something quite different in his

 creative process we see that God did not create women out of the dust of the earth but from men so why did God do something special for creating women well let me just be completely honest women are special

 there's something special about women but the significant reason for this is wrapped up in equality and oneness there's a Jewish

 tradition saying the eve was not taken from Adams feet to be walked all over nor from

 his head to dominate or lord over their husbands but from his side to be his companion helper and confidant you see women were created to be that help meat they are both helper and they are

 comparable in verse 23 we see Adam is so completely smitten by Eve's beauty that he breaks out in history's first poetic love song let's read it verse 23 that says this is now bone of my bones flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of men now while that may not seem like

 much of a love song to you today I am sure without the presence of even a hint of sin and in the context of first seeing a the the first sight of a woman for the very first time I am sure that the context of this of this poem would probably even make Brian McKnight blush and we can only imagine what happened after that in the Garden of Eden without the presence of sin but the author of Genesis who many believed to be Moses steps in and narrates the following and we read yet another profound and powerful

 verse let's look at 24 and 20 five he says therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall be come one flesh and they were both naked the man and his wife and were not ashamed we see the first purpose of

 intimacy within marriage and it is to form oneness with our spouse biologically the very act of sex releases two major hormones in our brain the first is dopamine which is

 essentially the pleasure and accomplishment hormones and the sect the second is is oxytocin which is known as the bonding hormone when this is secreted into our brains it bonds us and binds us to the

 other individual and promotes affection this oneness begins with separation from what once was and is becoming a new thing

 therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife a leaving of an old way of life and a joining to a new does this sound familiar to you church you see before even the presence of sin was in he was was in our world God was already

 building the building blocks of the gospel a leaving of the way things were and joining into a new thing before sex is even initiated in marriage there is a leaving of an old way of life and then a joining of the new in marriage you are now a family unit you make your own you make your own and build your own traditions and customs based around who you two are as

 individuals and who you are now as a couple yes we are talking about oneness in the sexual sense but we are also talking about the oneness and our finances as well what was once yours is now both of yours what was once mine alone is now ours and for some of you this may be a hard concept to grasp and and and wrap our mind around because you've worked hard for your

 portfolio you've worked hard for your nest egg that you've built up and now you're you're possibly married to somebody who doesn't view or value those things the way that you do but this is where intimacy and money are very similar for many going into marriage can be a very scary thing when it comes to sex and money sharing your body and money are probably the most

 vulnerable things you could possibly do both require trust service and sacrifice and sadly we live in a fallen world where Trust is broken and looking out for number one and looking out for number one or self is

 promoted instead of serving and loving others which leads us to our second point how humanity has meddled with and perverted God's design anytime we take a good thing and make it a god thing we are already deep into the process of idolatry unfortunately in the very next chapter of our text chapter 3 of Genesis we find we find the perfect world of Eden coming to a crashing halt our first father and mother sin they follow the voice of the enemy and

 choose to not trust in God's Word or his promises they choose to serve themselves seeking enlightenment - knowing good and evil they choose their own desires over there over each other and obedience to God and it's from this point forward in the process of humanity that mankind is in a perpetual

 state of longing for what once was and like our first father and mother we tend to listen to other voices besides God's first there are two main polarizing voices that we listen to instead of God's Word the first voice that we listen to is the culture and we allow the culture to divine our view of sex and money this voice says that it doesn't matter who you sleep with it doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it for for whatever is best for you it's all about what makes you happy and fulfills your immediate needs the second

 voice that we allow to shape our views and hear me on this church the second voice that we allow to shape our views is the silent and scared Church this is the voice that says nothing about it this is the voice that if we do talk about it we talk about how sex is dirty and not for pleasure and we should really

 just avoid talking about it all together unless you absolutely need to and mainly when you absolutely need to its rebuking somebody else for their sin and as a church we don't

 like to talk about money because we feel that if we talk about money then everybody's going to think that that's all that we're about so we avoid the topic altogether and this is wrong the damaging thing about this church is listen to this the damaging thing about this is because the church is

 silent on the idea or the topics of sex and money the voice that is heard loud and clear by our youth and the people that are growing up in the society is the voice of the culture but at the heart of this issue is an issue of the heart we are a broken humanity when we don't focus on the issues of our own heart we begin to believe the

 misconceptions that the culture feeds us first misconception that the culture feeds us is that I need sex in spending to satisfy me the problem with this mindset is we are looking to sex and money to give us

 something that it was never intended to give now I want to I want to remind you Church that sex and money is a gift from God it is a gift from God but when we look to it to give us something to satisfy us this results in us getting discouraged and abandoning that hope to find fulfillment or we continue to

 come back to it to see a different result but to no avail and this is where addiction creeps in and secures its talons in our life Paul Tripp says this sex and spending money are powerful but short-lived pleasures with no capacity to satisfy the true desires of your heart sex is powerfully pleasurable and connecting money can powerfully change your life but neither was designed to give you inner peace they are not your Savior Martin Luther says whatever your heart

 clings to and confides in that is really your God your functional Savior Paul Tripp again says this sex and money aren't actually the problem what you what you've asked of them is the second misconception is that accountability and budgeting we'll save us because sex and money are a gift from God we can no they are not behavioral problems but heart problems so the inadequacy of

 accountability and budgeting is that it only affects the outward behavior and not the issues of the heart now I'm not saying that I'm against accountability or budgeting I'm not saying that they're bad they're actually wonderful things and when we focus on the issues of our heart accountability and budgeting become assets in the fight

 accountability connects us with other people it connects us with community and allows the community to come together and to help and support each other budgeting as a family unit allows a husband and a wife to come together and be of one mind when it comes to the spending and using of the

 resources and finances that God has given us I'm all for these things but we can't treat them as our Savior and we can't treat them as the end result but we can use them as tools in the fight or as assets in the fight Psalm 51 comes on the tales of Nathan the Prophet doing the ultimate mic drop when he confronts King David on his adultery with Bathsheba and then the murder of

 Bathsheba's husband when David finds out that he's gotten Bathsheba pregnant yes this is in the Bible and Psalm 51 verse 10 says

 this this is David's plea and his cry when he has been presented with his sin and in his repentance he says this create in me a clean heart O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me you see David understands that this is not a beautiful woman issue but a heart issue the third misconception is this it's just sex it's just money it's not that big of a deal the hard truth of it is it is a big deal we remember the biological side of this whole thing of when to when a couple has sex the

 hormones that are produced during any sexual encounter are still produced allow me to be real honest with you Church anytime you have a sexual experience whether it is with your spouse or with someone other than your spouse or by yourself you are

 forming your brain you are forming your brain you are bonding your heart mind and soul to whoever or whatever is in front of you and this is why the effects of pornography are so damaging it only

 provides a false sense of intimacy the images that you're seeing don't know that you exist and in your mind you are bonding yourself to these people that you don't even know so these images that you don't even know the fourth and final misconception that takes the focus off of our own heart issue is that the true problem is with the

 culture around us sometimes I find myself thinking that the perversion that we see today in our culture is a result of slow evolution since the fall of man but we look in our scripture and we see that that's just not true sin is incredibly damaging the effects of sin run deep and fast just within the next chapter we see perfect unity in in chapter 2 chapter 3 we see our our first father and

 mother sin therefore it doesn't begin with a little white lie it begins with murder it begins with Cain murdering his brother out of jealousy and greed a few more chapters later we'll see the story of a lot in Sodom and Gomorrah where God sends two angels down to pull a lot out lot brings these two

 angels are these two men into his house and immediately the town surrounds his house demanding that that lot released these two men so that they can have a sexual encounter with them and to make things

 worse to make things even weirder lot says men of the city please don't do this but hey I have an idea here's my two virgin daughters I'll give you them and have you can have your way with what is going on this is early in our Earth's development this is early within our humanity's development we see that the effects of sin runs deep and fast again the problem is the sin in our own

 hearts and not the culture around us when our hearts are rescued by grace we can see Jesus as more beautiful than the temptations of our culture I want to say that again when our hearts are rescued by grace we can see

 Jesus as more beautiful than the temptations of our of our culture the truth and a glorious truth it is Church is that we are unable to fix our own heart issues this is only a work for our Creator so number three how Christ has redeemed sex and money in marriage Jesus first begins with restoring us individually he restores us first individually we are God's creation and he has created

 created us to be sexual creatures with sexual desires I remember growing up and you know obviously when you're an angsty teenager you have all these feelings and desires and and once and I remember going to purity camps and things like that and just like and and and really this is kind of the fault of the purity camps but but being

 encouraged to pray those desires away and that's not that's not our human nature that's not the way that God has built us God has not built us to pray our desires away but pray for the strength to walk in those desires the way that he has intended us to Jesus Christ is the only one who can repair and

 restore our broken hearts and fill the void of Savior that sex and money cannot and he does this by first restoring us to the most important relationship and that is God entering into a Living covenant with his people this is why Christ came right this is why Christ came to restore the broken

 hearted and there is reason for the lost and broken to have hope and as I mentioned in my prayer church I know that many of you are listening to this message and some of you are even triggered I think some of you are as far as being triggered and listening to this because of the the trauma that you have seen and endured in your life around these two subjects but there is hope Romans 12:1 through 2 says this I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy

 acceptable to God which is your reasonable service verse 2 and do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the

 renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God our bodies and our minds are able to be transformed and rerouted to do

 God's will and it's from this relationship that a proper relationship with our spouses is formed the formation of oneness between a husband and wife is a foreshadowing of our unity with God it is an active gift and a

 reminder of what was in Eden and what will be in the hope and Kingdom to come in regards to intimacy our sinfulness seeks to objectify our spouse or the opposite sex and please only ourselves but in Christ into my intimacy with our spouse recalls and

 reminds our hearts that we are not our own in Christ the action the act of sexual expression within the marriage covenant is a picture of the oneness that once was in the garden and what will be when Christ comes back for his people and in regards to our money and finances our sinful nature seeks to hoard and preserve and serve our self but in Christ our security of heart and mind is found only in him we no longer have to rely

 on our nest egg we no longer have to rely on our on our retirement when our hope and our and our security is found in Jesus Christ in Christ as a couple we can choose to seek out those we can bless because we know that God is the all provider together we can choose to submit to one another in humility and grace and seek to make financial

 decisions based on trust service and sacrifice and lastly because we have been saved and because marriage is a picture of what was and what will be there is freedom and not bondage Galatians 5 verse 1 says for freedom Christ has set us free stand firm

 therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery we see that God has given us the gift of sex and wealth a continuation of what was in Eden is now with us today as a

 picture of what will be in the kingdom to come these things form us these things bind us both biologically mentally and spiritually we also see that God has given us the gift of wealth not for our own fulfillment or success but for the blessing and sustaining of others we see this in the early church this is one of the founding things of the early church that the early church came around and gave

 their finances to support one another and they did so together in unity what it really boils down to church is this a real really boy it boils down to who we are choosing to worship will we choose to listen to the voice of the culture and seek self pleasure and fulfillment or will we choose to worship God and honoring how he created us for

 marriage I know that for many of you this topic was a difficult one not in that was awkward to listen to but I know that for so many of you there are unfathomable

 wounds and pain surrounding these two topics and first I just I just want to say I am so sorry this is your experience this was not the way God intended it this was not part of his perfect plan but I feel inclined to

 conclude with this God is able to restore us if he is able to take our sinful souls are marred and corrupt horrible God rejecting souls and restore them back to souls and minds that want to serve and love he can restore our hearts as well I know that for many of you your marriages are frail right now I know that for many of you your

 marriages were frail before Kovan nineteen hit before this pandemic hit and now you're stuck with one another inside the same four walls for a long amounts of time and I I can only imagine that that has not made things easy but God is able to restore your marriage but Adam you have no idea you'd have no idea what I'm going through you have no

 idea the kind of person he is or she is and what they've done and all those things guess what God could say the same thing about us and our rejection of him and yet he came down to earth draped in human flesh and died for you and I despite our sin despite our our fallacies despite our shortcomings

 despite us actually murdering him on a cross humiliating him spitting on him he went to the cross for us husbands this is a call from the Lord we are to love our wives as Christ loved the church and yes that means exactly what it means we are to lay our lives down for them that we are to lay our lives down for them and serve them

 even if it kills us for wives the Bible also says that we are to submit you are to submit to your husbands as the church does to Christ and this does not mean a falling underneath or an unequal miss God loves you guys so much and he is for your

 marriages and as a church we want you to know that we are here for you if that means marriage counseling great let's do it if that means something as simple as prayer we're here we want to pray for you guys we want to love you guys we want to support you guys we are for you let's pray and let's worship together Lord we just thank you that we get to pray that we get to

 communicate with you and we get to understand that you are a God of restoration that you know our innermost hearts you know our innermost thoughts you know the things that we try to hide from everybody else in this world and and God we just we ask father for just a complete invasion of

 your Holy Spirit in our life we thank you that you are a God of restoration we thank you Lord for your word that tells us that you are able to restore the brokenhearted that you are able to give new life Lord that you are able to reroute our brains and the way

 that the culture has shaped us in and and reshaped us into your image and the way that you have originally intended us so Holy Spirit we ask father that you would begin and continue that work in our life we just thank you Lord for the wonderful gifts and blessing that you give us and we pray this in Jesus name Amen you

God bless you 

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