Men
are From God and Women Too
Genesis 1:24

Turn with me in your Bibles
to the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, beginning at verse 24, and then we’ll read
five or six verses from Chapter 2. First of all from Genesis 1:24. This is the
Word of God.

Then God said, “Let the earth
bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and
beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so.
25God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the
cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its
kind; and God saw that it was good.
26Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our
likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the
sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth.”
27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created
him; male and female He created them.
28God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the
earth.”
29Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding
seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit
yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
30and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky
and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every
green plant for food”; and it was so.
31God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And
there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

And now in Chapter 2–this
is the second creation account beginning at verse 20 reading through to the end
of the chapter.

The man gave names to all the
cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for
Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he
slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
22The LORD God [3]
fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her
to the man.
23The man 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.”
24For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and
be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
25And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Let’s pray together:

Our Father, now as we turn to Your words in this
part of our service of worship, we ask You to be our teacher. Instruct us, we
pray, and make us into Your obedient disciples, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Now tonight, as you already know, we begin a new series
of sermons about marriage and about family issues. Some of the titles are fairly
specific–and I don’t apologize for that. In the day and age in which we live,
we need to address some of those issues. You can rest assured that this evening,
however, we are going to cover some more general principles with regard to these
issues. I’m going to call this series “Men and Women After God’s Own Heart: The
Fellowship of the Ring.”

Part of the reason I want to do it is because of a
felt need within our congregation. I remember following the visit of Dr. Dan
Doriani, some months ago now, how well that was received and how it seemed to
touch on some very genuine needs within the congregation, and after some
conversation with Ligon, we thought it might be a good idea for this summer–in
the three months from now until August–that we would cover this theme. I’ve
been married for over 25 years and I’m still in need of a great need of help as
Rosemary will tell you. And she’s going to be here before my nose and before my
eyes as I preach these sermons. I said to her during the course of the week,
“Throughout this series, it’s as if on that back wall there’s a flashing neon
light that says ‘hypocrite.’” So bear with me as I try to preach on some of
these issues in the coming weeks.

I know for some of you this will not meet your
particular need. You may be single, you may be widowed, you may be in
circumstances that make this particular series perhaps a little difficult and a
little awkward for you. Some of you may be going through the trauma of divorce,
and I realize some of the sensitivities about preaching a series like this. I
want to ask from you one particular thing over these next few weeks: don’t stay
away, but will you covenant to pray that even though this series might not
directly affect you? It may well be that even if it doesn’t, it may touch upon
the hearts of the people of God in this place because what we need desperately
in this day and in this hour are families and homes where Christ is honored and
glorified. That in itself would grow this church. We are living in dangerous
times. Only this past week a Reformed minister fell in a very decisive way. You
will no doubt hear about it in the weeks to come, and it grieves us no end to
hear of this. And it’s only further evidence that Satan is at work; and he’s at
work in the area of home, and he’s at work in the area of marriages, and he’s at
work in the area of sexuality, and Satan is often gaining ground that we need to
win back for Christ and for his glory.

Tonight I want to establish some groundwork. We’re
not going to get very far tonight, but I just want to lay down some basic
parameters and basic principles. I want to ask the question–the basic question
about manhood and womanhood. I want to ask the question–What does it mean
to be a biblical man and a biblical woman of God?
Dr. John
Gray, practicing psychologist, has written a book called Men Are from Mars:
Women Are From Venus
. No, I’ve never read the book. I have no great desire
to read it, to be honest. It’s a best seller. You’ll find it in the self-help
section of bookstores–not, I hasten to add–in The Presbyterian Bookstore of
First Presbyterian Church–not unless something has happened to Douglas that I
don’t know about. It says a lot, I think, that that particular book should be so
popular because it says a great deal about the needs that exist in our society
even for help in marriage. And what the book is saying, more or less, is that a
man behaves in a certain way because he is a man, and a woman behaves in a
certain way because she is a woman. Well, that’s not rocket science, is it? But
there are so many books just like that, and since the Enlightenment, the
foundations of human relationships have been destroyed and the capital of the
Judeo-Christian tradition has all but been spent, and we need to go back and ask
ourselves the question once again–Teach me what is means to be a biblical man
and a biblical woman of God.
Now let’s see three principles from the two
chapters of Genesis.

I. The principle of co-regency.
The first is the principle of co-regency. By co-regency I mean
that Adam and Eve were created to be rulers–to be vice-gerents–to be rulers over
the creation. Come with me to Genesis, Chapter 1 and verses 26 and 27. These are
two of the most important verses in the Bible because they establish for us the
kind of creature man is. And when I say man here at this point, I mean
man generically–man as considered male and female. And man considered as male
and female, as we are told in Genesis 1:26-27, were created in the image of God
and after the likeness of God. Man is made in God’s image. In our image and
after our likeness, it says. And for the one and only time during the creation
process, we are given a glimpse into the divine mind by what immediately
follows. And what immediately follows is “And let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, and over the livestock and over
all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Whatever
it meant by image, whatever it meant by likeness, a part of what it means is to
exercise lordship and kingship and dominion over the earth. Now later of course,
after the fall, exercising that dominion over the earth will face a great deal
of opposition. Work and labor must be exercised in the face of thorns and
thistles and painful toil. Man is to bring the world to his feet exercising
authority over the world, mastering its behavior, understanding its laws that
govern all of life’s existence, and halting the spread of evil and disease in as
much as that is possible to him. But even here in Genesis one, before the fall,
before the instance of sin, man is to exercise authority over the creation. Man
considered as male and female is to exercise that authority over creation. Man
is called to bring the world in tribute to God.

Now we need to understand that in ancient time, the
only ones who ever had images built of themselves were kings. An image was
invariably set up as an image of a king. The only ones described as bearing the
image of god were kings. So you see what Moses is saying. You see what God is
saying here through Moses. My image belongs not to royalty, but it belongs to
all of My children, and it belongs to both male and female. Now let’s pause
there for a minute and reflect that as believers in Christ–for those who have
trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior–we are kings. We are royalty. I want to ask
Tim and Sarah afterwards just how royal they’ve become since living in England,
especially in this year of Jubilee, the fiftieth reign of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II. It may not mean a whole lot to you, but it means a whole lot to
people in England this very day. But you know, we are all kings; every
Christian, every believer, every man and woman in Christ is royal. You know that
wonderful hymn by Harriet Buell? Apparently she wrote it on the way home from
church. “I’m a child of the King; I’m a child of the King, with Jesus my Savior,
I’m a child of the King.” That’s what it means to bear the image of God. And
this has direct implications for the relationship that will exist between a man
and a woman in marriage. For what Genesis 1: 26 and 27 is saying, among other
things, is that man and woman equally bear the image of God.

Now we are so quick to want to ask about the
differences between men and women–men are from Mars and women are from Venus–but
the first thing we need to appreciate is the equality–the absolute, unqualified
equality or divine image bearing by both men and women. Men and women are
considered as royalty. Now do you see the implication of that for marriage? It
means, my friend, whether you are a man or a woman, that you are to treat your
spouse as royalty. You know that’s where all the trouble comes in, isn’t it?
Think of all the problems, think of all the disagreements, think of all the
rows–you don’t have rows in your marriage.

Think of all the problems that come into a biblical
marriage. I’ll guarantee, it stems because you don’t treat your spouse like
royalty. Ask him afterwards what he would do if Her Royal Highness Queen
Elizabeth were to knock on the door and say, “Can I come to church next Sunday?”
Ask him what the correct response is. You know, even if you were introduced to
the President. Suppose you were given an invitation to come to the White House
to meet President Bush. I guarantee you would be asking a thousand questions.
What am I going to wear? I can’t possibly go in this dress. What do I say? What
will I call him? What’s the decorum? What’s the proper gesture? What are the
rules? And we are to treat each other–you treat your wife as royalty–you treat
your husband as royalty–something extraordinarily precious! That’s where
the trouble starts, isn’t it? That’s where the trouble often starts, but that’s
where the solution begins too. Don’t think about yourself. Don’t think about
your needs. You treat your spouse like royalty. We’ll have to work that out over
the course of the next few weeks and months as to what exactly that means, but
the first principle is the principle of co-regency.

II. The principle of
companionship.
The second principle is the principle of companionship. We’re
going to move from the first account of creation to the second account of
creation, and the two of them are slightly different and they complement each
other. The second account gives us little details that the first account doesn’t
give. Turn to chapter 2 and especially to verses 19 and the first half of verse
20. You remember the wonderful account that’s given of the naming of the
animals. It’s a bit like Dr. Doolittle giving all of the animals their names.
What does it mean to give the animals–the birds, the fish, the creeping things,
the cattle–all of these things–to give them names? It means, in part, to
exercise authority over them. But there’s something else.

It’s telling us something about man in distinction
from the animals. Man is to rule over the rest of creation. Man has dominion
over the creatures. Now there’s a link between man and creation. Of course there
is. Man was created on the same day as some part of creation. It’s not a
surprise to learn that man genetically has very similar genetic constitution to
a chimpanzee or an ape. That shouldn’t surprise us. They were created on the
same day. But there’s a distinction. A man is to exercise that co-regency, he is
to exercise that lordship over the rest of creation.

But it’s not only telling us something about the
authority, the kinship that man is to exercise. It’s also saying that man is to
be a prophet. And by man here, I don’t mean man as we meant earlier–man in the
generic–man as male and female. Here we mean man as man. Man in distinction from
woman. Now you remember how it goes. The naming of the animals. He is to find
some word that expresses the essence of this creature’s being. I don’t know how
long it took and I don’t know how the process was. It’s amusing to try and
imagine it–chicken, bear, octopus–it’s amusing to try and even imagine. Of
course it wasn’t in English.

Well, what’s the point of the story? Look at verse
18 of chapter 2. “Then the Lord said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I
will make him a helper suitable for him.’” Now you have to understand the shock
of that negative. It is not good. All through chapter one, in the first
creation story at verses 4,12, 18, 21, 25, we read that repeating phrase, “and
it was good.” Then by the climax of verse 31, “it was very good.” And now in
chapter two, verse 18, “it was not good.” It was good, it was good, it was good,
it was very good; it was not good. And what is it that was not good? It is the
sense that Adam is alone. You know, when Adam named all these creatures
something would have come to him. You wouldn’t need to have had super
intelligence–they all came in pairs–two chickens and two bears, two cows and two
sheep and whatever. But he was alone. It was his “aloneness” that was not good.
And what the second creation account seems to be bringing out is the principle
that the creation of woman was in order to meet the need of companionship–to
meet the problem of his aloneness.

You know what a terrible thing it is to be lonely?
I’ve only really experienced it a couple of times in my life in an intense way.
When you feel displaced, when you’re away from your family, you’re away from the
circumstances that you know, and you’re in a strange environment and perhaps in
a different job with different responsibilities and you’ve not been there very
long and you just feel terribly alone. Ask a widow. I remember after a prayer
meeting probably fifteen years ago, at the door of the church on a Thursday
evening, saying to an elder of mine, Mr. Sampson, who lost his wife. A godly,
godly, saint of a man, saying to him at the door, “You’ll be going home now, Mr.
Sampson?” And he said to me, “No, it’s not home anymore; it’s just the place
where I live.” And the pain of that sentence has stayed with me for fifteen
years. He didn’t mean it to sound that painful, I don’t think. It was just a
reflex of his loneliness that he’d lost the companion of his lifetime. And
Genesis two is bringing out in this Dr. Doolittle story of naming the animals,
that there was something about man–about Adam–that was incomplete without the
creation of Eve.

There’s a very particular word that was used about
the creation of Eve, and that is that she will be a helper. In verse 18,
“I will make him a helper suitable for him.” What does the word helper
mean? Some will say, “You see this proves that women exist to help men.” And
feminists will reply, “No, it means that men need help.” And we are to
understand that helper is actually a word that God uses about Himself.
God is Israel’s helper. On at least four occasions in the Old Testament, God
says about Himself that He is Israel’s helper. One must be strong in order to
help. Have you ever tried to help your son or daughter with their math homework?
You need to know more than they do in order to help them. You need a certain
amount of ability and you need a certain amount of strength in order to be a
helper.

Two extremes need to be avoided. To correct one we
need to say that women are able to help because they are strong. And to correct
the other, we need to say women must be willing to help. You know, in God’s
world the Almighty is a helper and the Lord is a servant.
Subordination does not mean inferiority. In the gender wars so much would be
gained if we remembered that. And while the notions of authority and
subordination are undoubtedly present, it’s not the chief thing. When we read
that Eve will be Adam’s helper, she enables Adam to enjoy a relationship
together. Together they will enjoy intimacy and deep companionship and here, in
this woman, is someone to whom Adam can relate and open up to, in whose life he
will discover things about himself that he would never have known apart from
her.

The purpose for the creation of Eve was in one
sense to enable Adam to grow, and without her there would always be something
missing. You know that’s the greatest test we can apply in contemplating
marriage. Let me speak to you younger folks–or maybe you’re not younger–but
you’re just contemplating marriage. Is this someone whose companionship and
presence in my life will enable me to grow–will enable me to flourish as a
Christian in a way that I could never do on my own? That’s a great test, isn’t
it, when you’re thinking about someone to marry. Not how handsome they are; not
how pretty they look; not about how much money they’ve got in the bank; not
simply about work and vocation and stability–all of those things may well be
important in their own place–but will this person and my companionship with this
person and his or her companionship with me–will it enable me to grow? Will it
enable me to blossom as a Christian in a way that perhaps I could never do by
myself?

III. The principle of
complementarity.
If the first principle is the principle of co-regency and the
second principle is the principle of companionship, the third is the principle
of complementarity. Ligon had an alliterative sermon this morning, so I’m doing
my best to have three c’s: co-regency, companionship, and complimentarity. Now
what do I mean? And you need to turn now to 1 Corinthians 11. It’s a difficult
chapter, but it’s a chapter in which Paul picks up on the reference that Moses
makes in Genesis, chapter 1, to man and woman being created in the image of God
and after the likeness of God.

Now you need to divorce, for a minute or two, the
background of 1 Corinthians 11–it’s about hairstyles and veils or whatever–but
we’ll put all of that aside for a minute, because Paul is trying to say that
though man and woman were created in different ways, they were created for
mutual dependence upon each other. Now look at verse 3. “I want you to
understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of a
woman, and God is the head of Christ.” Now jump down to verse 7. Ignore the
context for a minute, and see what Paul goes on to say in this principle. “A man
ought not to have his head covered “(ignore that)”since–here’s the principle–he
is the image and glory of God and the woman is the glory of man.” Paul is making
an argument, but he’s basing it on this fundamental truth: that Adam was created
first and that Eve was created out of Adam. And Adam is the image and glory of
God and the woman is the glory of man.

Now, is Paul saying that the woman is not
the image of God? No, of course not! That’s not what he’s saying. What is
he saying? He’s saying that a woman enables a man to shine in a way that,
without her, he could never do so. You know, we have this expression–speaking
sometimes of our wives and sometimes we say it in jest–but there’s a sense in
which it is absolutely true. And it is, I think, the principle that Paul is
working on in 1 Corinthians 11. “She is my better half.” She makes me out
to be better than I really am. Adam is the image and glory of God, and Eve is
the glory of Adam. A woman makes a man appear better than he otherwise would be.

We see three things: 1. Treat your spouse
like royalty. Ask yourself tonight as you go home, “How am I going to do that?”
2. Husbands, treat your wives as your best friend–as your companion, as your
very best friend. 3. Men, think of your wives as your better half. And you know,
if you apply those three biblical principles to your marriage, I’m absolutely
convinced that you will grow–grow to image Christ more and more.

Let’s pray together.

© 2024 First Presbyterian Church.

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