Adam was created to be God's representative on earth and to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and every living thing that was on the earth. He named all the creatures that God had made, worked in the garden that God had provided - and enjoyed the beautiful environment that God had created. But it was not good that the man whom God had created was to live alone.. And so God made a suitable helper to share his life.. She was to be his helper. She was to be all that Adam lacked in his loneliness and together they would become one flesh and live together in loving unity.
Together they would abide in spiritual union. Together they would be joined in a perfect marriage that was overseen by God - for from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female, man and wife - to be united together, as one. The word ezer occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament. In two cases it refers to the first woman, Eve, in Genesis 2.
Three times it refers to powerful nations Israel called on for help when besieged. In the sixteen remaining cases the word refers to God as our help. He is the one who comes alongside us in our helplessness. That's the meaning of ezer. Because God is not subordinate to his creatures, any idea that an ezer -helper is inferior is untenable. In his book Man and Woman: One in Christ , Philip Payne puts it this way: "The noun used here [ ezer ] throughout the Old Testament does not suggest 'helper' as in 'servant,' but help, savior, rescuer, protector as in 'God is our help.
While many devout Christians see a woman's function as a subordinate to a man, the word ezer in the original Hebrew overturns that idea. The woman was not created to serve the man, but to serve with the man. But there are people who like to blame God and blame Christians for any problems, for in doing that they are pointing attention from themselves and their own guilt.
God said, "Dress it, keep it". And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die Gen So here is man placed in an ideal environment, under ideal conditions. Couldn't ask for it any nicer, any better, placed in this beautiful garden that God had planted, all kinds of fruit trees, all kinds of luscious fruits to eat of.
And man is given only one restriction, that tree that is in the midst of the garden, you're not to eat of it. And then as though God knew that he was going to, He said, "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Now it was really a twofold death; it was a spiritual death but it was the beginning of physical death for man.
It doesn't really seem that God's requirements were too stringent. But why would God put that tree there anyhow? Of all the trees that God planted in the garden, why would He plant that tree? Just think. Had He not planted that tree we wouldn't have all of the problems that we have in the world today. And if God knew that man was going to eat of it, why would He put it there? And surely God did know if He indeed is omniscient, which I am confident that He is.
God created man after His image and God, being self-determinate, created man also self-determinate, giving to man a free will. One of the most awesome things that you have is the power of choice. You can choose your own destiny.
You can choose whether or not you want God to have a part in your life. You can choose to obey God or disobey God. You can choose to love God or hate God. You can choose to serve God or serve your own flesh. God has given to you the capacity of choice. Now it is interesting to me wherever the Christian gospel has gone, there has been a very high respect for the power of choice, freedom, the freedom to choose.
And whenever there is a waning of the gospel in any area, what is the consequence? A slavery of man. The loss of freedoms. Look at those nations ruled by Communism today. How they have taken away the freedoms of choice and made them very restricted and very restrictive. And as we see in this country, more and more governmental controls we realize that with each new law there comes a confining of the freedom of choice.
But always where the Christian gospel has gone, it has taken with it a respect for the freedom of choice because God gave to us the freedom of choice. And we respect it as a God-given capacity. But what value would it be to have a freedom of choice if there was nothing to choose. It would be totally meaningless that God gave to me the power to choose, but I don't have anything to choose.
It's all there. It's all laid out. There is no law, there is no restriction, there is nothing; therefore, I have no choice to make, therefore my power of choice is really meaningless. So in order that the power of choice be meaningful, God had to give a choice. God had to make a restriction. In order that man's obedience to God might be meaningful, God had to give the opportunity to disobey and the choice to disobey.
The power of choice is the thing that makes man something other than a robot. God could have made us all robots with no choices, every decision coming from a superior mind that is controlling every action, every decision of my whole life and my body and everything else.
But God didn't want a bunch of robots, because you could never receive meaningful love or meaningful fellowship from a robot.
For love to be meaningful, the power of choice must be there. For obedience to be meaningful, the power of choice must be there. And so that my worship of God, my love for God might be fully meaningful to God, He gave to me the capacity of choice. I don't have to worship Him. I don't have to love Him. I can choose to do it or not to do it; that's my choice. But when I choose to love God, then my love for God becomes meaningful unto God because it's a choice.
I'm not a robot, I'm not just responding in a preset condition that God has built into my mental apparatus where He pushes a button in heaven and there are certain little flashes that go across my brain and my body responds automatically to these impulses from God and I say, "I love You, God". It doesn't turn anybody on. God wants our love to be meaningful. He gave us power of choice, but then He had to give us something to choose.
But in order that the power of choice be meaningful, not only must there be something to choose but then God must respect the choice that I make. In other words, He can't force me to choose. It isn't an arm-twisting God that has you in a hammer hold and says, "Say, Praise the Lord! Say, Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! So He respects the choice that I make.
If I make a choice and oh no, you can't do that, than what's the value of having a choice? So God has given me the free will, the power to exercise that free will and then He respects the choices that I have made. Woo, that's awesome! For that means that I have the capacity to choose my own destiny, to be with God or not to be with God.
And when I make my choice, God respects the choice that I make. And if I choose not to be with God, He honors that choice. Now this is why it is so ridiculous to say, well, how can a God of love send a man to hell?
He doesn't. He never did, He never will. Man goes there by his own choice, which God respects and honors. If you choose to go to hell, God will respect your choice; otherwise, giving you the power of choice would be meaningless. And then so it's very awesome to realize that capacity of God, that God-like capacity that I have of choosing, choosing my destiny. Now God calls upon us to make a choice and God does seek to influence our choices.
But when you come to the bottom line, the choice is yours. Satan is also seeking to influence your choice. But the bottom line is that neither God nor Satan makes the choice for you. You make the choice for yourself. Every man is responsible for his own destiny.
God has created us that way. And so He placed the tree. He gave the warning. And then He left man for his own choice. Now that is God's recognition of man's basic incompleteness by himself. God when He looked at man said, It is not good that man should be alone Gen ;.
Man is incomplete by himself. God said, I will make a help meet for him. Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and he brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof Gen Now imagine that.
What a mind God must have given to Adam. As He brought to Adam all of the animals and everything and he said, "That's cow, that's a horse, that's a dog, that's a cat". And he named all of the animals, and all of the birds; but in all of the animal kingdom there wasn't found [a companion or] a help meet for Adam. Now just, He opened up his side and He took—and a rib is not probably quite correct here. There is another Hebrew word for rib and just what this particular Hebrew word means is ambiguous.
We can't be sure, but God took something out of Adam, perhaps even a blood transfusion or maybe a cell, maybe God cloned him. Who knows? Interesting concept this cloning bit, realizing that the cell is far more complex than we originally thought, that there is the design pattern for the whole body in just a cell in your arm. So where this particular passage used to create a lot of problems to some of the problemed people, all of a sudden it looks like something out of science fiction that man has just about come to the place where we can clone, they think.
And they're talking a lot today, in fact there is quite an interesting book that's created quite a controversy on cloning. When God took out of Adam's side, and we'll say ribs just because we don't know what it is.
Now as I said, this has caused a lot of problems. People say, well, they don't believe the Bible can be the Word of God because man has the same number of ribs that a woman has.
Well, that sure isn't very logical thinking by the person who presents that kind of an argument; is it? Because say if you lost your arm in an accident, it doesn't mean your child is going to be born without an arm; does it? Or you've chopped a finger off, it doesn't mean if you have a little boy he's going to be missing his index finger.
So if God took a rib out of Adam, it wouldn't mean that his child would be minus that rib. You'd have to go find Adam's skeleton someplace to see if there was a missing rib. You couldn't, you know, look at man today and say, well man has the same number and all because that would not follow. We know better than that. But there is that deep intimate relationship between man and woman. So deep that, Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: and she shall be called ishshah, because she was taken out of iysh.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed Gen So now we have God establishing the basic relationship between a man and a woman in marriage. The two become one. The deepest, the most intimate bond, the two becoming one in marriage. The man cleaving to his wife.
This is basic, this is the beginning of things, this is how God started it, this is how God intended it to be. Now man had difficulty living up to God's plan and to God's intentions.
When Jesus came, He sought to bring man to God's basic design and purpose; and thus, Jesus was teaching the sacredness of the marriage vows and the endurance of the marriage vows. And the Pharisees, recognizing now a difference between what Jesus was saying and what the law of Moses said, were seeking to trap Jesus, showing that He was teaching other than the law of Moses.
And so they said to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause? Oh ho ho, trap is shut. We caught You! You're saying something contrary to Moses' law. We know that God gave the law to Moses. There's no question about that. We've trapped You. We've caught You. You're contrary to Moses' law. What did Jesus do? He went back and antedated Moses' law.
Jesus said, "In the beginning it wasn't so. For in the beginning, God made them male and female, and for this cause shall a man leave his mother and father and shall cleave to his wife and they two become one flesh.
And it was because of the hardness of your hearts that Moses said, Let him give her a writing of divorcement". Because man's heart was hard and would not come to God's divine ideal, the law of divorce was established but that was never God's original plan. In the beginning it was not so. We've come back now to the beginning, that which Jesus came back to, the basic purposes of God in marriage. That once for life, a man leaving his mother and father cleaving to his wife and the two of them becoming one flesh.
And because of the hardness of man's hearts, his inability to obtain or to obey God's best, we look at our society and our world today and we see the multitude of problems that have arisen out of the hardness of our hearts, leaving the basic beginning purposes of God in marriage.
There's something wrong today with our whole concept of love. I get so tired of hearing a husband or a wife say, "Well I never really loved them. I don't think I loved them. I don't think I ever loved them". Listen, if you don't love, don't get married. Where is your head? What are you thinking about? That's a terrible thing to say to your mate, "Well, I don't think I ever really loved you".
It's tragic. So there is—there's a basic problem in our whole dating system. And one of the basic problems of the whole dating system is the couples are getting deeply involved physically without even knowing each other emotionally. That is, in the true deep sense, the relationship is predicated too much upon the physical aspects and there's not enough just getting acquainted and knowing.
You see, one of the characteristics of true love is that it is patient and it will wait for that God-ordained time. And any guy that tries to hustle you along into bed before you're married doesn't really love you with the kind of love that you want your husband to love you.
Get rid of him. That's the whole problem, you see. Couples are getting married without really knowing each other or without really loving each other because too much emphasis has been on the physical aspects which is not true love. True love will wait. Beautiful openness in marriage, there should be. They were both naked, they weren't ashamed. They shouldn't be.
The two are one flesh. Man should normally live in community even as God does. For companionship to be satisfying, however, there must be oneness in the marriage cf. Genesis Self-centered living destroys oneness and companionship. The term "helper" does not mean a servant. It means one who supports us in our task of doing the will of God cf. Deuteronomy ; Psalms ; Psalms ; Psalms ; Hosea It is not a demeaning term since Scripture often uses it to describe God Himself e.
The man is created first, with the woman to help the man, not vice versa see also 1 Timothy ; however, this does not mean ontological superiority or inferiority. Genesis was also true of Eve. They both had the same nature. The ancient Near Eastern texts contain no account of the creation of woman.
Moses, however, devoted six verses to her formation compared to only one for Adam Genesis And the Lord God said , Not at the same time he gave the above direction and instruction to man, how to behave according to his will, but before that, even at the time of the formation of Adam and which he said either to him, or with himself: it was a purpose or determination in his own mind, and may be rendered, as it is by many, he "had said" b, on the sixth day, on which man was created,.
I will made him an help meet for him ; one to help him in all the affairs of life, not only for the propagation of his species, but to provide things useful and comfortable for him; to dress his food, and take care of the affairs of the family; one "like himself" c, in nature, temper, and disposition, in form and shape; or one "as before him" d, that would be pleasing to his sight, and with whom he might delightfully converse, and be in all respects agreeable to him, and entirely answerable to his case and circumstances, his wants and wishes.
Here we have, I. An instance of the Creator's care of man and his fatherly concern for his comfort, Genesis ; Genesis Though God had let him know that he was a subject, by giving him a command, Genesis ; Genesis , yet here he lets him know also, for his encouragement in his obedience, that he was a friend, and a favourite, and one whose satisfaction he was tender of.
How God graciously pitied his solitude: It is not good that man, this man, should be alone. Though there was an upper world of angels and a lower world of brutes, and he between them, yet there being none of the same nature and rank of beings with himself, none that he could converse familiarly with, he might be truly said to be alone.
Now he that made him knew both him and what was good for him, better than he did himself, and he said, "It is not good that he should continue thus alone. It is not for his comfort; for man is a sociable creature. It is a pleasure to him to exchange knowledge and affection with those of his own kind, to inform and to be informed, to love and to be beloved.
What God here says of the first man Solomon says of all men Ecclesiastes ; Ecclesiastes , c. If there were but one man in the world, what a melancholy man must he needs be! Perfect solitude would turn a paradise into a desert, and a palace into a dungeon. Those therefore are foolish who are selfish and would be place alone in the earth.
It is not for the increase and continuance of his kind. God could have made a world of men at first, to replenish the earth, as he replenished heaven with a world of angels: but the place would have been too strait for the designed number of men to live together at once therefore God saw fit to make up that number by a succession of generations, which, as God had formed man, must be from two, and those male and female; one will be ever one.
How God graciously resolved to provide society for him. The result of this reasoning concerning him was this kind resolution, I will make a help-meet for him; a help like him so some read it , one of the same nature and the same rank of beings; a help near him so others , one to cohabit with him, and to be always at hand; a help before him so others , one that he should look upon with pleasure and delight.
Note hence, 1. In our best state in this world we have need of one another's help; for we are members one of another, and the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, 1 Corinthians We must therefore be glad to receive help from others, and give help to others, as there is occasion. It is God only who perfectly knows our wants, and is perfectly able to supply them all, Philippians In him alone our help is, and from him are all our helpers.
A suitable wife is a help-meet, and is from the Lord. The relation is then likely to be comfortable when meetness directs and determines the choice, and mutual helpfulness is the constant care and endeavour, 1 Corinthians ; 1 Corinthians Family-society, if it is agreeable, is a redress sufficient for the grievance of solitude.
He that has a good God, a good heart, and a good wife, to converse with, and yet complains he wants conversation, would not have been easy and content in paradise; for Adam himself had no more: yet, even before Eve was created, we do not find that he complained of being alone, knowing that he was not alone, for the Father was with him.
Those that are most satisfied in God and his favour are in the best way, and in the best frame, to receive the good things of this life, and shall be sure of them, as far as Infinite Wisdom sees good.
An instance of the creatures' subjection to man, and his dominion over them Genesis ; Genesis : Every beast of the field and every fowl of the air God brought to Adam, either by the ministry of angels, or by a special instinct, directing them to come to man as their master, teaching the ox betimes to know his owner.
Thus God gave man livery and seisin of the fair estate he had granted him, and put him in possession of his dominion over the creatures. God brought them to him, that he might name them, and so might give, 1. A proof of his knowledge, as a creature endued with the faculties both of reason and speech, and so taught more than the beasts of the earth and made wiser than the fowls of heaven, Job And, 2.
A proof of his power. It is an act of authority to impose names Daniel , and of subjection to receive them. The inferior creatures did now, as it were, do homage to their prince at his inauguration, and swear fealty and allegiance to him.
If Adam had continued faithful to his God, we may suppose the creatures themselves would so well have known and remembered the names Adam now gave them as to have come at his call, at any time, and answered to their names. God gave names to the day and night, to the firmament, to the earth, and to the sea; and he calleth the stars by their names, to show that he is the supreme Lord of these. But he gave Adam leave to name the beasts and fowls, as their subordinate lord; for, having made him in his own image, he thus put some of his honour upon him.
An instance of the creatures' insufficiency to be a happiness for man: But among them all for Adam there was not found a help meet for him. Some make these to be the words of Adam himself; observing all the creatures come to him by couples to be named, he thus intimates his desire to his Maker"Lord, these have all helps meet for them; but what shall I do?
Here is never a one for me. He brought them all together, to see if there were ever a suitable match for Adam in any of the numerous families of the inferior creatures; but there was none. Observe here, 1. The dignity and excellency of the human nature. On earth there was not its like, nor its peer to be found among all visible creatures; they were all looked over, but it could not be matched among them all.
The vanity of this world and the things of it; put them all together, and they will not make a help-meet for man. They will not suit the nature of his soul, nor supply its needs, nor satisfy its just desires, nor run parallel with its never-failing duration.
God creates a new thing to be a help-meet for man--not so much the woman as the seed of the woman. There is one characteristic of divine revelation to which attention may be profitably called as a starting point.
We have to do with facts. The Bible alone is a revelation of facts, and, we can add not from the Old Testament, but from the New , of a person. This is of immense importance. In all pretended revelations it is not so. They give you notions ideas; they can furnish nothing better, and very often nothing worse.
But they cannot produce facts, for they have none. They may indulge in speculations of the mind, or visions of the imagination a substitute for what is real, and a cheat of the enemy. God, and God alone, can communicate the truth. Thus it is that whether it be the Old Testament or New, one half speaking now in a general way consists of history. Undoubtedly there is teaching of the Spirit of God founded on the facts of revelation. In the New Testament these unfoldings have the profoundest character, but everywhere they are divine; for there is no difference, whether it be the Old or the New, in the absolutely divine character of the written word.
But still it is well to take note that we have thus a grand basis of things as they really are a divine communication to us of facts of the utmost moment, and, at the same time, of the deepest interest to the children of God. In this too God's own glory is brought before us, and so much the more because there is not the smallest effort.
The simple statement of the facts is that which is worthy of God. Take, for instance, the way in which the book of Genesis opens. The highest, the holiest, the only suitable way, once it is laid before us, evidently is what God Himself has employed in His word.
You cannot, as a rule, anticipate facts; you cannot discern the truth beforehand. You may form opinions; but for the truth, and even for such facts as the world's history before man had an existence in it facts as to which there can be no testimony from the creature on the earth, we find the need of His word who knew and wrought all from the beginning.
But God does communicate in such a way as at once meets the heart, and mind, and conscience. Man feels that this is exactly what is appropriate to God. So here God states the great truth of creation; for what is more important, short of redemption, always excepting the manifestation of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Creation and redemption bear witness to His glory, instead of communicating aught of His own dignity. But short of Christ's person and work, there is nothing more characteristic of God than creation.
And in the manner in which creation is here presented what unspeakable grandeur! How suited to the true God, who perfectly knew the truth and would make it known to man!
I warn every person solemnly against a notion found in both ancient and modern times, that there was in the beginning a quantity of what may be called crude matter for God to work on. Another notion still more general, and only less gross, though certainly not so serious in what it involves, is that God created matter in the beginning according to verse 2, in a state of confusion or "chaos," as men say.
But this is not the meaning of verses 1 and 2. I have no hesitation in saying that it is a mistaken interpretation, however prevalent. Nor indeed is such dealing according to the revealed nature of God.
Where is anything like it in all the known ways of God? That either matter existed crude or God created it in disorder has not, I believe, the smallest foundation in the word of God.
What scripture gives here or elsewhere seems to me altogether at variance with such a thought. The introductory declarations of Genesis are altogether in unison with the glory of God Himself, and with His character; more than that, they are in perfect harmony with itself.
There is no statement, from beginning to end of scripture, as far as I am aware, which in the smallest degree modifies or takes away from the force of the words with which the Bible opens "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Some have found a difficulty which I simply touch on in passing from the conjunction with which verse 2 commences.
They have conceived that, coupling the second verse with the first, it suggests the notion that when God created the earth it was in the state described in the second verse. Now not only is it not too strong to deny that there is the least ground for such an inference, but one may go farther and affirm that the simplest and surest means of guarding against it, according to the style of the writer, and indeed propriety of language, was afforded by here inserting the word "and.
But, as it is, scripture means nothing of the sort. We have first the great announcement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. There is next the associated fact of an utter desolation which befell not the heavens, but the earth. The insertion of the substantive verb, as has been remarked, expresses no doubt a condition past as compared with what follows, but pointedly not said to be contemporaneous with what preceded, as would have been implied in its omission; but what interval lay between, or why such a desolation ensued, is not stated.
For God passes rapidly over the early account and history of the globe I might almost say, hastening to that condition of the earth in which it was to be made the habitation of mankind; whereon also God was to display His moral dealings, and finally His own Son, with the fruitful consequences of that stupendous event, whether in rejection or in redemption. Had the copulative not been here, the first verse might have been regarded as a kind of summary of the chapter.
Its insertion forbids the thought, and to speak plainly, convicts those who so understand it either of ignorance, or at the least of inattention. Not only the Hebrew idiom forbids it, but our own, and no doubt every other language.
The first verse is not a summary. When a compendious statement of what follows is intended, the "and" is never put. This you can, if you will, verify in various occasions where scripture furnishes examples of the summary; as, for instance, in the beginning of Genesis , "This is the book of the generations of Adam.
But there is no word coupling the introductory statement of verse 1 with what follows. In the day that God created man. For a summary gives in a few words that which is opened out afterwards; whereas the conjunction "and" introduced in the second verse excludes necessarily all notion of a summary here. It is another statement added to what had just preceded, and by the Hebrew idiom not connected with it in time.
First of all there was the creation by God both of the heavens and of the earth. Then we have the further fact stated of the state into which the earth was plunged to which it was reduced. Why this was, how it was, God has not here explained. It was not necessary nor wise to reveal it by Moses. If man can discover such facts by other means, be it so. They have no small interest; but men are apt to be hasty and short-sighted.
I advise none to embark too confidently in the pursuit of such studies. Those who enter on them had better be cautious, and well weigh alleged facts, and above all their own conclusions, or those of other men. But the perfectness of scripture is, I am bold to say, unimpeachable. The truth affirmed by Moses remains in all its majesty and simplicity withal. In the beginning God created everything the heavens and the earth.
Then the earth is described as void and waste, and not as succeeding, but accompanying it darkness upon the face of the deep, contemporaneously with which the Spirit of God broods upon the face of the waters.
All this is an added account. The real and only force of the "and" is another fact; not at all as if it implied that the first and second verses spoke of the same time, any more than they decide the question of the length of the interval. The phraseology employed perfectly agrees with and confirms the analogy of revelation, that the first verse speaks of an original condition which God was pleased to bring into being; the second, of a desolation afterwards brought in; but how long the first lasted what changes may have intervened, when or by what means the ruin came to pass, is not the subject-matter of the inspired record, but open to the ways and means of human research, if indeed man has sufficient facts on which to ground a sure conclusion.
It is false that scripture does not leave room for his investigation.
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