Trinity Church Spokane Valley
Genesis 2:18-22 - Brian Sayers
Thanks, Paul. Yeah, good to see old friends. Meet some new ones. For many of you, you'll recognize me. I was here just a couple of months ago doing some stuff on men's and women's roles with two separate groups. And Paul thought it would be good for me to kind of expand on that a little bit and say some of the things that we said with all of you here together so that the couples that are married can look at each other while I'm saying it. Maybe be given elbow where appropriate. Don't do that. That's actually a joke. But yeah, so that's what we're going to try to do. And I suspect you guys stand for the reading of Scripture. So stand with me. I'm going to read from Genesis 2 18 through 25. And my hope and aim is to help you think about this text very practically this morning. A little bit of theology and a lot of bit of practicality. Genesis 2 beginning in verse 18. "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature that was its name. 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. So 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. The Lord God fashioned into the woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The 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. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This is the word of the Lord. God help us this morning to understand and more importantly put your truth into practice in our lives in whatever way appropriate in our very unique marriages and even in our singleness. God help us see the truth of your word that it might be lived to the glory of your name. Amen. You may be seated. This passage as you know you've been in Genesis. This is the beginnings of marriage. Genesis is the book of beginnings, the beginnings of everything and this is the beginning of the divine institution of marriage. Not considered in our world so much anymore to be divine but marriage is a divine institution properly understood. It was designed by God. It is defined by God and only God can properly make the rules, set the guidelines regarding marriage. Anything else that's happening in our culture is just another example of why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman. If anything is clear in Genesis that's what we see and I believe the Lord sits in the heavens and laughs in a sense at the oxymoron that our world has created by trying, trying to thwart his divine design and plan for the ages. But I'm not going to throw too many grenades this morning. Paul has asked me to teach on this divine design for marriage and so I don't really want to spend time addressing the misrepresentations of it except to the extent that we need to recognize what the world is trying to lead us astray. It tries to lead us astray in many, many ways and actually the ones that we're most susceptible to are far more subtle than just redefining marriage, aren't they? I think Satan would rather just corrupt it a little bit for us even as he's trying to destroy it for the culture. Anything called marriage, anything that we might refer to as a marital relational union that are anything more or anything less or anything different than what we see described here is a corruption of what God has designed. In those broken versions, the broken versions of marriage, the corrupt ones, even the ones that are just subtly and slightly corrupted by sin, they can never produce the kind of joy and happiness and fulfillment and pleasure that God has designed marriage to be for those who know him, who understand his design, who strive to follow his design for it. In the summer of 2014, I may have told this story before, but a friend of mine was preaching at a local church in New England. He had three people approach him after the church service, a man and two women. One of the women was pregnant, the man introduced the other woman as his fiancé and the pregnant woman as his fiancé's best friend who was having his baby. That was how he introduced the group, something to that effect. I'm not sure the words that he used. Apparently, this fiancé's best friend wanted to have a baby and she's like, "You know, my boyfriend is really cool. I think he would make a great dad. You should have his baby." That was the idea they came up with. That was where they found themselves. As you might expect, there was tension in the household. They weren't really getting along. In the midst of their relational difficulties, they were driving down the road one day and they see one of those placards, not unlike the one out front here. They were like, "Hey, I heard they help people at churches. We should go over there and see if they can help us with our relational problems." Having never gone to church in their entire lives, they wander into a church in New England and walk up to the pastor and begin to tell the story. He says to them, "That's an interesting story. This is a unique arrangement. I've never seen this before. Maybe you've never heard this before." He says to them, "But the Bible says that God designed relationships and marriage and even parenting and the family to function a certain way. When we follow the design and the function that the creator of people and the creator of the hearts of man has designed, these things work better." He's a little pragmatic in that, but he said, "If you'd be interested in sitting down with me and reading in the Bible how God designed marriage and families and relationships to work, I'd be happy to spend some time with you and see if I could help." They did. They scheduled an appointment and I don't know the end of the story because I moved two weeks later. I'm sure it sounds odd to most of us that people would be so far off in their thinking about how marriage and family should work, but that is the trend today. There's going to be more and more of this kind of confusion and this kind of dysfunction. It's becoming somewhat in an age of open relationships and sometimes intentional, unwed parenting. It's becoming more and more common. It's been a few years now, but in the issue of Christianity today, just a few years ago, there was an article about polyamory. That's multiple love partners. That's what that word is intended to communicate. I think the Bible refers to it as fornication, but they're writing an article about polyamory, multiple intimate partners. They reported that one survey said 70% of non-religious Americans between the ages of 24 and 35 believe there is nothing wrong with polyamory. 70% of non-religious. Takeout Christians of all shapes and sizes. Takeout Jews and takeout Muslims. 70% of people between 24 and 35 think having multiple intimate partners is not a problem. This is the world of confusion and dysfunction that we're living in, where God's standards aren't known, they're redefined or perhaps rebelled against. What we want to be as the people of God is the people who put on display the manifold wisdom of God and the beauty of marriage and the blessing that it is designed to be. It's important, so important that we go back to the book. This wise and kind expression of God's will for mankind. We take a look at what the beginnings of marriage teaches us about understanding and pursuing married life in a way that pleases God. If you take notes, if you like to take notes, we're going to look at four pursuits of a God-honoring marriage out of this text, four necessary pursuits of a God-honoring marriage. The first one is couples must cultivate companionship. Couples must cultivate companionship. Look at verse 18 where we're told exactly what sad condition marriage was given to resolve. The Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone. I'll make him a helper suitable for him. Marriage was established to solve Adam's problem of being alone and I'm going to clarify that I don't think alone necessarily means that marriage was designed by God to solve loneliness. There are many reasons why two are better than one. There are many reasons why being alone for Adam was going to be a problem in the long term. So while I'm using the word companionship here, I'm not restricting that concept to relational intimacy as you'll see. Here we see God's commentary that Adam was though alone and that condition is the only thing about God's creation that he said was not good. Everything in creation was good, good, good. And then after he creates Eve, it's very good. But in between those two moments, God saw something that was not good. It was not good for Adam to be alone. And so let's start with the first and most obvious point. Adam had been given some responsibilities by God, the creation mandate back in chapter one, verse 27 and 28, part of that creation mandate, he could certainly not fulfill on his own the be fruitful and multiply part, right? Fill the earth. Adam definitely bad that he's alone if that's part of the responsibility that God is giving him. That's not the only reason though. I believe there was also an element of relational companionship that was needed that God had designed for the human race. If we're going to properly reflect the relational nature of the Trinitarian God in whose image we have been created, it's also not good that Adam was alone. But also as you read this creation mandate, this commission given by God in verses 27 to 28 chapter one, the text says that in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them, plural, and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and to them, subdue it. And to them, rule over the fish, the sea and the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth, fruitful, filling and subduing and ruling over the earth is something that God gave Adam and Eve the task to do together, together in partnership, in companionship with one another. And knowing those responsibilities were about to commence, God knew that Adam couldn't fulfill those responsibilities fully on his own. And so he says it is not good that Adam's alone. Adam can't do everything that God's calling him to do. He can't do it fully. He can't do it completely. He can't do it as well as God would want him to. And we'll see what Eve's helping accomplishes for him in a moment. So there's at least three reasons that it was not good that Adam was alone. The responsibilities he was given, the relationship that he was to have, and of course, the filling the earth part, the reproduction, there's your sermonic alliteration, responsibilities, relationship, reproduction. I probably borrowed that. I don't remember from where. I think this is a beautiful picture one. It's one that shows us that marriage is designed to be a total sharing of life together with another person. And that sharing is to be a joyful one. It is certainly designed to be a joyful one. And prior to the fall, we have all the confidence in the world that it was a joyful experience for Adam and Eve. This is another way God has allowed us to express our relational nature, to reflect his divine nature, and to find companionship in the work that he's given us to do. Adam got a companion and a co-laborer. And I think it's important that we think about it that way. There have been definitions of marriage. The most familiar, calling it a covenant of companionship. And sometimes the definitions, I think, so emphasize the relational part of marriage, that it sometimes overshadows other aspects of marriage, or what it means to be a Christian first and a married person second, or it might imply that. Jesus, of course, history's most famous single person, did not need marriage to image the relational nature of God. So don't get me wrong. I'm not taking it too far. Jesus doesn't need other people to complete the work that the Father gave him to do. But notice, even in the coming kingdom, Jesus, we will reign with him. The bride of Christ will be with him. We'll have responsibilities that will do under him and for him. So God, in his grace, has given a gift to mankind, a gift of intimacy and marriage, to be a co-laborer in our mission. And he's given it in such a way that it results in a oneness and a relational intimacy that is so profound that it's adequate enough to picture the spiritual union of Christ and his people, Paul says, in Ephesians 5. So some have overemphasized the relational companionship, and it's also true that some evangelicalism have perhaps under emphasized the co-laboring of under emphasized the co-laboring of marriage. In fact, in a group this size, I would guess perhaps some of you might even be considering for the first time that Adam's headship and Eve's role as a helper suitable, you may be considering for the first time that those dynamics were to be lived out in order to accomplish and to be lived out in a way that would fulfill a mission that they had an equal responsibility to carry out. Like, headship and helper is not a subservient role. I was, Michelle likes to listen to the Joyful Journey podcast, a podcast put out my faith search Lafayette. We're driving to the West Side one day, and I got to listen to lady podcasts all the way. And I don't mind it, because it's a great podcast, actually. And I'll never forget, I can't remember the gal's name, the older lady, what's her name? Oh, I can't remember. But she's like, helper, helper doesn't mean he's the scientist, and I'm the one in the lab that has to clean the beakers. And I was like, you know, I've met people, and that's exactly what they think. They hear headship, and they hear helper, and they think something like that. No, no. God said to them, rule the earth, subdue the earth, exercise dominion over the earth. It's a joint responsibility. So let's ask a couple of practical questions as we're thinking through this relational intimacy and the mutuality of marriage and how we're to be thinking of one another. Married couples, do you, do you prize the value and privilege you have of enjoying that relational intimacy? And I'm not even thinking about the sexual relationship. We'll have a little bit to say about that at the end. Though that is an intimate part of marriage, certainly something God's given us to enjoy and pursue. But just you and them, him and her, the intimacy, the fact that you are designed by God to be the most intimate of partners. And it may sound trite. Do you know the color of your wife's eyes? And I mean, is it Carolina blue or is it Sapphire blue? Do you still look into her eyes? Ladies, do you, do you know what your husband's favorite meal is? Or favorite flavor to throw into something? And do you delight in giving that? Can I suggest married couples just make a simple goal of learning something new about your spouse every week, of being engaged in them relationally and conversationally enough to be asking questions enough that you continue learning and delighting in your spouse? I did a marriage retreat for a church down in Pullman a few years ago. And one of the things that they did was they had a newly wed game at their marriage retreat. So they had one newlywed couple and then another couple that had been married like five years. And then they had Michelle and I had been married like 30 years. And then the pastor and his wife, uh oh, they lost. We were second. You know who won? The couple that had only been married less than a year. And you know, I've reflected on that sense. And I think it's because they were still on that stage where they were just so excited to be talking to each other and learning new things and engaged with one another. They hadn't gotten into boring rhythms and they hadn't experienced enough frustrations yet to turn a blind eye to that beautiful bride, to that handsome man. They were still totally engaged and they nailed it, actually. So wouldn't it be great if those of you like us were a couple weeks away from 35 if if we still made googly eyes at our spouse? If we still delighted in learning new things and found our greatest pleasure in pleasing them and serving them, sacrificing for them. How about your work? Do you think about your vocations and your calling, uh, either outside the home, inside the home, whatever your God given responsibilities are? Do you think about even that as things that that aren't just yours and his or hers, but things that you own and pursue together? Whether it's your family, whether it's your vocation, whether it's your ministry at church, are those things that you own and pursue together? There should be thoughtful and intentional pursuit and cooperation together toward the same things. And families, as God blesses us, for those of you who can and have had children, families and parenting are an obvious partnership that couples should be engaged in, but even thoughtful and intentional, thankful and conscious appreciation and effort toward just cooperating in life. I remember in the early days of ministry, I would tell Michelle when my schedule would get busy in ways that were outside my control, I'd say as I become busy, I need you to be not so busy because we need to partner together in everything that's going on. And it's, for me, it's work in ministry, right? But then I need to be confident that things at home and children and whatnot, that's being covered and she did it so well. But if we had both busied our life at the same time, it would have been potentially disastrous. Knowing all the responsibilities that were coming for Adam and Eve, but particularly for Adam, God knew he couldn't fulfill those responsibilities fully, completely alone. And so he gives him this helper. There's a place for leadership and headship, we're going to get to that the next point. Submission is part of a biblical marriage, but even that I think is often misunderstood and misapplied. And you've all heard me talk about that a little bit. Now, there's some other thoughts I have for the singles because there's plenty of you here. Single adults, do you, even as you read a text like this, do you appreciate that you can reflect the relational image of God even in your singleness in the way that you relate to others, just like Jesus did, right? He reflected the relational image of God even though he was single. Are you thankful that you can focus on what God has called you to be and do now with undistracted devotion to Christ, not having the concern, as Paul calls it, the legitimate concern of having to please a spouse. I mean, while all this relational and co-laboring parts of marriage are to be fulfilled and enjoyed by those who have them, they're by no means necessary for you to be a joyful, fulfilled, productive servant of Christ and his kingdom. Don't lose sight of that. Continue to have a thankful heart for that as you pursue it. But for those of you who are married, here's what we see in Genesis 2, cultivate companionship with that spouse that God has given you. You can't fulfill God's purpose for your marriage if you're not. Look at verse 24, "They shall become one flesh." They shall become one flesh. The manner in which God took Eve, like took the rib out of Adam and fashioned Eve out of that rib and forming it into her is forever a picture, isn't it, of how intimate the marriage relationship is intended to be? The one flesh statement at the end of this section, I don't think it's primarily about physical intimacy or even about the reproductive responsibility for Adam and Eve. I think being one flesh is about being one in heart, one in spirit, one in thought, one in mind, one in purpose. You become one joined unit to be living life in partnership to the glory of God, which is both the labor that we do, but it's also the friendship that we have, the companionship that we know, helping to shape one another's passions and longings and desires and even fueling them, as we'll see here in a little bit. I like the way Wayne Mack puts it, marriage is a total commitment and a total sharing of the total person with another until death. That's his definition of marriage and his strengthening your marriage book. So being one flesh means all of these things, sharing your bodies, your possessions, your ideas, your feelings, your abilities, your gifts, your successes, your failures, your joys and your sufferings. Do you hear the wedding vows in that? For richer, for poorer, for sickness and health, for better, for worse, our delights, desires, goals. I would love to unpack all those. Go back through the wedding vows and ask yourself, how am I, as a loving spouse, living life for the glory of God, pursuing those things, experiencing and pursuing and appreciating the better, for worse, richer, for poorer, sickness and health? I think it's vital that we think intentionally about it in that way. Cultivate companionship. Number two, a second necessary pursuit of a God-honoring marriage. The second half of verse 18, wives must complement their husband's service to God, right? He made for Adam a helper suitable for him. That's the first and most basic statement in scripture that there is a functional order within the marriage relationship. In other words, while both man and woman are created in the image and likeness of God, while they equally share in the responsibility to rule over and subdue the earth, there is this functional order of husbands exercising godly headship and wives joyously helping their husbands in the task. What does this particular phrase mean? I'll make him a helper suitable. You'll notice how I've worded the wife's responsibility. Wise must complement their husband's service to God. That's complement with an E, not complement with an I. It's not saying good job, honey, or you look really handsome in that cowboy hat hat. It's complement as in two things making the individual parts better because they're together. That's it. Her together with him make the whole relationship and the responsibilities better. God said man needed a helper. Someone to help get the job done. One that would be that perfect complement, completer, and fulfilling all of those responsibilities. When we see the word helper again, we might have a tendency to think about as a beaker cleaner. Let's not let ourselves do that anymore. It's not the person who has to do the dirty work. And that's not the idea wrapped up in this Hebrew term, which I'm sure you've been taught. No one is referred to as the helper more in Scripture using this very same term than God. Psalm 30, "Here, O Lord, it be gracious to me, O Lord, be my helper." Psalm 54, "Behold, God is my helper. The Lord is the sustainer of my soul." Job refers to himself as a helper of the poor in Job 29, 12. There's nothing demeaning about the term. God is called a helper of the poor and the oppressed and the widow and the orphan. Helper in the biblical sense is someone who comes alongside someone who is needy or inadequate by themselves and provides what they need. And woman Eve is the helper that corresponds to Adam that was suitable for his need. Man alone was inadequate to reproduce, but I think needed the help and co-laboring to rule over the earth as well. And God provided that through Eve. And that divine provision was part of God's design for marriage. It continues to this day. Every single one of you men here who are married have been given someone to help make up for your needs and inadequacies. And I hope you see her that way. And if you don't think you have any inadequacies, ask her what they are and listen. Because they're there, we all have them. Within the relationship of marriage with God's design, there's still a functional difference. There's still husband being the head, the leader and wife being the helper, the compliment that provides what's needed. And we're going to talk about that in the next point. But here the idea is that we're working together to accomplish God's purposes. Standing before God, identical. Privileges and abilities to relate to God, to serve God, identical. But we partner together. And I believe the equality of image-bearing and the partnership of our joint responsibilities has kind of been overshadowed, sometimes minimized and ignored. And that's likely, I think, in the history of evangelicalism, it's likely a natural swing of the pendulum where we're reacting, maybe overreacting to that cultural feminism that has kind of dominated our society for 50 years. And we so don't want to be associated with that that we swing the pendulum a little bit too far. When I can't take too much time to clarify how the roles find their ground and creation and the details, even of this text, you can read Paul's explanation of headship in 1 Corinthians 11 if you want some homework. I love to give homework. So 1 Corinthians 11 would be your homework. I have a sermon on that too, which you can find at fbchurch.org. What's highlighted here is not submission in Genesis. You don't actually see that word at all. What's highlighted is the equality of essence and the partnership of calling in the sight of God. That partnership is reflected in what is a clear delineation of roles, the husband leading and the woman being the necessary and suitable helper. And that's why I've worded this as wives compliment your husband's service to God. Again, however, the relationship as God describes and defines it here, makes it clear that whatever is meant by headship and submission, it has nothing to do with a person's essence or ability. I think submission is often discussed too much and that godly leadership is discussed too little in the church. And I mean godly leadership in the home. Every good definition of submission that I've ever seen includes the word willing. Biblical submission is a willing deference to leadership. That's the idea. It always has the willing underneath it. And that's because if a person isn't willingly bringing themselves under someone's leadership, that means the leadership is being exercised against their will. What does God call that? Something else, subjugation or maybe oppression, dictatorship. That's not biblical leadership. So as soon as that happens, something is a skew. Remember, that's how I said. I think the tendency sometimes is for the mistakes that we make to be very subtle, very subtle. And we want to make sure that our leadership men, as I've exhorted you before, should be godly and sacrificial and nurturing and cherishing our wives to be servant minded. We'll talk about the leadership part in the next point. But I would say there are some who practice a kind of headship in the home that's not characterized by those things. Men, we don't want to be that. We don't want to be those kinds of men who are selfish or perhaps even harsh in our leadership. And that was our marriage for maybe a decade. And it's, I hope, gotten better and better. She stuck it out for 35. So that's, I think I'm all right. But the first 10 years, I think in an effort to just try to be that leader, it was just selfish. It was just me controlling things in subtle ways. And it wasn't gracious. It wasn't sacrificial. And I just think we need to guard our hearts from that. The principle of complementarianism and submission works amazing when men are leading like Christ. So let's talk about that a little bit. That's a third necessary pursuit of a god honoring marriage. Husbands must exercise their proper headship. I think the Bible makes it clear headship isn't an absolute authority. It's not a kind of authority, as the Bible describes it, that justifies controlling behavior or selfishness. That's a perversion of the divine order. All God-given leadership is delegated. And if God delegates authority to you, men, that means that you must exercise that authority under the lordship of Christ. You must exercise that authority in the way that Christ would exercise it. He defines it. He regulates it. And how does he define it? What does it look like, right? It's, it's a kind of authority that dwells with your wife in an understanding way that grants honor to her as a joint heir of the grace of life. Do you see the partnership and the co-laboring there as well? In 1 Peter 3, it's a kind of leadership like Ephesians 5 says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and nourishes and cherishes it, washes her with the water of the Word longs for nothing more than to see her growing and flourishing. When two of Jesus' disciples were using their mother to gain an advantage over the other disciples in Matthew chapter 20, the other disciples weren't too happy with that. They wanted to be the greatest in the kingdom, right? Matthew 20 verse 24, this was the mother of the sons of Zebedee. Can one of my sons sit on your right hand and one on your left? She wanted them to have the greatest positions in hearing this. Matthew 20 verse 24, the 10 became indignant with the two brothers, and Jesus called them to himself, and he said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you. It is not this way among you. Leadership in the Christian world, and I think in every way that leadership happens is not the way it happens in the world. Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, just as the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Even in the home men we exercise leadership as a servant, as a sacrificial servant to our wives and to our families, the lording over the exercising authority. It's probably better rendered use power against someone. That's not a Christian authority structure, but again like Ephesians 5 says, we're loving like Christ. We're giving ourselves up for her as Christ gave himself up for us. Loving our wives as our own body, there's definitely not another body on the planet I give more attention to than my own. Comfort, we nourish it, we cherish it. The two become one flesh. That is what godly headship looks like. It has to look that way. If it's going to reflect god's design, if it's going to actually cause our marriages and our relationships to flourish the way god's designed it to. The kind of leading in Christian homes, this kind of leading. It doesn't leave room actually for either of the ends of the spectrum for passivity or authoritarianism. There's just no room for either one of those things in a loving, intentional headship in the home. The concept of, well, you need to submit to your husband as long as he's not asking you to sin. But what if he's selfish and controlling and sometimes harsh? You don't just ignore that. You as a loving wife, I hope you would speak to him. As my wife doesn't hesitate to speak to me, you should speak to him. And if you won't listen to you, maybe you need to get some help from someone. There's another grenade to lob over the wall for you, Paul. Ephesians 5 paints such a rich picture of what Christ like sacrificial, nourishing and cherishing ought to look like. And in a context where a husband is trying to lead and love like that, it is so much easier for wives to come alongside and be everything God has called them to be. What's clear is our culture, the world, ruled and shaped by sin, it doesn't do manhood very well, right? That's what we get in the culture by and large is either some overcharged macho view of manhood or we have the satire of the passive buffoon of a husband, right? Like just think Homer Simpson and every sitcom that has a dad in it, right? It's the satire of the passive buffoon of a husband and a dad. But we don't want those extremes to reflect anything in our Christian homes. We instead, men, especially we should be looking to Jesus as the model for our manhood and for the model of what it means to love with a servant's heart, sacrificially, nourishing and cherishing. And you know what that looks like. Even if your mind is a little cloudy and corrupted by misrepresentations in the world, you know what it looks like because you've experienced his nourishing and cherishing in your own life. Through the grace of the gospel and the forgiveness of sins, which by the way, is the grounds and the power to really understand and be and do any of this, right? Apart from the grace of God, you can't love like this. Apart from him, you can do nothing. Don't miss the grace of the gospel in all this. Look to Jesus as the model of manhood. Now granted, we don't get glimpses into what a married Jesus would look like, right? But we have experienced the sacrificial, servant-hearted, nourishing and cherishing of Jesus, of his bride, of whom you are a part. And so do that. How complicated is it? Well, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentle self-control. We can start there just thinking about the virtues that the Spirit of God wants to grow in us and what would each one of those look like if I were intentionally expressing it toward my wife and wives toward your husband for that matter. That's what a Christ-like headship in the home is going to look like. On a practical level, godly headship in a home looks like Proverbs 31. We don't see or hear much about the man in Proverbs 31, other than he's fed well, he's clothed well, and he has a great reputation at the city gates, right? Because of his wife. But somehow behind the scenes, whoever that guy was, he had figured out how to enable and encourage and empower his wife to be that, I don't know, total package of a woman, whatever you want to call her, right? She was productive and joyful and flourishing. And behind it, he was encouraging that. And godly leadership in a home will enable, will encourage, will empower a joyful, productive, flourishing of your wife. If we step back and just said practically, men, what are your wife's dreams and gifts and talents and desires? What are they? You actually should be able to list those. What are your wife's dreams and gifts and talents and desires? And how can you encourage her to have and pursue and experience all of those things? Now, most of them probably center around the home and family, but perhaps there's some things that she'd like to pursue outside of that. Do you know what they are? Have you just dropped a gauntlet and said, nope. Squash a dream, right? Stifle a gift and tail it. Don't, don't do that. Know her well enough to know and lead her well enough that she can flourish and find joy in all the ways that God has gifted her. Are you doing that deliberately, consistently? As consistently as you do it for yourself, he who loves his wife, loves himself. I think that's why Paul said it. No one ever hated his own flesh. And she is one flesh with you. Maybe we could keep it even simpler. The greatest commandment is love, right? That means a lot of things, but in marriage, it certainly doesn't mean anything less than cultivating mutual affection, sacrificial service, and causing others to flourish. Husbands, as a leader in your home, you're to be the lead lover. Do you think about that? You're to be the lead lover, the affection tone setter, and the servant of all. Again, it takes the grace of the gospel to be any of these things. Now, one last point, just to give our broad overview of the beginnings of marriage, a little icing on the cake. Verse 25, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And the fourth pursuit of a God-honoring marriage is couples should selflessly enjoy intimacy. As soon as they eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve immediately want to cover their nakedness, don't they? They experience immediately a shame previously unknown to them. That is what is introduced into that perfectly harmonious existence together. When they were first prepared to the entrance of sin into the world, what they experienced was a perfectly pleasurable and selfless marital intimacy. And I think that was first and foremost, a relational, affectionate, selfless interest in the other. That's what love is doing. It's interested in any other. It was a oneness that was relational. But I think the reference to nakedness here certainly implies there was a physical intimacy as well that was untainted by sin. Imagine, imagine a marital relationship where nothing was ever done for selfish pleasure, where both the husband and the wife were interested in one another, not for what they could get out of it, but for what the other person would enjoy. And where nothing hindered the pursuit of that mutual satisfaction and pleasure, that was the kind of relationship that Adam and Eve enjoyed. As sin has corrupted that too, as it's corrupted all of these things, it's corrupted the physical relationship. But for a time, we don't know how long, but for a time between Adam and Eve, there was no shame, no selfishness, no embarrassed self-consciousness, no reluctance, just the selfless, shameless pursuit of pleasing the other person. Why does God put this here? I believe he knows that this is one area where married couples living life under the sun, now that we're living life in a sin cursed world, he knows this is one area where married couples will inevitably see the selfishness of their own heart. Whether you see that selfishness and trying to get what only pleases you, or whether that selfishness is seen by not really being interested in pleasing the other, whatever, or however that selfishness rears its head. Sin has corrupted even this most precious and enjoyable gift in the context of marriage. God doesn't go into detail. And I think that actually reflects the reality that the physical relationship. It's just one small aspect of marriage. It shouldn't be overemphasized at the expense of the other. And he doesn't go into details. I think because it's also something that we share only together with our spouse by his design. But when a couple is pursuing companionship, when a couple is pursuing that one flesh relationship the way God has designed it, then they should also be learning how to selflessly enjoy that intimacy with one another. It's part of God's ideal, part of God's model in the home. There's four broad pursuits, cultivate companionship, compliment your husband's service to God, ladies, husbands, exercise a proper loving, servant-hearted sacrificial leadership in the home, and then couples selflessly enjoy that intimacy together. As I just going over this again this morning, just wishing I had like, let's do this in four weeks. Because there's so many words that I've used, things I've admonished you to think about and do where I just would love to unpack it just a little bit. And we don't have time to do that. Though I did give everyone some homework with some practical application questions that you could be thinking about and talking about together in small groups. So I hope you're doing that together over the coming months. I appreciate the privilege of sharing from God's word with you this morning. God, thank you for Trinity Church. You know, we pray for them often, even from our pulpit at faith. And God, we long to see you, blessing them, growing them, deeper and deeper in your word, in their love for you and love for one another. That's what we long for the most. And we pray that that would continue. And the fruit of it is evident as I see people enjoying life here together. God, we pray that you would take these truths from your word and melt them into the hearts of those here that you have blessed with a spouse that they would be pursuing these things. Buy your grace to the glory of your name. Help the singles here. Be content where you have them and to throw their energy and concern into serving your kingdom, serving you with passion and delight and gratitude. And God, we pray that in every way that it could be more practical in every way that you have stirred a heart to think about one or two or three things that they could go home today, this week, and begin to practice intentionally and affectionately toward their spouse. I pray that you would not let them forget it. Stir their heart to put the truth into practice of the glory of your name. And it's in your name that we pray. Amen.