Prayer

Lord and our God, we praise you and we thank you for your great mercies to us.

We pray, O Lord, that you would be exalted and glorified in our lives.

And we pray now as we take a few moments to

Meditate on your holy word and fill our minds with the truth of your word.

Our Lord, we pray that you would renew our minds and help us that we may glorify you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Reading

Genesis 2:18-25.

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

Meditation

Have you ever looked at the face of a groom as his bride walks down the aisle to him? Speaking as a man, there are many things that men particularly enjoy. We enjoy taking apart a motorbike and putting it back together. Boys like to wrestle and test each other’s strength, and that kind of mindset carries on into manhood. Men like the physicality of a contest on the football field – sprinting at top speed in competition with the man next to you. Men like a good juicy steak after a hard day of physical labour, with mushroom gravy and chips on the side and a pint of beer to drink. We like the satisfaction you get from splitting wood and stacking up a massive pile ready for the winter. Especially when you strike a piece of wood in just the right spot, and there’s a big crack, and it splits in half perfectly under the force of the blow! But there are few things in a man’s life that compare to the sight of his bride walking toward him, dressed in white on their wedding day.

What does it mean to be a man? Why did God make men? Why not something else? Why not a world full of women? Why not a world of sexless beings able to self-replicate? Our sexual identity is something about us that goes right down to the core of who we are as people. Because of this, it should come as no surprise that sexuality has become the idol of our culture today. It is because it is such a precious treasure, and that it cuts so close to everything about who we are, that it has been able to be misused to such potent effect.

As we’ve been studying Genesis 2 we’ve been discovering what life is really all about. We’ve seen that life is central to God’s purpose for his creation, and that he wants to fill the earth with life. We’ve seen that he does that through work and the fruit of our labours, and the gift of wisdom. There’s one more piece of the puzzle, according to Genesis 2, that we need to think about when it comes to flourishing life. It’s at the centre of it all, really. I’m talking about relationships – and our sexuality is one of the main engine rooms for these relationships.

To understand relationships, then, I’m going to suggest that we need to start with this question: What is a man? What does it mean to be a man? What is masculinity? Because that is where it starts in the text itself: God makes the man. That’s where God starts – he makes, not a woman, but a man. We need to ignore our feminist alarm bells for a second, take a step back, and ask: Why? Why did God do that? Why a man? Why not a woman? Why not both at the same time?

To start with, we need to affirm the plain truth of the text: God does start with a man. He didn’t start with a woman, but with a man, and then he put that man in the garden (v15). In the garden, he gave that man at a task: to work and keep it. Only once the man was established in that task did God then bring the woman to him as a help-meet (Gen 2:18). Man and woman were not created at the same time, the man was created first, and the woman second. Now we’ll get to the significance of that in the coming studies, and we’ll talk about what it means for her to be a helpmeet later as well, but for now the overall point is clear in the text: God made man first. That’s the design.

Be ye doers of the word…

The first obvious point of application that we should make here, as the Apostle Paul does, is to say that God made the woman for the man. In 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 Paul says “...man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” We’ll get to looking at femininity in later studies, but we start here with masculinity as God does. Now I’m under no illusions, I know what I’m saying is controversial. Even just reading 1 Corinthians 11:8 is controversial today – let alone commenting on it. Every feminist under the sun would howl me down for the last few sentences. As Christians, however, we ought to know better. Our response ought not to be: “How dare God make the man first, and create the woman for the man!” (which is essentially the complaint of feminism). No, our question should be to humbly, and submissively ask: “Why did God create the man first?” That is the question, and it has a glorious answer which we’re going to unfold in the coming studies. But start with this basic perspective on the sexes, and on your own sex: the woman was made for the man.

Having said that, let’s keep the big picture in mind with the perspective of what we’ve already learned in Genesis 1. We must affirm and remember that: women are equal in dignity. It’s probably important to repeat this again in today’s world. Just because God created the man first, it does not mean that the man is better than the woman. Both men and women were created equal in dignity and value in the image of God – as we saw in Genesis 1. While men and women are equal in dignity, however, they do have different roles to play in God’s design. The world hates that idea, but we should embrace it. Why? Because God is all wise, and he does all things well. He doesn’t make ugly things, he makes beautiful, wonderful, amazing plans. He didn’t make man first by accident, it wasn’t his one mistake in creating mankind. As we continue on in the next series of studies looking at sexuality, come with this assumption: as we study God’s design for male and female identity, we’re going to discover something wonderful in God’s good and perfect plan! SDG.

Prayer of Confession & Consecration

Our Lord and God, we confess in an age that is filled with sexual confusion.

Lord, we are not immune to these currents of thought.

We pray that you would please help us to

ponder your word in these coming studies and to renew our minds and to see very

clearly your design for men and women.

And for us as men and women, may we embrace the sex that you have assigned to us.

May we rejoice in it.

May we joyfully submit to your plans and purposes.

And Lord, as we serve and live for you as men and women, may we exalt you.

in our sexuality that you've given to us.

We pray,

O Lord,

that there would be greater clarity in these things in our lives,

families,

and churches.

And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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