Genesis 2:4-25 | Marriage
Introduction
What is the second most important thing someone should know about you? Or what is your second favorite color? What is your second-favorite meal?
I’m guessing you haven’t often been asked that question: What is your second most important…whatever. We often talk about what your favorite or most important thing is: your favorite food, your favorite color, your favorite movie. But the second favorite usually isn’t talked about much. Which is interesting because learning the second-most-important thing about someone may tell you just as much about them as the first-most-important thing.
For instance, if I tell you one of my favorite colors is blue, you may expect that and think that it is quite boring. But if I tell you my second favorite color is yellow – and I clarify that I am actually thinking of a teal-blue with yellow, now a different picture may come into view. This is not the color scheme of the Los Angeles Chargers, but rather a mid-century modern and 1950’s- and 60’s-vibe. Like my bright yellow Volkswagen Bug that I drove for years! Just because I don’t wear those colors often doesn’t mean I don’t like them a lot!
It is sad, but we all tend to make assumptions based on the first impression, the first piece of information we are given, or the first thing someone says. But each extra piece of information begins to build the jigsaw puzzle that is a person, an idea, or a plan. And the second piece is just as important as the first. Often, the second piece helps us understand the picture even more than the first piece alone. That is true of the story we see unfolding in Genesis 1–3.
Review
God started his story of creation, telling us about the beauty of all that he has done in everything he created. We see his amazing greatness and total authority—his sovereignty—and we see his incredible loving kindness to us all throughout the creation account in Genesis 1–2:3 that we have been looking at most recently in this Genesis series. We see first our God:
God
God Who Creates Out of Nothing
God Who Reveals Himself to Us
God Who is Present with Us
God Who is for Our Good
Our God who created everything out of nothing but still chose to reveal himself to us, who chooses to be present with us, and who is for our good. In fact, he made everything good and very good—including us! As we turn to God’s creation of humanity, we see even more in this creation account:
Humanity
Image Bearers: Inherent Worth
Image Bearers: Sons & Daughters
Sons & Daughters: Kings & Queens
Sons & Daughters: Priests
Image Bearers: Purpose
Purpose: To have Dominion
Purpose: To Guard and Keep God’s Words and Ways
We see that we are image bearers, those who are made in the very image of God and given inherent worth. That we are sons and daughters of the great king who were made to be kings and queens ourselves, and priests as we worship our God. Importantly, we were given the purpose of exercising dominion as kings and queens over this creation and of guarding and protecting God’s words and ways as his great priests.
Amazingly, creation itself declares the beauty of God and his plan to us:
Creation
Eden is an image of the King’s Kingdom.
Eden is an image of God’s Temple.
God’s creation of Eden is an image of God’s kingdom and of God’s temple. It is God’s place with his presence.
Even in Genesis 1, we can begin to see the plan God originally had and what it was supposed to look like for all of us, even now, if we weren’t sinners. And that was a lot to pull out of just Genesis chapter one. As we went through Genesis one, you may have been a little overwhelmed by all that we could see there. That is okay—Genesis one is meant to be an account that is packed with so much imagery, so much detail, that it will sustain the rest of God’s story with humanity throughout the rest of our history on this earth.
Genesis one is like you, and I went to a play in a grand theater. The lights dim, the curtains slowly open, but instead of a stage instantly filled with people and a story, it is dark. It is empty. And what we see in that emptiness is that God is there. And into that emptiness he moves and speaks, and everything needed for this grand play springs to life. The earth and stars, animals, and even people. We hear God speaking over creation, and everything you and I know is made.
God is letting us know that this entire story of our life and our existence with God will be about his people being with the very presence of God, living out the purposes of God. That is the setting and the stage that he is creating for all of us. That is what we see in Genesis chapter one. In fact, we summarized Genesis one and God’s plan from the very beginning in exactly those ideas:
Summary of Genesis One
Presence (of God)
(in the) Place (of God)
(with and through the) People (of God)
(living out the) Purposes (of God)
Genesis one is an introduction of sorts, but an introduction so real that it is the first scene of all of creation, the first act of the play itself. Genesis chapter one is THE record of creation itself, and it is largely about God’s amazing greatness both in himself and towards us. And as we go on to Genesis 2:4, we see the goal of what God is sharing with us changes a little bit.
Toledoth
In Genesis 2:4, we see a new phrase come in:
These are the generations…
That phrase at the beginning of Genesis 2:4 signals that a new section is beginning, and it sets a pattern we will see repeated throughout the rest of Genesis. There are ten total sections that start this way:
Generations of heaven and earth, 2:4-4:26
Generations of Adam, 5:1-6:8
Generations of Noah, 6:9-9:29
Generations of Shem, Ham, Japheth, 10:1-11:9
Generations of Shem, 11:10-26
Generations of Terah, 11:27-25:11
Generations of Ishmael, 25:12-18
Generations of Isaac, 25:19-35:29
Generations of Esau, 36:1-37:1
Generations of Jacob, 37:1-50:26
This word for generations is the Hebrew word “toledoth,” which can be translated as " generations but more generally means “begotten things,” or as we would probably say, “those things coming from (whatever).” When we see this word in Genesis, we sometimes get a list of names and sometimes an entire narrative. In fact, it creates an alternating pattern for us throughout the rest of Genesis.
Narrative: Generations of heaven and earth, 2:4-4:26
List: Generations of Adam, 5:1-6:8
Narrative: Generations of Noah, 6:9-9:29
List: Generations of Shem, Ham, Japheth, 10:1-11:9
Generations of Shem, 11:10-26
Narrative: Generations of Terah, 11:27-25:11
List: Generations of Ishmael, 25:12-18
Narrative: Generations of Isaac, 25:19-35:29
List: Generations of Esau, 36:1-37:1
Narrative: Generations of Jacob, 37:1-50:26
Narrative, Genealogy, Narrative, Genealogy. When God wants to move the story forward, he gives us a list of those who come from a specific person, what we would consider a true genealogy, with a list of names and ages. And every time God wants us to focus on the story of what has happened, he will use the phrase “generations” or “begetting,” along with a narrative, as a sign that we are to focus on a new section of what is happening.
Here in Genesis 2 all the way through Genesis 4, we get the first of the narratives that we are going to focus on here in Genesis. And importantly, it is about what comes from the creation of the heavens and the earth, or said another way, what heaven and earth begets. That is an odd thought—that heaven and earth coming together made something. In fact, it points to the idea of marriage. You may say, “Yeah, Pastor Ryan, I know that. Genesis two is about the marriage of Adam and Eve.” Yes, but it is much more than just that marriage! Look at the whole statement again here:
These are the generations [begotten things] of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
We have to say “begets” and can’t say children precisely because of Genesis 2:4. Here, in Genesis chapter two, we are to see that this account of Adam and Eve is what is brought forth, what is begotten, what comes from the coming together of heaven and earth. And what that phrase—heaven and earth—seems to mean is that when God in all his glory condescends, when God comes down and engages with his creation (that’s what condescends means, to come down and draw close), we see that it is very intimate. He is very close to creation. He walks amongst his creation. He engages with his creation personally. And it isn’t just with his creation in general. It is with his image bearers. God being present on earth meant he had a very intimate, covenantal relationship with Adam and Eve, and he wanted to have that with you and me as well.
As Moses turns his lens (as it were) and focuses in on the sixth day of creation, we see it is all about a marriage. It is about God’s intimate, personal connection with his creation, his image bearers, as well as man and woman’s intimate connection with one another. As the scholar Peter Leithart says:
“When Genesis 2:4 announces 'these are the begettings of heaven and earth” and then proceeds to recount the creation of Adam and Eve, we are to understand that the first human couple are products of the marriage of heaven and earth.”
Adam and Eve are pictured as the results, the offspring of the heavens and the earth. Of God coming close to his creation, specifically man and woman. Genesis two is the story of a grand marriage in more ways than just the man and woman.
Marriage
Now, if you hadn’t ever read Genesis before, I bet if I had told stopped after reading Genesis one and asked you what you thought God would talk about next, you probably could have come up with a hundred different things you think God would want explained next: how to worship him, how to live life well, why we are in the situation we are in. But I bet you wouldn’t have said, “You know what, how about a story about marriage!” That probably wouldn’t have been your guess of God’s second most important thing that he wants us to think about.
Not that marriage is bad, but would you really think this is the second-most-important thing God wants to share with us? We have become so accustomed to this flow from Genesis one to Genesis two that we rarely ever stop and say, “Why this? Why a marriage?” And because we don’t ask that question, many people miss that the language here points to men and women as the outcome of the marriage of heaven and earth—of God engaging directly with his creation and then with his image bearers in a covenantal relationship. Why, of all the things that God could have shared with us, this? Why did he move next, and in his grand outline of Genesis, not only share with us the results of how the marriage of heaven and earth brings about his covenantal relationship with man and woman, but also share with us the marriage of the man and the woman?
We are lucky to stand on this side of history. I think many Jewish people wondered over the years why God started this way. And as Paul says, we now know the mystery:
“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
(Ephesians 5:32 ESV)
Paul, in talking about human marriage—the marriage between one man and one woman—says that marriage is a profound mystery. And remember, the phrase “mystery” in Scripture doesn’t mean something we can’t understand or something we have to seek out to figure out. Rather, a mystery in Scripture is something that God has revealed to us so we can know him more. Everything about marriage is meant to point us to God and specifically to God’s relationship in Jesus Christ to his people, the church!
I think we often get this backwards in our minds. We are often quick to think that our relationship with God is like our marriages. But that is backwards:
Marriages were created BECAUSE of and TO IMAGE the relationship God has chosen to have with us.
We are going to see much about marriage over the next couple of weeks, but we start where the story starts! God’s second main point he wants us to think about in Genesis—God’s plan from the very beginning and through today—is that his coming to engage with his creation and his image bearers —the begetting of heaven and earth —results in HIS marriage with his people.
God Draws Close
Look at where Genesis 2 goes next:
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon.
It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis two is very different than Genesis one. Genesis one focuses on the picture of God as transcendent. Remember, we already talked about that word. Transcendent means the attributes of God that are so different than us, that attributes of God that are beyond us and that we won’t ever fully have. The ways in which God is sovereign, all-powerful, all-knowing—everything we are not. But Genesis two shows us another aspect of our God. His immanence. We talked about that as well—how God is also very close to us. How God chooses to stoop down, like an adult, to address us, his children, so we can understand and know him. So he can be close to us.
In this account in Genesis 2, God doesn’t just speak from afar to create; he is there, on the earth, as a mist rises from the ground, seeming to walk around. Many scholars would say this is the pre-incarnate Son of God, intimately interacting with his creation, as the person of God tasked with directly engaging with man and woman. God himself, who seemingly kneels down and forms man out of the clay—the imagery of the language here is of God purposefully taking piece by piece out of the dust of the ground and putting them together one at a time to make the man. Mankind and man are named “Adam,” meaning from the earth. And then, in an incredibly intimate moment, God breathes into the man. As though a kiss is what places the very breath of life and the spirit of God into man as he awakens.
God then does what we would expect in any marriage—he takes his beloved home. He takes man to the garden, God’s very temple. All the imagery here is of items we see return again at the very end of Scripture, in the new earth with God’s holy city. There is the tree of life, a river flowing out of it as though a spring coming out of the top of a mountain, flowing in four different directions. The jewels and precious metals are the same types that adorn the temple in Jerusalem and the new city in Revelation. God brings man to his temple garden to dwell with him.
We even see the language of covenant and stipulations here. We mentioned in Genesis one how we get a glimpse of God’s covenant with creation and his people from the very beginning, but here in Genesis two is where we see the language of covenant. We see God give man responsibilities and stipulations. God says:
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
The man is given freedom to eat and enjoy what God has provided, but he is told not to eat the tree. He is given the stipulations of his relationship with God, and they are actually quite simple rules. Eat of whatever is in the garden, just not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And like all covenants, there is a punishment promised if he disobeys: he will die. This is the language of an intimate relationship in which God has initiated a loving, caring, and providing role with his image bearers.
But God isn’t finished yet. This isn’t just about the man; it is also about the woman. God wants the woman in this relationship with him and the man as well. It is interesting to notice the order of events here:
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 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. 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.
God didn’t have Adam see all the animals first and decide on his own that he was missing someone to join with, rather God sees man, knows the creation of humanity is not complete, and THEN shows the man the problem and brings him into the need to complete creation. It’s only after Adam sees that there is no helper suitable for him that God solves the problem God himself allowed to happen:
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. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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.”
Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
God provides the woman as one to be with man as part of this grand project of being God’s people in his place in his presence with his purpose. Woman is taken from his side so they might stand side by side and work as equal image bearers on the task God had given them.
God has indeed drawn close to humanity in Genesis 2. In God’s engaging intimately with his creation—heaven meeting earth—man and woman are created. They are given life by the one and only God of all creation, and they are placed together in his house, his place, with freedom and responsibility to do his good work together. To walk with him in a loving, covenantal relationship.
Again, I think we so quickly jump to the marriage of the man and the woman that we don’t notice the marriage of God with his people. An image that is setting up for us the beauty of what Jesus Christ does for us, even though we have all sinned. God is showing us that he always intended to walk in an intimate, close relationship with his people from the very beginning. He did not create us as aloof Gods or from afar. He created us up close, intimately, right next to us. He formed us, molded us, made us. He breathed life into us. He placed us exactly where he wanted us to be. God came so close to Adam and Eve, to humanity, that it is described in the same language of marriage!
And don’t miss this last line:
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Yes, that phrase is speaking about men and women not being ashamed to be with one another and naked in their marriage, but very importantly, they were both standing there in front of GOD, not ashamed to be naked. That is the image we associate with marriage, and it is true in our life with God. We are to know we can stand before him fully exposed, and not ashamed. The first thought we should have when we read that phrase is about the beauty of them being naked before GOD, because that is exactly the first thing that breaks down when Adam and Eve sin. They are not just holy and perfectly standing before one another as man and wife, they are also standing before their great bridegroom—GOD—unashamed and in love with him. The marriage of heaven and earth—God engaging intimately with his image bearers—has resulted in unashamed knowing and beauty of being with one another in perfection!
Jesus our Bridegroom
Before Genesis is about the marriage of man and woman, it is about the marriage of God to his people. God foreshadows in his creation of people, and then lovingly embeds in our relationships to one another, as a man and wife, the very nature of his relationship with us. Again,
Marriages were created BECAUSE of and TO IMAGE the relationship God has chosen to have with us in Jesus Christ.
God, through Scripture, spends a lot of time trying to help us wrap our heads around our relationship with God through faith in Jesus as a marriage. God repeatedly compares his relationship with Israel to a marriage. Much like he says in Jeremiah 31:31:
I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.
(Jeremiah 31:31–32 ESV)
In fact, the image of God’s marriage is so large that we see his people’s rebellion in the prophets imaged as adultery and then divorce.
And when Jesus comes on the scene, we see that Jesus is our bridegroom—the one to whom we are to be married.
John the Baptizer says:
‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom... rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete.”
(John 3:28-29)
In seeing Jesus, John rejoices that God has let him see the bridegroom not only of himself but also of all God’s people, and he rejoices! He doesn’t sense any competition—he is lovingly thankful that God would come and truly be close to his people. The Pharisees ask Jesus why his disciples do not fast, and Jesus says:
Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast”
(Matthew 9:14-15)
Again and again, we see Jesus as the king who has come to his people, but he is a betrothed king! He is coming for his bride, his collective people, the church. And he doesn’t come for sex. He comes to give the church a joy that will make sex seem like a mere birthday candle flicker in comparison to the sun. He comes to give his people the joy of everlasting life in his place again, with his presence, living as his beloved people again walking in his purposes for us forevermore! All through faith in what Jesus has done for us. He comes to consummate his marriage!
Before we can discuss the image of marriage between men and women in Genesis chapter two, we must start with the image of God’s marriage to his people. That is the image embedded in Genesis two itself—the outcome of heaven and earth coming together. The begetting of God’s beloved sons and daughters through his drawing near makes us, his image bearers, and God brings us into a covenantal, loving relationship. A marriage.
Application
My guess is that through much of Genesis one, you may have marveled at the enormity of God’s plan, the beauty of how much he has done for us, and the amazing scene of his people, place, presence, and purpose all wound up in this grand creation! Yet you may have felt a little distant from God in that description. Sure, knowing we have the God who created every star we see in the night sky surely means he is all-powerful and can do whatever we may ever need. Yes, knowing that God created us in his image means we can trust that he has a good plan and that he created us to do exactly what he calls us to. But does he love you? Is he close to you? Yes, you can see that God says his creation of his people was VERY good, but does he feel that way towards you today?
That is the grand fear of sin—how can God love me when I have openly rebelled against him? And that is the magnificently good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ—that through faith in Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection for you, you are brought back into relationship with God again. And not just any relationship. You are brought back into an intimate marriage with God through Jesus Christ!
Today, for those of us who put our faith in Jesus, we are drawn back into that loving relationship with God. We may not always see in the midst of a sinful world and our sinful tendencies, but that is the true relationship you have with God again! In Jesus, you again get to walk in the presence of God as the people of God in his place, living out his purpose.
Summary
Presence (of God)
(in the) Place (of God)
(with and through the) People (of God)
(living out the) Purposes (of God)
Friends, every good thing you can think about marriage is what is true for you TODAY in faith in Jesus. What God describes about Adam and Eve in his covenantal marriage to them in Genesis 2 is true for you in Jesus. God has breathed NEW life into you through his Holy Spirit. He has brought you into his very presence through the Holy Spirit and promises to bring you to his new house—the new Jerusalem on the new earth—that you might be with him forevermore. He brings us all together as one people that we might be his beautiful bride walking in loving relationship with him.
You can even stand naked, unashamed, before God today! There is nothing about you that God does not already know—that God did not already die for—in faith in Jesus Christ. You can stand before him, sure that he smiles on you in love even when you see the sins you didn’t yet realize were there. God knew. God died for that. And God smiles on you.
God’s marriage to his image bearers is where Genesis 2 starts and then moves to the marriage of man and woman to help image what God was doing with humanity. What God would ensure he could do with his people through Jesus Christ and his righteous life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection in power. Standing this side of the cross, it is our marriage to God in Jesus Christ that will help us understand what God is trying to show us through the marriage of men and women to one another—the aspect of this chapter that we will look at next week.
Conclusion
This week, start our journey in Genesis 2 by embracing the marriage that God is most to show us—the marriage of God to his image bearers. The union that occurs when God condescends to his creation and joins with his image bearers is the beautiful union most clearly seen in our faith in Jesus.
Friends, God was never surprised by humanity's trajectory. He knew, even before the moments of Genesis 1 and 2, that his people would rebel against him. So from the very beginning, he made sure we knew how much he loved us—he loved us as a perfect marriage. And he then encoded that image in our marriages themselves. He made sure we knew he would continue to be our bridegroom and draw us into this beautiful marriage with him. That he would bring us back into his presence in his place as his people walking out his purpose.
This morning, rest in your marriage to God in Jesus. Marvel and wonder at your marriage to God in Jesus. If you have come to Jesus in faith, ponder for a minute:
What does your marriage to God in Jesus mean for you?
Each of you will likely need to remember something different. Do you need to realize that God has chosen YOU? That he has kissed you with the very life of his Spirit. That God knows everything about you and smiles on you in Jesus? That he will never leave you? That he wants you to be with him, exposed, and unashamed? That God loves you as his most beautiful, perfect bride.
If you are here this morning and you are not a believer, this is what God is offering you in Jesus Christ. A perfectly loving, covenantal relationship with himself that is the perfect version of the marriage we were all meant to see in human marriages. It is the relationship you have longed for. That even in all your brokenness and sin, God would look on you and smile, your sins dealt with by Jesus the Christ, his righteousness given to you. Come to him this morning. I would love to talk to you, even during this time, if you would like. Let’s take a minute and ponder God’s marriage to us.
Communion
Benediction
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all! (2 Cor 13:14)
