Strengthening Our Confidence in a Trustworthy Creator

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. From microscopic organisms to human life and society, to the distant uncharted galaxies, God created all in a space of six days. What volumes upon volumes of books would it take to describe all the intricacy and planning and design involved in the creation of the universe?

How curious our curious minds would love to read about the marvelous wonders and workings of God and His vast creation. But rather than satisfy our curiosity and thirst to store up and accumulate knowledge, God saw fit to disclose to us only those most necessary and important details to equip us for life in godliness.

And these important details are all contained in a space of about two or three pages in our Bibles. And this tells me something. This tells me that acquiring and amassing knowledge is not the end goal of the Christian life.

There are those Christians who are like the Athenians and would love nothing more than to hear or to tell of some new thing. Now we can take this habit and we can make it a little more Christian by confining our field of study to those things that are related to theology.

But that alone doesn't somehow turn that vice into a virtue. Just because some burning question or controversy may somehow be connected with a Bible or theology does not make it automatically profitable or edifying.

We're going to see a little later in this sermon how God took a rib from Adam and with it formed Eve. And I have heard of some people getting into a serious debate over the question of whether men have one less rib than women.

And you may think that's funny, but it happens. And not only does it happen, but Christians can get into debates over matters just as trivial as this. Paul had to remind the young Timothy to have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies, for they breed quarrels.

To Titus, he admonished to avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. Now in our series in Genesis, we are approaching the cusp of Adam and Eve's fall and the plunging of human race into a world of suffering and misery.

Do you really think in the big picture that God is really concerned whether Adam and Eve figured out if Adam had one less rib than she did? Or whether they knew what shape the earth was? Or even this, whether they knew how old the earth was?

Knowledge, even theological knowledge, when pursued for any other purpose than for the furtherance of faith and godliness, will only puff up. Now God gave us the Bible not to produce swelled heads, but to produce trusting hearts.

So accordingly, the first two chapters of Genesis do not include details to inform every facet of our curiosity, but they lay the necessary foundation to ground our confidence in God as a faithful creator.

If Adam and Eve were fully persuaded of just this one thing, that God were a faithful creator, a rock in whom they could put their full confidence and trust, they would not have turned their faces from him and placed humanity and all of the world under a curse.

We're going to be looking at the last part of Genesis 2 in which we'll be examining God's description of the creation of woman. And my desire is not that we would go from here having learned something new.

My aim in prayer is that we would leave here having become just a little more settled than we were when we came, that our God is a trustworthy creator. That the unbelief we carry with us, whether it's in the form of anxiety or fears, worry, depression, whatever form that happens to take, that those things would be weakened and abated.

The more settled we become in the conviction that God is a trustworthy creator, the more we will shed away and cast away our baseless doubts and come more and more to experience the kingdom of God, which is, in essence, righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Adam’s Need Reveals God’s Goodness

So let's pick up our study now in the reading of Genesis 2 in verse 18 where we find Adam alone among the animals of God's creation in the Garden of Eden. Here we step into a world where absolutely everything is fresh and new.

Only six days old was the earth at this point and sin had not yet entered into the world. Adam, being created a fully formed adult, was soaking in his surroundings like a baby might do when they have wide eyes looking at the things all around them.

And yet though he was younger than a newborn, being less than 24 hours old at this point, his fully formed and untainted mind was drinking in and absorbing all his surroundings at a blinding speed. And so here's where you're going to pick it up and enter into the story.

Verse 18. The first aspect of the trustworthiness of God that I would like to bring to your attention is that God is good toward man. People have described the goodness of God in various ways. But I happen to like this particular definition.

It defines the goodness of God this way, as his inclination to deal well and bountifully with his creatures. Just to say that one more time, God's goodness is his inclination to deal well and bountifully with his creatures.

Now I would like to clarify here that the goodness of God is not to be confused with the righteousness of God. Oftentimes these things are conflated together but they are actually quite distinct. And of all the characteristics of what God is like, I would venture to guess that the goodness of God is the one that we doubt the most.

It was the hook that Eve swallowed when the tempter slandered God to her. And I don't doubt it's one of the weakest links in the chain of our own confidence in God. We may hold fast to the conviction that God is powerful, almighty, fully capable of doing what he wants, sovereign.

We may hold firm to the conviction that God is perfect and unwavering in his justice and righteousness. But sometimes it just appears to us that for whatever reason beyond our understanding, it just doesn't seem that God is simply all that inclined to do us good.

And therefore we pine away in depression or anxiety or fear or what have you. But regardless of the way things may appear to us from our vantage point, the testimony of Scripture is that God truly is inclined to deal with us well and bountifully.

Think of how bountiful he was toward man in our text. God had already created Adam out of the dust of the earth and given him the breath of life. He didn't create him to be a slave, but to be a king. The earth was his footstool and the world was his oyster.

God also made Adam's home in the Garden of Eden, a place where God planted every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Now that in itself bears witness to the fact that God is good to man.

But I would like you to consider something further. Not only did God create this creature Adam and make him to rule over the world and live in paradise for his joy and pleasure, but even when God saw Adam in that condition, he said, it is not good that the man should be alone.

Now personally, when I go about to create something or work on some project, I'm inclined to make it perfect. I have a desire to. But knowing that I can't make it perfect and that I have other things to do, I tend to lower the bar a little bit.

And so I eventually reach the point where I just look at what I'm working on and say, meh, good enough. God could have looked at Adam that way and said, good enough. And that would have been no low standard.

Adam was in paradise. But so bountiful is God towards his creatures and particularly mankind, that when God sees even the possibility that things could be made better for Adam, the mere fact that things have not reached that state of perfection is enough for God to look upon it and say, this is not good.

This will never do. So we see that God doesn't just deal well with man, but he deals bountifully. He's not just good toward us in that he gives us food and clothing and things to enjoy. He doesn't do some good works toward us and then call it a day and say, good enough.

But he is a perfectionist. He won't stop working on you until you are made absolutely perfect. And he won't be satisfied and rest from his labor until he can look back upon you and say, this is very good.

And let me point out that this isn't referring to moral perfection only. Adam was already morally upright with no flaw in him. But God wanted his joy and fullness to be made complete. That Adam would not only have life, but have abundance of life.

Just as when Jesus said he came, not that they may have life, but that they may have it more abundantly. Now maybe you don't like working with a perfectionist, if someone happens to be that way. But for me, when God is working on me, I'm rather glad that he's a perfectionist.

And so God continues. It's not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. And here we see that God not only pointed out how things could be improved and voiced how things could be made better, but he determined and resolved to make that improvement happen.

God as the creator knew that Adam would never experience the fullness of what he was created for unless he were to experience it in communion with a close companion. But not just any companion. The animals were already there present with Adam.

But the close companionship God designed would not be found through pets who were below him. Nor was it enough that Adam walked with God in the garden. Adam already had that, and yet God said, it's not good that the man should be alone.

It wasn't enough to have fellowship with God who was so far above him and so unlike him. But he needed a companion that was fit for him. On his level and equal. But not only on the same level, but one who would be his counterpart, his complement.

And so God determined to provide for Adam a helper who was to be his perfect complement. A helper who was tailor-made, custom fit, just what Adam needed for his perfect enrichment and completion. The man and the woman would complement each other perfectly.

Man, being created first, was appointed by God to be head and ruler. The woman, being created last of all, was the crowning glory of God's creation. And being made for the man, God designed her to be the crowning glory of man.

What a display that God is inclined to deal well and bountifully with mankind. Let's move on. Verses 19 and 20. Now out of the ground, the Lord 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.

Now between verses 18 up there where God said he would make a helper and then down below at verse 21 where he actually does make a helper, we have these two verses here in which all of the animals are paraded before Adam where Adam observes them and gives them names.

And so what's going on here? And what is the point of all this? I don't think its primary purpose is to shift topics and to speak about the nature of man's authority and dominion of the world in the way he was given authority to name the animals.

I don't think that was the primary intent. Nor do I think this was designed as an experiment to see if any of the animals might fit the bill of being Adam's perfect counterpart. I think rather that what God was doing was very intentionally increasing Adam's capacity to be able to fully enjoy and appreciate the gift that God was about to give him.

Think of it this way. If I had a dog and I wanted to give it a good gift, I could elect to give it a very fine meal. And if I wanted to give the very best gift, I could give it the very finest food crafted by the finest world-class chef and made with the finest ingredients.

And when I gave that excellent gift to my dog, it would inhale it in about five seconds and probably hardly taste what it was swallowing because it wasn't chewing it even. And I would have dealt very well and bountifully with my dog.

But if I wanted to deal even more well and bountifully with my dog, and I had the power, I would not only give the dog that fine meal to enjoy, but I would endow it with a refined sense of taste and a full capacity to enjoy and savor that dish so it wouldn't be wasted but it would be fully enjoyed.

What God is doing here is exercising His goodness toward Adam in not only giving him a good gift, but enlarging and increasing his capacity to fully appreciate and enjoy that gift. And if we use our imaginations a little bit, we might speculate how this might have looked.

There is Adam in the garden, drinking in and enjoying his surroundings in the Garden of Eden and enjoying the gift of life being made a brand new soul. At first, maybe God brings before Adam some elephants.

And Adam looks at these creatures for the first time and starts making observations. He would have started noticing differences or similarities between him and them. Perhaps he notices they have two eyes like he does, but they are much larger.

They also have a big trunk and ears and tusks. And so maybe he calls them some name that's related in some way to this distinguishing feature. Well, then maybe God brings to Adam some birds. And Adam observes how they are quite different from both him and the elephant in that they have wings and that they can fly.

But though being different, they also have similarities. They also have two eyes and they have two legs like Adam has. And then comparing the elephants to the birds, he notices that they both have something that he doesn't have, counterparts.

There's a male and there's a female. Well, that's curious. And so as the animals continue to be brought before Adam, he sees a pattern developing. And the striking thing that is becoming more and more obvious to Adam is not only the reality that he is alone, but that he alone is alone.

All the others have companions, but where is Adam's companion? There is none. He is alone. Now, perhaps at first, this didn't bother Adam, but the more his awareness was being developed, the more he was beginning to discover for himself and see what God had already stated, that it is not good for the man to be alone.

At this point, though Adam had all or almost all, he became aware of his lack, aware of his emptiness, though he sat king of the earth. For Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. No doubt this feeling of emptiness and loss would have been unpleasant to Adam, and in the moment would not be producing joy, but only sorrow.

Yet this was the very thing that was carving out in him a greater capacity for joy, joy that he had never experienced before. There's so much application here in the Christian life. Our momentary light affliction that we bear in this life is the very thing that is working for us, that incomparable weight of glory in the life to come.

And it's not just through the various trials and difficulties we have, it's through life itself. The whole life we are now living, with all its lack and emptiness, is preparing us. God is preparing us through this to fully enjoy the ultimate gift of God's salvation.

God is using it precisely that we may feel the lack of what is missing in our lives, and discover for ourselves our own poverty and emptiness, that when the fullness comes, it may be like life from the dead.

And perhaps you're still wondering why we can't just skip this step and move on to glory. I'll just ponder this little observation. When Adam was first created, he was instantly a king, living in a garden of paradise.

Nevertheless, do we hear any expression of joy or thanksgiving or praise coming from Adam at this point? We don't read about anything like that in this account, do we? There is silence. But afterwards, when Adam went through God's hard school of providence and was made to understand and feel his great need, what is the immediate expression we see from Adam when the hope finally arrives?

At last,.

This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and it's only here that we find the first exclamation of joy coming out of the lips of man in the Bible. Well, not only is God good towards man, but he also deals wisely with man.

We've already seen his wisdom on display in his dealings with Adam, but now we're going to see it a little more fully in his creation of the woman. And we see this in God's very next action. So one might expect God at this point to say, let there be woman.

But no, God does something entirely unexpected. And we're starting to see this pattern develop with God here. Verse 21, Now right off the bat, this may seem to have been a disappointment for Adam. Now that Adam was fully awakened and expectant for God to provide this brand new companion for him, he probably would have wanted to get in on this action in the creation of the woman.

And I can just imagine Adam like an eager and enthusiastic young adult not being satisfied to just sit back and wait for God and to see what God would bring him, but to help out some way and maybe give some pointers or suggestions.

I just have this image of my head of Adam pushing his nose in there and saying, you know God, I think you should really make her look like this or some other thing. But Adam had very little conception of what a woman was having never seen one.

Adam had nothing of any real value to contribute. In fact, if man were to start contributing, he would only ruin things. Well, God doesn't need man's help. He's an infinitely wise creator and he was about to cap off his creation with a masterpiece.

So for this, Adam had to get out of the kitchen. Let's continue reading. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. Now stop there for a moment. In our lives as Christians, we're going to be met with times when what we are experiencing in that moment is not going to line up with what we thought the Christian life should be or was told it would be.

Just imagine how it would have appeared to Adam if he were to suddenly wake up before God was finished and while God was still operating on him. What the scene would look like. He would have been in the middle of having sweet dreams about the woman and what she would look like.

And then he wakes up and he doesn't see the love of his life standing there in front of him to behold, but rather he sees himself laying down there with his side opened up, his flesh opened up, bone taken out, parts missing that were not previously there.

Instead of joy and bliss, would be shock and horror. I thought you were going to make a woman. What is this I see? Adam may have thought that God wasn't dealing very wisely about the matter at all. And just looking at the situation, well it might be hard to come to any other conclusion if that's all you saw.

But what we need to learn is to stop looking at the way things appear from our vantage point. Now think of the way Adam could have reasoned. He could have thought, well God purposed to do me good and what I'm going through at this moment isn't bringing about that good, therefore something isn't quite right about what God is doing here.

Well that would be very wrong headed. A better way to reason would be this. Well, God purposed to do me good. I also know that the good he has in mind is higher even than I am able to conceive. Therefore, since the end goal is beyond my understanding, the means to get there must be beyond my understanding also.

It's a strange thing that we should ever believe that we are wiser than God. But as strange as that is, in many ways, that's exactly what we truly believe. Well, blessed is the man that can say in his heart with full conviction, this God, his way is perfect.

The word of the Lord.

Proves true.

He's a shield for all those who take refuge in him. For who is a God but the Lord and who is a rock except our God? Let's move on. Verses 22 and 23. Now, it doesn't take much deep commentary here to explain the wisdom of God on display.

We can get caught up in the weeds and the details, but let us just take a moment and stand back and look at what we just read here. God took some flesh and bone out of the side of Adam and created a woman from it.

Who but God can do this? And this is just one of the things, one of the many things that God did in these first six days. He created the woman, the man, the creatures, the plants, the land, the sea, the stars, the planets, the galaxies, everything we know about life and have yet to discover about life.

Now, ask one of your friends after the service today, how was your week? What did you do this week? And maybe you'll get a response like, well, not much. I paid some bills maybe, got some groceries. Funny creatures we are that God should ever, or that we should ever.

Have the thought.

That we have something to teach God. Do you want to know what man's contribution was here? Adam gave her a name. He said, she shall be called woman. That's all he did. Well, I think that says it all. Well, not only does our text show how God is good to man and how he deals wisely with man, but it shows us last of all that God desires to be in loving union with man.

Christ’s Exclusive and Unreserved Love for His Bride

Therefore a man, verse 24, shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Now, there's much to learn from this passage about God's design for marriage.

However, we know from Ephesians 5 that this verse, on a much deeper and significant level, is speaking about the great mystery of Christ and the church. In fact, marriage itself was designed principally for the purpose of showing us what union with Christ is like.

And when the mystery will be fully revealed in the last day, and we come to see and understand just what that union is, marriage, having served its purpose, will be no more. In its present state, there is no man that can fully understand or appreciate just what that union is.

Words cannot adequately capture the essence of it. Our minds cannot fully comprehend it. Instead, the Bible gives us illustrations of what union with Christ is like. It speaks of things we know, things that share some similarity in some way.

Union with Christ is like a branch being united to the vine. And here we learn something of the vitality and power communicated to us through that union. It's like stones of a great structure being joined together and built upon the cornerstone.

And this shows us that union with Christ is something about it, about the foundation and strength of that union. It's like the head being united to the body. And this shows us something of the structure and order of that union.

All these things point to and illustrate different aspects of our union with Christ. But in the union of marriage, we see the greatest aspect of all, that union with Christ is a loving union. Now, for the remainder of this sermon, I would like to bring out two aspects of this loving union.

I would like to consider both the exclusive love of Christ for His bride and the unreserved love of Christ for His bride. So what does this verse teach us about the exclusive love of Christ for His bride?

Let's consider God's original design and intention for marriage. He designed for two individuals, namely one man and one woman, to be joined together in such a bond that the two may be considered one connected unit.

The man and the woman enter into an exclusive relationship with one another. That means that they become one with another and at the same time, become unavailable to all others. And because the husband and wife are exclusive to one another, a degree of love is then opened up and made possible that cannot possibly be experienced any other way.

Think of the way that love is only heightened and intensified when that love is directed wholly at one individual and not shared with others. We see the beauty of this exclusive love in the Song of Solomon, where the two are so enraptured in each other's love that they have no eyes for any other.

So rich and pure and undefiled is such love. Now what a difference we see between that picture and we compare it to Solomon's actual life. King Solomon, it is said, loved many wives. Now you'd think that this would be a description of one so full of love that he has so much to spare, like an overflowing fountain, that it must overflow to many women to be able to contain this kind of love.

Well, and so full was the love of Solomon that he had 700 wives in addition to his 300 concubines. But what appeared to be much love turned out to be no love at all. Solomon, in his poetry that he wrote, certainly wrote richly and beautifully about the exclusive love that was better than life.

And whether he was speaking of his own experience or creating poetry out of the imagination of his heart, I don't know. Even if he did experience that love for a time in his first marriage, he didn't experience it very long.

For in adding to himself wives and concubines, he actually shut himself out from the very possibility of ever enjoying that bliss personally. In giving his love to many, he never gave it fully to any.

Now some, when they hear that Christ is united to his bride in a bond of love, and then consider that the bride is made up of not just one, but of a vast multitude of individuals, may begin to suspect that Christ's love for them individually must therefore be diminished in the way that Solomon's love would have been diminished towards his many wives.

Now one way that Christians may try to sort this out in their heads is by making the church out to be, and conceiving the church to be as something no more than a collection of, or no more a collection of individuals, but rather one conglomerate mass joined together.

The way you might look on a very large crowd and see not individuals, but rather just a sea of people. And with this understanding, Christ's love is exclusive in that he directs all of it upon this one great ocean called the church, but what happens in that case is that individuality becomes lost and absorbed into the one new collective identity, while some religions and several Star Trek episodes have based the idea on this kind of philosophy.

So in that case, you maintain Christ's exclusive and pure love for the church, but you lose any notion of Christ's love for you individually. I think that's the wrong way.

To look at it.

Christ does not look on his bride as an undefined, impersonal mass. Consider just this one scripture. To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that nobody knows, except the one who receives it.

Do you see the special and unique way that God views and relates to individuals? They do not disappear into a nameless mass. Jesus Christ looks at you and communes with you individually. His relationship with you is separate and unique from every other person.

In the world.

Well, then you ask, so doesn't this still make his love diluted then? Isn't this just like Solomon still, who had many wives, loved many, yet none? Well, we must remember that though Jesus is a man, he is not just any man.

He is God in human flesh. He is able to do what is impossible for ordinary men. Have you ever wondered how it can be that at this very moment, he is interceding for countless multitudes individually? That he is enjoying sweet communion, not with one person at a time, but many individuals all at once?

That he may be both grieving over many and rejoicing over many all at the same time? Or how about this, have you ever wondered how he could be bleeding and suffering and dying on a cross, yet even in the moment of his dying breath, be sustaining and upholding the entire universe by his own power?

Jesus Christ is the God man. He is like you and I in some ways, but in other ways, he is altogether in a realm that no man can see or know or ever will be able to see or know. So when we think of the precious, exclusive love that marriage is designed for, know that not one drop is lost of Christ's unique and precious love that he has only for you.

That love is exclusive. It's not shared. It's not diluted. Well, not only do we have here a picture of Christ's exclusive love, but we see also his unreserved love. This is seen not in the marriage union itself, where the two souls are knit together as one, but we see it when we consider the cost involved in obtaining that union.

God says in verse 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother. A man must be willing to restructure his life and relationships to accommodate and make room for the new union he is entering into.

The union of marriage is so important as to take preeminence in a person's life above all their former life and relationships. So strong is this union that even natural blood relationships must give way and give place to the marriage union.

For this marriage union to flourish, certain sacrifices have to be made no matter how precious. His love for her must be unreserved. This unreserved love that we see intended by God in marriage is designed as a model to teach us of Christ's love for the church.

Christ's love for you and for I is unreserved. He holds back none of it, but gives it all. And what a man demonstrates of his love for his bride in leaving father and mother, Christ demonstrates by leaving behind what is precious to him for the sake of his bride.

Christ so loved the church who was to become his bride that he was willing to pay whatever cost to obtain her. Such is his love to her that there is no price that is too high. No point where Jesus could say, I'm willing to go this far, but no further.

He laid aside not just some things that were precious to him, but all that was precious to him that he may have her as his own. Well, so what are those precious things that Christ laid behind? Well, we could consider the way he laid aside his glory, the glory that he had in the bosom of the father, where he was clothed with power and majesty and all authority.

How he left that dwelling place with God in heaven to become a lowly man and to be born in a feeding trough in a little town called Bethlehem. Christ emptying himself and becoming a man was one of the great sacrifices he made for you and I.

This, however, was just the tip of the iceberg. If we really want to see what Christ left behind that was precious to him, we have no better place to look than to the cross. And here we see that Christ not only left behind his glory, but he left behind life itself.

Now, there is no greater display of love than a person can show than to lay down their life for another. And there have been many in this world who have done just that. But what Christ left behind on the cross was not just physical life.

The cost he was going to have to pay was on an order of magnitude incomparable to the mere separation of body and soul. Christ, if he was to have his bride, would have to pay the ultimate price. He would not only have to die a physical death, but a spiritual death.

He would not only have to be separated from his body, but separated from the very presence of God himself. Hebrews 2 .9 says that Jesus tasted death for every man. Now, we know that this can't be speaking of physical death because we all still have to die.

But Jesus tasted utter separation from the goodness of the Father. And for Jesus to make that sacrifice was worse than a thousand deaths, for he knew the goodness of God like no other. Now, we have a number of newlyweds here.

And if I were to ask some of you how you would feel if you were separated from your spouse 10 years ago, the truth is, you may not feel any different at all because, in fact, you were separated. You were not married yet.

You may have not even known your spouse. But if I ask you how you would feel if you were separated from your spouse now, that you have been married sometime, the answer would be quite different and you would be impacted a great deal.

Now, fast-forward the picture to where you have been married 20 or 30 years or more. After having grown closer and closer together, your heart's being knit tighter and tighter. And I ask you then how you would feel if you were separated from your spouse.

And it might be all you could bear. There are those who have been married for most of their lives, decades even. And when the time comes that one of them is taken away through death, the one left behind can get very close to the point of even losing the will to live.

So great was their love. So great the loss. Now, it's one thing for a sinner to be separated from the presence of God. It's a horrible thing. Of how much greater a loss must it have been for the eternal Son of God to be cut off from the presence of the everlasting Father.

This is a loss that no man can know or truly understand. And whether that separation lasted three hours or 3 ,000 millennia, it would make no difference. For the Son of God was able to go through in three hours what a mere man could not experience through an entire eternity with anguish of soul.

And Christ was well aware of this cost. That's why we see Him in the Garden of Gethsemane sweating great drops of blood in the anticipation of the cross and pleading with His Father with all His might, if there were any other way He may secure His bride than having to drink that cup.