Woman Was Created For Man

Woman Was Created for Man

All right.

Good morning.

If you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis 2 .18, and we're gonna be reading Genesis 2 .18 through 25. Please go ahead and stand whenever you're ready. Today we're gonna be continuing our study on basic truths, and the basic truth that we're gonna be studying today is the truth that woman was created for man.

Let's read Genesis 2 .18.

Verse 18.

Then the Lord God said, it is not good that 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 his name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to all the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he 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 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. This is the word of the Lord.

All right, let's pray.

Lord, we do thank you for the opportunity that we have to continue to look at these great truths in Genesis, which are meant to help us to understand who we are and why we're here and what you made us to do.

Pray that you bless our time here today to help us to learn great things from your word. In your son's name I pray, amen.

You may be seated.

Role Confusion in Marriage and the Home

About seven or eight years ago, a friend of mine came up to me for counsel. As he was wont to do. But in his particular situation, he was basically a guy who was in ministry. So he was in ministry, formal ministry.

He had two jobs. So he was a bivocational pastor. One of his jobs was he worked in the military. So he was a man who was given a lot of responsibility in that kind of area. And then he was also given responsibility as it relates to the church.

But behind the scenes, his home situation was somewhat of a mess, okay? So he was a guy who worked about 60 hours a week. He was a guy who worked about 60 hours a week with all of his responsibilities or more.

That may be on the conservative estimate. But he was a pretty busy guy. And he was married. He had a wife. They'd been married for a few years at that point. They had a couple of kids. But every day he'd come home, he'd come home to a house that looked like an absolute wreck.

That was the situation. So he'd come home, the house was a mess. And when he'd ask his wife about it, she would basically kind of gaslight him, essentially. And she would tell him that, you know, you don't know how hard it is to be a homemaker.

You don't know what it's like to be a wife. These kids are needy. And they have, it takes a lot to take care of them. And, you know, you don't understand. And she would say this over and over again to him.

But as he would come home, he really felt like he was being gaslighted. You know, the same pile of laundry was right there where it was the day before. And that lasted for days and days and days. He looked at the sink, the same pile of dishes in the sink that were just piling up and getting bigger and bigger.

When he looked at her Netflix history, one of the things he noticed was that she was watching hours and hours and hours a day of TV shows. I mean, her thing was anime. So she was watching anime cartoons for hours and hours a day.

But then she was telling him that, you know, this is just so busy and you can't really understand how hard it is while nothing was actually happening. She refused to basically cook for him. She refused to clean for him.

She refused to do the laundry. She really didn't do much of anything, but she was a babysitter. She kept the kids from dying. So I guess that's something. But I mean, he felt like this was, like something was wrong was happening with this and that she was lying to him.

And in order to test it, he basically, you know, on Saturday when she would go out to have her me time because it's stressful to be around kids and all that, he would clean the house. So as he cleaned the house, he realized that with kids, so while watching all the kids, he could clean the house from, you know, top to bottom in about an hour and a half.

That's how long it took him while watching the kids and keeping everyone from dying and, you know, feeding them and doing all the things that he has to do. It took him about an hour and a half, him an hour and a half to do it.

But then he was absolutely puzzled by the fact that she couldn't seem to accomplish that in the course of a week. And so, I mean, he's coming to me and he asked me, you know, what do I do about this?

She's lying to me.

She's spending all her time doing other things. What do I do, you know? So I told him, my advice to him was what she had expected him to do was to come home and basically do all of her work that she had been letting pile up.

And so over the past few months, you know, he had been, he had gotten himself into a position where he's trying to help her with her job. And what that basically meant was he's doing his 60 hours a week, he's coming home, and he's trying to do all the homemaking stuff that she is refusing to do.

And so he asked me, what do I need to do about it? And I mean, I told him what any sane person would do, would tell him to do. And that is, hey, stop doing anything. Quit doing the dishes. Quit doing the laundry.

Like, what are you doing the dishes?

What are you doing the laundry?

What are you cooking? What are you cleaning? What are you doing all that for? You work 60 hours a week. You know it doesn't take that long to do all these things. Why are you doing it? And I told him to stop doing it.

He said, but you don't understand what's gonna happen. You don't understand what's gonna happen if I stop doing it. If I stop doing it, my life is gonna be miserable, right? My life is gonna be miserable.

She's gonna be mad at me. I said, just, you stop doing it. Make her do her job. The Bible says that I've seen that there's nothing better than a man rejoiced in the toil with which he toils. This is God's gift to man.

Like, this is her work. You're robbing her of her dignity. You're taking, you think you're helping her by taking over her job for her and doing all of her job and enabling her to be lazy and worthless.

You're not helping her. Stop doing her job.

Let her do her job. You do your job.

Let her do her job and see what happens. So he tried this plan.

I told him, I warned him,.

This is probably gonna get worse before it gets better. Okay, this is probably not gonna be, you're gonna have to go through some conflict here. He said, you know, if I do this, she's just not gonna do anything.

She's not gonna cook. I'm not gonna have anything to eat. I'm not gonna have any clothes to wear. I said, well, you just look at her and say, I'm not gonna do it. If you don't cook for me, I'm not gonna eat.

I mean, you probably need to go on a diet anyway. So just, this will be a good dieting opportunity for you, right? So tell her, you're not gonna, if she doesn't make any food for you, you're just not gonna eat.

And if she doesn't wash her clothes, you're just gonna wear dirty clothes. Just put your foot down and say, enough is enough, no more, right? So he did that and she was really mad about it and she basically started cooking all the food that he hated for him.

You're like, that was her plan for the next few months, to cook all the food that he hated.

But it got better.

I mean, after about two months of them fighting it out and sorting it out, everything got remarkably better. And that was like a pivot point for their life where everything began to change. But I say all that to say that this is a dramatic example of something that I would consider fairly obvious.

It was a fairly obvious example of role confusion and I doubt that many people in the room would have told them to follow that plan exactly like that. And most of you are probably tempted to scream at me in your mind saying, shouldn't he help her with her job?

And are saying that men should not do any of the housework and cooking and cleaning, while we're missing the main point that you're looking at a situation that is completely and totally imbalanced. Now, I wish this was a rare example.

I mean, I wish this kind of thing was a rare example that I'm putting forward as something that's gone significantly awry. But it's not. Before I, at different points in my life, I've worked in a granite countertop shop.

And part of the job of working in a granite countertop shop, I made templates for granite countertops. So I went into some very wealthy homes, normal homes. I mean, these weren't just like lower class kind of homes that I was going into on a regular basis.

And I mean, for years of my life, while I was in seminary, I mean, after I was in seminary and while I was working at churches, I've gone into homes on a regular basis. And one of the things that I've found in going into home after home after home after home is a significant majority of homes today are completely uncared for, completely untended.

And I know that you may not have the perspective I have because you don't go into homes necessarily on a regular basis. But I mean, I would go into rich homes that were completely uncared for and untended, that looked like a disaster.

I'd go into poor homes that were completely untended and cared for that looked like a disaster. I would go into homes where the wives were there and they had stuff piled all on their countertops that I would have to somehow figure out how to communicate to them.

They have to move so I can do my job and make the template for them. And they would look at me like I was a crazy person for asking them to move the junk off their countertops so that I could actually do my job because I was like the only person in their life who's ever asked them to do anything, do you understand?

This is not uncommon. So you think about the statistics right now of what's happening in our society, there's a comprehensive role confusion that's happened in our society that's reflected by just basic stats, right?

So if you look at the U .S. Census Bureau report in 2022, here's a report of opposite-sex married couple family groups with children under 15 and it's gonna give you the stay-at-home status of both spouses, this is for 2022 so it's looking back on the past year, 2021.

So these are fairly recent, okay? So this is for married families, right? Opposite-sex married family. It's a shame that we have to put that there. Children under 15, this is the working status, stay-at-home status of both spouses.

So mother in the labor force for one or more weeks last year, that's 2021, 71 .5%, 71 .5%. Mother not in the labor force caring for the family, I'm surprised it was this high for the whole year, that's 25 .3%.

So with the traditional family, that's husband working, wife staying at home caring for the kids, 21 .7%. And then the wife, homemaker, husband not working at all, that would be 3 .6%, okay? So that's a relatively small amount, but think about this, traditional family is about 21 .7 at this point.

The father in the labor force, one or more weeks last year, it's what you would expect, it's what you expect, 94 .3%, right, that's kind of what you expect. Stay-at-home dads, I mean, this is a rising phenomenon even within the church where guys are pursuing being stay-at-home dads.

This is not talking about stay-at-home and working, this is stay-at-home in order to care for the, provide the primary care for the children. So 1 .5 at this point. So you think about these stats, right now I've looked at a variety of stats related to this, but give or take, dual income with kids, statistics are about 66%, right?

That's the posture. Now, where does this come from? Egalitarians, I mean, they obviously reject everything the Bible has to say about roles, right? Egalitarians hate the Bible. They know what it says, and there are many times when you think about the way that atheist unbelievers interact with the Bible, particularly when it comes to a lot of the problem passages.

Unbelievers can be much more honest about what's in the Bible than Christians can be, okay? So you look around the state of affairs, I gave you some statistics. Mothers of children under 15 are in the workforce at a rate of about 71 .5%.

The Christian community is very little to distinguish them from the regular stats in the world. This is just the state of affairs. The egalitarian posture, they openly reject the concept.

Of biblical roles.

Men and women are viewed as basically the same. Household roles are shared, right? So if I were to basically try to define a man's role and try to define a woman's role, an egalitarian is just gonna reject that.

They're gonna say, hey, there's no, they're the same, right? They can be equally competent to do either role. They openly reject the concept. That's one of the reasons why they hate the Bible. They hate the Bible because the Bible teaches that there are gender roles.

So they hate it. Now, Christians who believe in gender roles, it's a little more complicated because on paper, and I'm talking to us, okay, I'm talking to us. We say we believe in gender roles, all right?

We say we believe in gender roles. Our church says we believe in gender roles, you understand? That you formally embrace there are gender roles, right? If you were to take a theology exam, you would check, yeah, it's made men and women different, there's different gender roles.

Problem is, by and large, Christians, even Reformed Christians, almost especially Reformed Christians at times, they reject the ontological foundation for biblical roles, meaning like you reject the idea that man is uniquely competent for his role and woman is uniquely competent.

For her role.

You may embrace it in certain areas in a very minimal way, but then if I point out other ways, you'll probably get pretty uncomfortable. Reject their ontological foundation, like in terms of their being, their makeup.

We often embrace a very bare minimum approach to roles,.

Right?

So the husband, in Reformed Christian circles, like everyone believes, yeah, the husband should probably work, right? Everyone believes that. Maybe he should probably work and provide.

We all believe that.

It's kind of an added bonus if you can get the wife to stay home, right? But you, you know, life is complicated, you don't necessarily have to do that. I mean, this, who knows, maybe she can still do her job while working 50 hours a week as a homemaker, but then you don't even define, you're not even really allowed to define what her job actually is.

But every situation's different. Don't wanna be judgmental, don't wanna draw harsh lines. That's kind of our approach in general. We've significantly redefined the husband's leadership role. Okay, as Christians?

So leadership is not leadership in any conventional sense. Like leaders should be leading very different than in the home, like that's the way we understand. Leaders should be, husbands should be leading very different than they would in any other area of life, so we've totally redefined the husband's leader role.

We basically refuse to hold a woman accountable for anything related to her role. Like almost, like there's nothing. I can't list anything that, I'm gonna list some things the Bible holds a woman accountable to do today, and you're gonna be tempted to reject that at every single point, right?

So there's almost nothing that we will allow to be considered the woman's role. The husband, we think, yeah, he should probably, he should probably work at least a little bit. We're probably way more open to stay-at-home dad stuff than now than what we should be, right?

And we've totally redefined husband's role. And whatever, we say we believe in submission, but whatever submission, like husband being the head and wife being the smith, it's basically reduced to a husband having the hypothetical tie-breaking authority that he should almost never use.

So if there's a disagreement, he hypothetically, he has the power to veto it, but he should probably basically never use that, or else he's being tyrannical, and he's wielding his authority as the Gentiles do, and he should basically be patient and wait and see if he can get her along.

So summary, husband should probably work a job. He also has hypothetical tie-breaking veto power. And if his wife disagrees, he should probably, you know, not really stick to it.

He should probably just throw his guns.

And win her over slowly and see if he can get on the same page. Beyond that, there's no real division of labor. The wife basically must be consulted for every decision as she's viewed as just as competent and capable of performing the job as leadership as a husband.

And obviously, that can't be consistently applied because that's not really the way life works, but husband's job is basically just to be a nice guy and to figure out what his wife wants to do and do it.

That's kind of what we've reduced leadership to in the church. Why is this all important? It's important because God has spoken about these things to great length in his word. That's why it's important.

And not only that, because the picture of marriage between a wife submitting to her husband and these different roles that we're gonna talk about today is a picture that's supposed to point us to something greater than that, than that mere earthly picture.

So Ephesians 5 .22 says, "'Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.'". I can't think of something that's more shocking than that. If you actually sit on that and dwell on it. "'For the husband is the head of the wife, "'even as Christ is the head of a church, "'his body and is himself its savior.

"'Now as the church submits to Christ, "'so also wives should submit in everything "'to their husbands.'". You live in a time that there's almost nothing that you can put in that category of everything, but it is what it is.

"'Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church "'and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, "'having cleansed her by the washing of the water "'with the words, that he might present the church "'to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle "'or any such thing, that she might be holy "'and without blemish.

"'In the same way, husbands should love their wives "'as their own body, he who loves his wife loves himself, "'for no one ever hated his own flesh, "'but nourishes it and cherishes it, "'just as Christ loves to the church, "'because we are members of his body.'".

This marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship with the church, and when we get the picture of marriage wrong in an earthly sense, we're distorting this picture that it's supposed to be conforming to, and there are obviously dramatic consequences of getting these things wrong.

When you look around the society today, you're living in the wreckage of men and women embracing, men and women totally rejecting their roles. Everything that you see, all the problems that you can see are in some way connected to that.

Now, I know that we're used, in the primary and foundational sense, you look at the world, you look at the chaos that you see, it's because God has rejected, or it's because man has rejected God as his maker, but what we're not talking about is disembodied kind of errors.

There's a logical connection between man rejecting God as its maker and failing to fulfill his design that is leading to all the problems that you see, so God's, there's a punishment in the act itself, and our act of rebellion against God and how he's made us is leading to chaos.

That's the point. So today, what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be looking at Genesis 2 again, and our purpose here today, as we're looking at Genesis 2, 18, is to basically ask the question about what is being communicated here.

Now, just by way of note, one of the things to realize is if you're going to study what the Bible says about marriage, and you're going to study what the Bible says about marriage roles, when you look at the New Testament, what you're gonna find is that what you see in the New Testament is constantly pointing back to these opening chapters of Genesis.

So the New Testament is providing an authoritative, divinely-inspired interpretation of the very truths that are found here. So the New Testament teaching on marriage is not new stuff. I mean, the only thing that's new is the mystery, so to speak, that the husband's relationship to his wife mirrors that of Christ to the church, but what you're not gonna find as you look, I mean, and that's not even completely new.

As you look through the Old Covenant, what you're gonna find is that there are hints of that.

All along the way.

It may not be stated quite that explicitly, but here's the point, is just to say that everything you see in the New Testament is gonna be, all those observations are drawing on very specific details in the text of Genesis, which we might want to understand.

So as I said, the basic truth that we're gonna be talking about today is the truth that woman was created for man, and it's very difficult to read Genesis 2 and come away with any kind of conclusion but that, but that's the obvious, overwhelming thrust of the passage that we're talking about, that man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man, and this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, commenting on this passage here today.

So Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11, eight, says, for man was not made from woman, but woman was made from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That's what it says. When you open up the, when you open up Genesis 2, 18, this is how it starts.

It says that, then the Lord God said, it's not good for man to be alone, and then as we go through, we're gonna see that God makes a woman from man and presents him to man, for man, to be a helper for man, okay?

So when God looks at the situation, as we've said in past lessons, everything that we've seen so far in the text is telling us that man in his single and solitary state is not good. So the basic problem that Genesis 2, 18 is trying to address is the problem that man cannot accomplish humanity's shared mission by himself.

So what is humanity's shared mission within the passage? At the very least, God has other purposes that the rest of Revelation are going to tell you, but there's this primary purpose that God has for man found in Genesis 1, 28.

God blessed them, and he said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Man can't do it by himself, can he? Man does not reproduce asexually. He's not like a starfish or something. Cut a limb off and grow another one. It's not really the way it works. So man can't accomplish humanity's shared mission by himself.

He needs a woman, right? So that's the basic problem that the text is trying to address. So what happens? Genesis 2, 18, it's not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. So woman, here's the point, woman is made to help man accomplish humanity's shared mission.

Now when you look at that, this is a statement on roles, right? This is a statement on roles. What woman is designed to do? She's made from man and created for man to help him accomplish humanity's shared mission.

Woman was created to play the role of the helper. Now at this point, all the egalitarians are outraged because they understand what I've said, right? They all know what I've said. And the conservative Christians aren't because we generally play games with the plain meaning of passages, right?

So when I say this, when I say woman was created to play the role of a helper, what you're tempted to hear, I imagine, is something like this. God created woman to help fix man's inadequacies. And then parenthetical remark, woman, women have no inadequacies.

Now you may not say it exactly like that, but I know I had a young couple who were basically coming to me because of how pastors teach this passage every single time, arguing over this very point, right?

So the lady came to me and basically was asking me the question, do men need women more than women need men? That was the question she was asking. And she was getting that from this verse, right? This verse, it's not good for man to be alone, so man needs a helper made for him.

So God makes a helper for man to fix his inadequacies. And that's what every pastor jokes about. Every time they teach a man is inadequate, he needs a woman to fix his inadequacy. And you know what, that's true.

There's some truth to that. Man is completely inadequate in certain respects, and he's not completely inadequate in other respects. The issue is that man is completely inadequate in certain respects, and woman is completely inadequate in certain respects.

We're allowed to say the first statement, we're not allowed to say the second, you understand? So here's the point. The truth, what is the truth? Man is utterly incompetent to do women's role. Woman is utterly incompetent to do man's role.

You understand?

That's the way it works. Now, if you look at CVs, you look at movies, man is pictured as the incompetent buffoon, and woman is the omnicompetent gift to fix man's inadequacy. But the reality is, they're both incompetent to do each other's roles.

Now, you know this, you know this. Intuitively, you know this with one of the roles, okay? You know this with one of the roles. So let's talk about the role we all know this with, right? Woman is obviously a creation designed by God to make children, isn't she?

Is man competent to grow a baby in his belly? Think about it. Once he makes his original contribution to this project, is there anything that he can do to help that baby grow long, right? I mean, not really, not really.

That's on her, right? Now, if he comes and he like rubs her belly and he talks to the baby, is that gonna make the baby grow better or something like that? I mean, whatever help he plays is very minimal to the growth and development of that baby in terms of the actual process itself.

Man is not a child bearer, is he? Man's not a child bearer, understand? He's not. Now, how does man help woman bear children? How does she help her to bear a child, right? Well, he's gonna make that original contribution, but beyond that, how does he help her to grow that child in her stomach?

All right, well, he does that through his roles, doesn't he? So what are his roles?

Protection.

Woman is a weaker vessel. If he doesn't protect a woman from danger, what's gonna happen? That birth may get stopped, right? Due to the actions of violent men. So he's not helping her grow it inside.

Or something like that.

He's not doing that. He's helping her through his role. Protection, provision, right? There's some points in pregnancy where a woman has a very difficult time moving, right? In order to grow that baby, she's gonna have to eat.

How does he help the process? He helps the process not by trying to birth the baby for her, right? Not by taking over her role. He does it by giving her provision, right? Protection, provision. How does he help her?

He helps her by leading her. I know that you live in a world that thinks that man shouldn't have anything to say whatsoever about childbirth and childbearing and decisions that happen in the labor room.

I mean, in fact, as I've been to hospitals, the nurses will not look at me. They'll look at Elizabeth and ask her all the questions because they don't expect any input from man over there on the couch.

You stay over there and we don't want your opinion or advice on any leadership or whatsoever. But how would a man help a woman in general? I mean, there's a lot of emotions that come. There's a lot of hormones that come through childbearing.

There's a lot of stuff, right? But men are designed to shepherd their wives, to lead their wives, to help them to think rightly about this trial, to help them think biblically about this trial. But here's the point, man can't step in and build the thing for her.

She's, her body's building the thing. Do you understand? So here's the point I'm trying to make. I'm trying to say that we think, when you think woman is made for a helper for man, what you're predisposed to think is man is completely inadequate and woman is designed to step in and either do man's job for her or help him or either take over his job for her or tell him how to do his job, right?

Like that's what we think. Whereas when you think about what's actually happened, man is made with certain roles that are defined. The way man helps woman, you see, the way man helps woman, I'm using help in a different sense, is by doing his job.

The way woman helps man is by doing her job. You understand? So now we, like what I'm trying to say is we understand that as it relates to childbearing. We understand that as it relates to childbearing.

But I want to submit to you today that the same kind of principles that are at work in childbearing are at work with all the other roles. Same kind of thing. So God made man to lead, to protect, to provide.

God made female to follow, to be a nurturer and a caregiver, to be a homemaker. That's what he made her to do, okay? We believe with just the making of the baby part that yeah, man can't help with that.

With a lot of the other stuff, we can pretend like we're stepping in and taking over things and doing all these things, right? But it's the same logic throughout. So think about the logic of protection for a second.

In the real world, you know, when anarchy reigns, everyone understands that why man is made to protect woman. So when government shuts down, you're, it's law of the jungle and all that, right? Like when it's just sinful man against sinful man, there's no law, it's all chaos, everyone knows that man's made to protect woman.

Everyone knows that. So imagine yourself in that kind of post-apocalyptic scenario, the zombie apocalypse happened, right? And it's all chaos at this point. Step into that world for a second. What would you think about a woman who's basically telling man how to, like his fighting strategy or something like that to protect her from danger?

It's not really gonna work, right? Like, I mean, she's not equipped to protect herself, he's equipped to protect her, and there's very real dangers outside of the world, and she can't really take that over for him.

She's not made to take it over for him. She's not strong enough to take it over for him. I mean, I've seen videos of one man, like, fighting against, like, in UFC kind of format, like, four women at a time, and one man can take out four women at a time.

Like, that's just, it's just, you take, like, you take someone like Mike Tyson, he could probably take out 10 women at a time, or something like that, it's just the way it is. You know, so, but the thing is, like, man's made physically stronger than woman, woman's made physically weaker than man.

When it comes to protection, woman can't step in and, like, protect man for her, only in very rare occasions, right? Like, is she going to be able to do this, and not well, she's not designed for it. It's obvious she's not designed for that role, it's obvious that she's not made for that role.

Like, when you think about these role divisions, they're grounded in reality, they're grounded in biological realities. So, so, think about this, males, girls, leadership, protection, provision. With protection, I think you mostly agree with that.

That's grounded in biology, isn't it? Men are stronger, woman is the weaker vessel. It makes sense, he's been given that role because it's grounded in biology. What about provision? It's the same, okay, it's the same.

Do you understand it's the same? Think about the curse in the garden, think about the curse in the garden. What is it? For a woman, in pain, you will bring forth children, right? Your desire, and then there's a battle for the sexes, your desire will be for your husband, or he'll rule over you.