The Glory of Women | Genesis 2:14-18 (May 7, 2023)

Genesis 2 and the Creation of Woman

If you have your Bible, you can turn in your Bible to Genesis chapter 2, Genesis chapter 2. We're going to be in verses 18 through 24 in just a minute. If you're new with us, we're taking a break from our normal course of preaching through books of the Bible and we are doing this in order to apply what we saw when we went through the book of Jude just a few weeks ago.

And so the book of Jude focused on fighting against false teaching and false teachers in the church and one of the ways we saw that we fight against false teaching is with true teaching. And so what we want to do is fight against a popular false teaching that's wreaking havoc on our society, that of androgyny, the collapsing of male and female into some amalgamation of the two.

And we're going to do this by giving true teaching on God making us male and female. And so last week we looked at Genesis 1 and then throughout the whole Bible and we focused on the glory of men and we saw God's design for manhood.

We saw God's design for men and this week we'll look at Genesis chapter 2 and then the whole Bible to see the glory of women, the glory of women. So last week we saw in Genesis 1 that God created man in his own image, male and female.

He created them and so both men and women are created in the image of God, which means both men and women are called to rule the world in God's stead. That's part of what it means to be made in God's image, is we rule the world in God's stead.

Together men and women are to order the world towards fruitfulness and productivity. That's why God put us here, part of it. So in that sense we have a shared calling and a shared mission, but we also saw that men and women have particular glories in how they go about fulfilling that mission.

And these particular glories are manifest in distinctive natures and duties that go with men and women. And so this morning let's see from God's word the particular glory of women. Let's begin reading God's word in Genesis chapter 2 verses 18 -24 and the word of God says this.

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 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.

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.

Amen. This is the word of God to us this morning and the first thing that we notice here in this passage is that for the first time in the creation account that something is not good. So if you read through Genesis 1 you keep seeing this phrase repeated, and God saw that it was good.

And seeing in the Bible often has to do with judgment, for making a judgment on something. So God created and then he passes judgment on what he made and he saw that it was good. But here he sees that something is not good.

It's not good for man to be alone. So Genesis 2 is retelling the creation story. It's a retelling of the narrative and adding more details than what you have in chapter 1. And at this point in the retelling, here in verse 18, God had made the animals and God had made Adam, but he had not yet made Eve.

Now he created Adam with a purpose, with a goal, with a mission. Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, subdue it, take dominion over it. You see, Adam was to make the rest of the world that was untamed like the garden that God had crafted.

But he was alone and that was not good. And why? Why was that not good for man to be alone? When you think about how big the world is, you think about how big that mission is, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over it.

How was he going to go about this task alone? It was too big. More so, there was no way for him to multiply and fill the earth by himself. And so God had brought all the animals to Adam for him to name, but none of them, he quickly saw, were suitable to be of any help to Adam in the work that God had called him to.

So that's got to be kind of depressing if you're Adam, right? You're ready to settle down and get married, to be fruitful and to multiply and fill the earth, and all he saw were the dogs, the cats, the cows, the antelopes, the fainting goats, all the weird funny animals that God made.

None of them were a help. None of them were fit for him. It's not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. So, continuing in verse 21, 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. Can you imagine how Adam must have felt when he wakes up? Can you imagine him when he wakes up and sees Eve?

This is a good day for Adam. He had seen all the beasts of the field and the livestock and the birds, and now here is one like him, but different. Like him, but pretty. He had noticed that all the animals have a match, male and female, but he had none, and now he does.

And he responds with poetry, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. And he names her. And we see in verse 24 that this is the basis of marriage. That in the general course of things, man and woman are to come together in marriage for the purpose of together exercising authority on God's behalf in the world, ordering the world towards fruitfulness and productivity, because they are made in the image of God.

Now, because there, verse 24, where we see that it's coming together in marriage, a lot of what we'll say this morning, a lot of the application that we'll make this morning, it's going to have reference to marriage.

It's going to have reference to a woman and her husband, but I know that not every woman in this room is married, and there's various reasons. Sometimes it's the result of sin and bad choices. Sometimes it's the result of the sin and bad choices of other people.

Sometimes it's the result of being in a fallen world, and some are widowed and some are divorced. Some are not old enough to be buried yet. Sometimes a woman desires to be buried, and it's just a hard providence that she's not.

There's a lot of possible reasons, so I just want to stay up front that even though a lot is going to be in reference to marriage, because God puts this together here in Genesis 18, that the glory of women is not dependent upon marital status.

Even if marriage is the general norm in the course of human affairs. That is, depending on your situation, you may need to take the principle, which doesn't change, and then make the necessary adjustments to apply to your particular situation.

But I just want to state that up front, that the glory of women is not dependent upon marital status, and so nothing here should be construed as against anyone who's not currently married. So with that caveat out of the way, or stated, let's answer the question of that principle that never changes.

What is the glory of women? And again, that answer is found in her nature, in her duties, that God has given particular to women. So another way to say the question is, what are women for? Verse 18 gives us a start on this answer, and it says, I will make him a helper fit for him.

And so the first thing we see here is that Eve was created in relation to Adam. She was to be a helper to him. So however we answer that question of what are women for, we need to take this into account.

Now Eve, the first woman, was made to complement Adam, to help him in the mission that God had given him to tame the earth and bring it into order, to order it towards fruitfulness and productivity, to take dominion upon the earth, to subdue it.

And so her mission is in relation to his. Now saying that will give modern people all sorts of heebie-jeebies because of our social conditioning. But I want to point out, this is a glorious truth actually.

It's not something we should brussel because of. Because it means that if the mission of Eve is bound up with the mission of Adam, and that she's a helper fit for him, then that means that men and women are bound up together toward a common mission, and we are not in competition with one another.

We talked about last week of how some of our society-wide problems are because we perceive things as a battle between the sexes, between men and women, when in fact there's a battle on the sexes. There's a battle on men and women.

But if the mission of Eve is bound up with the mission of Adam, then men and women are together in a shared mission with distinctive roles, distinctive duties, distinctive natures, those type things. But we're in a common mission and we're not in competition with one another.

We're on the same team. That means our differences are not deficiencies, but design. The differences between men and women, there's not deficiencies, but these differences are design. We're on the same team working together in different ways to rule the world, to order it towards productivity and fruitfulness.

Now, people see the word helper there in verse 18, and often will kind of get their feathers ruffled by that word, as if the word helper means less than. I want to argue that they shouldn't. And the reason is, if you go to John 14, 26, do you know what Jesus calls the Holy Spirit?

Helper. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit of God eternal, always existing, the helper. Do you really think the Holy Spirit is less than? Are you really above the same name and type of role as the Holy Spirit of God, the same spirit that hovered over the waters at creation, the same spirit that quickened souls from the dead?

Well, no. And so the glory of woman is to be a helper. And God gives her a nature and a body fit for this task. She is, verse 18 tells us, fit for him. That is, she complements man in ways that are different from, but necessary to Adam, in order that they might together fulfill their mission and calling from God.

And so, like last week, when we saw the duties and virtues and actions of men, this morning I want us to see the corresponding duties and virtues and actions that are the glory of women. And so as a reminder, if you weren't here last week, the duties of men, we said, were to be summarized as lead, provide, and protect.

Lead, provide, and protect. This is the glory of men. And corresponding and complementing these duties of men are those of women. Subdue, fill, and glorify. Subdue, fill, and glorify. And so let's take these in turn.

Subdue, Fill, and Glorify

First, subdue. So we see that men are called to lead, that's what we saw last week, but they are not the only ones called to work. God told both man and woman to subdue the earth, back in Genesis 128.

He told them both. God said to them, subdue the earth. And so women were made to work. Now granted, the type of work may be different, but women were made to work and work hard. And so God did not make women to be Victorian era china dolls that are too dainty to do anything meaningful.

Nor did He make them to be the mid-century housewife who solely existed to look pretty and wait on her husband. No, God made women to put their hands to good work and to work hard, subduing the earth and ordering it towards fruitfulness.

Again, that work might look different, but it's work nonetheless. And of course, women ought to do the right kind of work in the right setting for the right purpose and the right people that you ought to work.

And so the corresponding virtue to this duty of to subdue the earth is, the corresponding virtue is productive. The glorious woman is productive. You read Proverbs 31, you're going to see a productive woman who is caring for her people.

She is not idle, she is not a busybody or a gossip, those things that Paul warns specifically about in the New Testament. She is not those things because she has too much to do. She has too much to get accomplished.

She is a force multiplier in her household, extending the work of her husband and multiplying it manifold. So let's just look at one example, hypothetically. You could have one man who is a faithful Christian, he's got him a small business, and he can do some good in the world, but he can do whatever is limited to one man and his capacity.

We all have capacities, right? He can do so much good in the world. Now his wife, they come together in marriage, she gives him four children, and she gives herself towards being productive with them, raising them to fear God, obey God, and work hard and be productive too, helping them with their education.

And they grow up to be faithful citizens of the community. They contribute in business and in church and in civil government, such that the family ends up having a spiritual impact, an economic impact, a relational impact on the community, and then they raise kids that do the same.

We see this played out in faithful communities, and we have in the past. Now the first man, the original man in question, he could do so much good in the world on his own, right? We could all, whatever our capacity is, that's what we can do.

Well his household produced exponential good, winning exponential glory for King Jesus because of the work of his wife. She took what was there and multiplied it. This is how God made the world. And she multiplied because she gave herself to different but diligent labor.

She took the children, her children gave her, and she turned a profit on them. And this is glorious. So the action that corresponds with the virtue, excuse me, with the duty of subduing, that action is to work hard.

So work hard, ladies, in feeding and clothing and educating and nurturing and healing the people in your care. Work hard in whatever other ways that are suitable to helping your husband and household.

And again, if you're unmarried, I would encourage you just to make the necessary adjustments there to fit your situation. But the principle remains, work hard to fulfill your duty to subdue the earth as a woman.

So the first duty is subdue. The second is to fill. So men are called to provide. We saw that last week. And corresponding to this, women are to fill. And so what we mean by that is when God created the world, He formed it during the first three days of creation.

And then He filled that world that He had made, that He had formed, in the second three days of creation. He formed, and then He filled. And while this isn't hard and fast, I think we see something to masculine and feminine duties here.

Men generally form, and women generally fill. And so a man will build a house, and his wife will make it a home. A man will build a house, and she'll fill it with children and seasonal decorations and homemade cookies and song and laughter and general pleasantness.

See women are experts at filling, and this is their glory. Now the most obvious application of this filling is to fill the world with people. Genesis 1, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. See it restated after the fall, you see it restated in Noah, you see it in several other places in scriptures.

And everything about a woman's body declares that reproduction is a major part of her calling. Now again, make the necessary adjustments for your situation. Sometimes there's the hard providence of infertility, sometimes there's the hard providence of lifelong singleness.

So recognize those situations, limit those with you. But we live in a society that despises fruitfulness, hates it. We have sought to chemically separate reproduction from sex. We have made children a lifestyle choice such that chosen childlessness is a thing even among Christians.

If you go out with a group of kids, you'll find negative comments. We despise fruitfulness. This is unnatural, and it's against God's created order, and it's against His commission, which was for us to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.

And so having children is glorious. Yes, I know, not everybody will, for various reasons we mentioned. But generally speaking, we want to be those who love fruitfulness, and even if that's not our situation, we want to love and support fruitfulness wherever we see it.

The fact that the love of a man and woman can produce another image bearer of God is incredible. The fact that, ladies, you can grow a human being inside of you with very little conscious effort on your part is absolutely amazing.

So I heard an author one time speak on his least favorite phrase in the English language, just a mom. He said this was his least favorite phrase. Somebody would ask, say, what do you do? I'm just a mom.

I'm just raising immortal souls. We've got these images of God over here, and they're going to live forever somewhere. Maybe heaven, maybe hell, we'll see. It just partly depends on me and how I project and teach the gospel to them.

I'm just a mom. Can you see why he hates that phrase? There's no justa to it. Raising up little ones made in the image of God to worship and obey God is one of the most fundamental and glorious tasks in the entire world.

Now, of course, raising children isn't the only way women go about their duty of filling. They fill their homes, and they fill the world with all sorts of good things. But the virtue here is fruitfulness and the cultivation and love of fruitfulness.

Grow to love it, not despise it, and the action that goes along with this is to pour yourself out for the people that are yours, for the people that you love. Give of yourself, ladies, towards fruitfully filling the lives of your people with good things.

Give of yourself to fill your life with lovely people and to fill their lives with lovely things that fruitfulness may abound. Third duty is to glorify. So the first is to subdue, the second is to fill, the third is to glorify.

Men are called to protect, but what are they to protect and guard? That which is glorious. They're to protect glory. Men put their bodies on the line in defense, and women make that which they are defending worth defending.

They make life glorious. And the reason women have a duty to glorify is rooted in the fact that women are glory. We see this in 1 Corinthians 11, 7. For a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

So man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. Now, at first blush you might read that and a modern person might think that there's some sort of hierarchy here and that women are lowest on the totem pole and the least glorious if you reason that way, and therefore the Bible must be misogynistic saying that women are the least glorious.

But that's not how the Bible speaks about things, is it? The Bible says that man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man, so what that means is that woman is the glory of the glory of God. And so when the Bible speaks of things like the song of songs, it doesn't mean it's not that good of a song, right?

I mean, it's the whole book of the Bible. When the Bible talks about the holy of holies, is that the least holy place? No, another name for the holy of holies is the most holy place. And so when the Bible speaks in superlatives, it speaks like this, song of song, holy of holies, glory of glories.

And so the woman is glorious, she is the glory of the glory of God, therefore she has a duty to glorify. She takes a house and makes it a home, she takes a paycheck and she turns it into flour and yeast, then she takes that flour and leashes, she mixes it with water and she turns it into bread and then she further glorifies the bread by spreading honey butter on it.

Glorify. This is why women wear makeup and men do not. She glorifies. It's why she gives so much attention to her hair or to her jewelry. She glorifies. This is why I love our hospitality team here at First Baptist, Ms. Lorene Leeds.

When we have a fellowship meal down in the fellowship hall, you'll notice the linen table cloths and the real silverware and the flower decorations. Sure it would be easier to go bare minimalistic. And if the men were in charge, we'd be eating off a newspaper.

But these ladies make it glorious. A godly woman who works hard, who loves fruitfulness, who has a gentle and quiet spirit, who teaches the younger women she is a glory to her husband who is a glory to God.

The corresponding virtue here is beauty and the action is to adorn and make beautiful. We've got the flowers here. Makes beautiful. Ms. Ruby takes care of the flowers outside, watering them. I see her pull up outside my office window every week taking care of that.

Why? To make beautiful. To glorify. Now we're not just talking about physical outer beauty of a space or outer beauty of a person. That's included. We're talking about the inward beauty as well. The inward beauty of love and faithfulness and gentleness and loyalty.

And so a woman's duties are to subdue, fill, and glorify. And she's to do this as a helper to her husband if she's married. This means her work in these areas are to be oriented towards the home. Or maybe better said towards the household, which includes the home but is broader to include all the people and all the ventures of the family.

And this orientation is rooted in creation. You see man was made from the earth and therefore is oriented towards the world. Woman was made from the man and therefore she is oriented towards her husband and her household.

Or for a young unmarried woman toward her father, his household. We see this in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verses 8 and 9. For man was not made from the woman but woman from man. It's appealing to creation account.

Neither was man created for woman but woman for man. She's a helper fit for him. Paul's going back to Genesis 1 and 2. We see this household orientation in the New Testament as well. For example, Titus 2.

In that passage, what are the older women to teach the younger women? They're teaching them to be reverent in behavior. To teach what is good. To train them to love their husbands and children. Another way to say that is to train them to be into kids and into their husbands.

And it's interesting there that they need to train the young women to love their husbands and their kids and not see them as some sort of hurdle that needs to be overcome to get to the real stuff of life.

And to teach the young women to be self-controlled, to be pure, to be working at home or keepers at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands. This is a straight Bible, Titus chapter 2. Do you see the household orientation there?

And why did Paul say for them to do this? Why are the older women to teach the younger women these things? Titus 2, 5, So that the word of God may not be reviled. You see, God's word and God's design and God's creation is what it is.

So that it may not be reviled, we're to live in accordance with it, in accordance with His design. Likewise, in 1 Timothy 5, Paul, he's listing out the qualifications to enroll a widow in church support, church assistance.

And in so doing, he describes a faithful woman as one who has a reputation for good works, if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.

That's 1 Timothy 5, 10. In these passages, what we see is Paul commend women who give their lives to the domestic arts and duties. Competence and fruitfulness in the domestic arts and duties are a woman's glory.

Now, in our context, the question naturally arises, should women work outside the home? I'm not going to give a blanket answer to that question. I'm not going to say unequivocally, well yes, of course.

And I'm not going to say unequivocally, no, never. Because the answer is, it depends. It depends on a lot of different factors. It depends on age and station of life and all sorts of things with your home.

If you're married, I would ask you this though. If you're married, does it serve your people, your husband and your children? Or does it serve yourself? Does it give to your people or does it take away from them something or someone that they need?

Can you still obey what Paul teaches in Titus 2 and 1 Timothy 5 or does it get in the way of that? These are the questions that you would need to wrestle with. And look, I get it. There are some major society-wide issues that really blur the lines here and make things difficult.

One of which is since the Industrial Revolution, productivity has been taken outside of the home, separated for the most part. In recent years, living wages have plummeted and inflation makes it hard to make ends meet.

And so, I just want to say I understand and I get that and that those are some of the factors that need to be considered. And again, that's why I don't give a blank answer one way or another. I will say this though.

The complete severance of a woman's work from her husband and her household has been disastrous for our society as a whole. And it's because it goes against God's design. Let me end with one more concept that is found in seed form in Genesis and is made explicit in the New Testament.

And that is the concept of submission. We see it in Titus 2. It said the young women are to be trained to be submissive to their own husbands. We see it in 5 .22 where wives are to submit to their own husbands.

Again, I realize that this is one of those concepts that is controversial in our day. It gets people riled up. It's often misunderstood. So, I'll make three brief comments as we close here. The first is that this is a command from our holy creator God.

Which means we can't just opt out of it because we don't like it. We don't get to opt out of the commands of God. That reveals a deficiency in us, not in God's Word or in God Himself. It also means it's for your good.

God's commands are for your good. So, wives submitting to their husbands is good. It will result in happiness for you ladies. And it will result in happiness for your husbands and for your children and for your community.

Because God made it this way. And so, because it is a command of God, the first thing you need to do is submit to God. And submit to His Word. Second thing I would point out here is notice that it says wives are to submit to their own husbands.

Not all men. There is no command here for all women to submit to all men. That's a good thing. It's often misunderstood or misapplied. Instead, God calls a wife to submit to one man. Who has promised to love and cherish and defend her until death do them part.

And the third thing I would say is that submission is glorious. It really is. Submission is glorious. In her book, Even Exile, Rebecca Merkel makes this point. That you don't get harvest without first burying a seed down into the dirt.

And you don't get resurrection without death first. And you don't get Easter without Good Friday. And you don't get glory without submission. As the old football coach used to say, it's no pain, no gain.

Except for in this case, it's no submission, no glory. A woman's glory is bound up in her humility. In her submission. And the reason it's glorious is because this points us to Jesus. I want to read from Philippians chapter 2.

It points us to Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.

Even death on a cross. He submitted himself to obeying God by dying on a cross. There's the submission part. Therefore, verse 9 of Philippians 2 says,. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

First submission, then glory. So what is the glory of women? To be a helpmate, working, filling, glorifying in submission to her husband and oriented toward her household. And all of this done in submission to God and his good design.

Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for your good design. We thank you for how you made the world. We thank you for how you made us. Lord, I pray that you would give us the humility to submit ourselves to it.

Lord, if there's any area of our life where we need to make an adjustment, Lord, I pray that you would give us the strength and courage to do so. Teach us to obey you in all things. Lord, I pray that the ladies of our church would give themselves, if they're married, to helping their husbands.

Pray they give themselves to working hard in their various callings and domains. Lord, I pray that they would embrace fruitfulness and filling the earth and filling their homes with good things and godly people.

Lord, I pray that you would help them to give themselves towards giving a glorifying touch to make life beautiful wherever they are. And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.