God’s true intention for marriage preceded original sin.
Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
I must confirm from a terrible emptiness and great incompleteness: It is not good for a man to be alone… so alone without God’s help meet (mate).
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
What a joy! What promise – and this, before sin.
Genesis 4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”
Genesis 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch…
Genesis 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
In the beginning, marriage.
Genesis 5:6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. 7 Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters.
The Bible does not mention the names of the wife of Seth or the names of the help meets of most of these ancestors of Noah, but they had wives and sons and daughters – family, with a husband and a wife and their children.
Noah was married. Noah’s sons, who were also grown men and had the faith to obey God and Noah, had wives who were saved along with them.
In the beginning, marriage. Not one whisper of any relationship of family other than marriage. Not one mention of any end of marriage, even for these first forefathers who lived hundreds of years with their wife and grown children. Not one mention of any alternative, until further sin of compromise entered into the lives of Abram, Jacob and others. (We will address the issues of their multiple wives later.)
In the beginning, God ordains that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” And yes, it’s okay that they are naked and unashamed in their own bed chamber; for as it was in the beginning, they are now one.
A man desires to know a woman. A husband desires to know his wife. A wife is a part of her husband, not to be torn away any more than a man would tear out his own rib.
I am witness that a wife torn away from our oneness is more deeply painful than the tearing out of any rib. For by divorce she has cut away with anger into your heart.
I too am witness to a wife being torn away by death. As for most husbands and wives, most shall part one prior to the other in the death of their beloved ‘other half.’ Your wife torn away, her soul separated from you for a time, is a pouring out of your own heart.
Husbands and wives this is the temporal end of the vows of your earthly commitment; but union with the soul and the uniting of these souls to God is quite something more.
It is not good that man (or woman) should be alone.
Are you a blessing to your husband? (Are you a blessing to your wife?)
What is your daily witness to your covenant of marriage before God?
What is the witness of your marriage to Christ?
In the beginning, marriage.
Marriage: To be continued…
