Transcript: Lesson 8 - Biblical Foundations: Image of God

Hey, friends, welcome back in this third unit, we are thinking about the story of creation,  understanding the biblical foundations for marriage, sexuality and singleness. Last time, we  talked a little bit about the Torah as a whole and understanding that and then zeroed in on the image of God and thought about what that has to say to us about understanding who we are  as male and female. In this video, we're going to talk for a couple of minutes about the  question, what is marriage, and see how Genesis two helps us understand that better, and  then think, again, about the importance of understanding the goodness of creation for these  things. So when we, when we ask the question, what is marriage? It's really important to let  scripture define this for us. A lot of times, especially in the broader culture, when people are  having debates and discussions about what marriage really is, you find that people don't  actually step back and say, Well, how do we, how do we define marriage? How does scripture  define marriage. And so if we're not clear about moving to Scripture, and thinking through  scriptures definition of marriage, it can be very easy to get caught up and confused in many  different discussions. So a few things that I want to observe, especially from the text of  Genesis two, about what marriage is. The first thing is to note, Genesis 2:15. That, that, when  this talks about introduces us to this, sort of the problem that we find in Genesis two, this is  what we find in Genesis 2:15 is is the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of  Eden to work it and take care of it. And then in verse continuing into verse 16, the Lord God  commanded demand, you're free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat  from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly  die. And then in verse 18, it says, The Lord God said, It's not good for the man to be alone, I  will make a helper suitable for him. Now, it's important to understand this term suitable, we  finished the last video talking a little bit about the term helper. But the term suitable is an  English translation from the Hebrew word, kenegdo. And kenegdo, though is this word when  we look at it and understand what this word means. It really there's the it contains both the  sense of someone who is similar to, but different from, and so suitable, I think, captures some  of that, but maybe not the degree of nuance that you find any in the actual Hebrew. So  there's a sense that what you see in Genesis two is God creates male and female men and  woman, that there's a sense in which they are similar. In fact, Dorothy Sayers a famous writer, part of the Inklings group that included CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers says, you  know, oftentimes we talked about male and female as opposite sexes. She said, You'll really  we should talk about them as neighbouring sexes because what you see in Genesis one and  two is that there is nothing in creation more like a man than a woman, and nothing more like  a woman than a man. And so when we look at Genesis two, we recognize that there's this  deep, deep sense of connection, a deep sense of similarity between the man and woman  between male and female, but they're not identical. They're not the same biologically  speaking, gen, in terms of gender, that there is this, there's this difference. And so just as last  time, we talked about how the creation narrative moves through this, the sense of diversity in unity, that it's crowned with male and female who are who are similar, but who are not  identical. So you get this same notion in suitable helper, one who is similar, but not identical,  similar, but different. Let me read that let me pick up and read, then from first 19 of Genesis  to further on. Now the Lord Got formed out of the ground, all the wild animals are all the birds  in the sky, he brought them to the man to see what he would name them and whatever the  man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the  livestock, the birds in the sky, all the wild animals. But for Adam, no suitable helper was  found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs, and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. And the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called a woman for she  was taken out of man. That is why man leaves his father mother is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife, were both naked and they felt no shame. Adam in  Genesis two has a theological vision, a theological vision. It can be hard when we read this  text to fully grasp what's going on here. But a lot of times from, from my perspective, from my cultural context, I think a lot of people tend to read this text. As though Adam is when it talks  about a deep sleep, as though Adam is almost like being knocked out for surgery, he's 

undergoing a surgical procedure, the woman is taken from his rib. And so there's this  tendency to read our modern context onto it. But the language here of a deep sleep, is  actually a phrase that is found elsewhere in Genesis to talk about somebody who has a  theological vision. So the point is not just that Adam gets knocked unconscious by God, and  God does this physical operation. What's happening here is that God is revealing this deep  theological truth about who he is as a man and who this woman is, who is, in essence, his  wife. And what we're seeing here is not just a depiction of a physical event, but it's trying to  help us understand the theological significance here, that that in some way, is reenacted in  every single marriage, that this is giving us as deep theological truth about what marriage is  supposed to be. So So don't think of this text so much as a physical operation, or get caught  up in thinking, well, how exactly does this work? Do? Do you know, do men have one less  room than than women? How does it you know, what's what, how does God do this? The point of the text is to help us understand the relationship between husband and wife between male  and female. The other interesting thing to note is that the term that is translated rib here is  the Hebrew word tsela, and that this word, it's not typically actually treated as translated as  rib. But oftentimes, it's actually used to describe an actual physical building or structure, like  one wing of this building one side of this building. And so again, there's a sense that human  beings, as God's image are God's images, male and female. And there's a sense that I think  this text is trying to capture that, again, is less about the, you know, the precise physical  details and more about saying, this is this is a woman who is part of this man that how you  should think about marriage is that these two are linked, that they are one flesh, that they are that they are close their lives are not two, completely separate individual wise, but that in this vision of what marriage is, they're actually physically linked. And so Genesis 2:24, so she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. The Hebrew words here are similar to  English, where we can see that there's both a similarity and difference ishah ish that these  two are similar, but different. So she should be called woman because she was taken out of  man. And part of what this this whole theological vision is trying to get at is verse 24, which  really talks about this is why a husband leaves his his biological family and cleaves to his wife, that is to think about what is it that really would cause somebody to, in essence, put their  family ties in in second place. Genesis two is telling us there's a theological vision of what  marriage is all about, that when I come to this point of being married to my wife, my  biological family now takes second place takes takes place further on down the line compared to my relationship with her because of this theological vision of male and female made in the  image of God, she is a suitable helper for me. And our life together now is knit together  physically and personally intertwined. So that helps us understand what marriage looks like,  what the purpose is here to draw us out beyond ourselves into join us into this into this  marriage relationship. And so if we think about how Genesis defines marriage, this this is how  my friend Preston Sprinkle, very helpfully summarizes marriage. He says, we look at marriage  in Genesis two, it's a one flesh union of two sexually different persons, one flesh union of two  sexually different persons. So this is a this is a union. That is, I guess, it's not the reference is  not just a physical or sexual union. But this is this is a big part of it, that what this gets at  what it symbolizes is that just as in sexual union, our bodies are connected. So our lives as  two different people are now connected as one. And that part of the way scripture then  defines marriage here from the beginning, is to sexually different people, that being male and female in the image of God is important to understanding what marriage is, it's important to  the creation and procreation mandate, and seeing how all of those things work together. So  it's important to have this biblical definition of marriage in front of us as we move forward.  Now, with this definition of marriage, I also want to highlight that everything that we've seen  so far in Genesis one and two, this is all part of the goodness of creation, the goodness of  creation. And so that means you we pay attention here, we need to understand that physical  bodies are good that God has made us as embodied creatures. There is a long history in  Christianity, of people sometimes devaluing the body of thinking of the body, as something  bad as thinking, you know, and maybe you can understand and reflect on this, you know, in  our experience, how our bodies get sick, our bodies, break down, our bodies get old, our  bodies get tired. And so there can be the sense of man, if I could just somehow get rid of my 

body, then then that would fix everything. That's not the view of Scripture. Scripture says, Our bodies are good, even with their limits, even and even apart from sin, obviously, our bodies  have limitations. But even with those limitations, there's a goodness to our bodies. So much  so that God Himself, the Son, God, the son, the second person of the Trinity, can take a  human body unto himself. And that's good, that's good. And so closely linked to the goodness  of bodies and the goodness of sex. It's clear from the way that Genesis one and two sets this  out, is that sex is does not have to be, or does not necessarily involve sin. And so this again,  there were some even early Christians, we see this in I Corinthians seven, who thought, Well,  if I'm following Jesus, then to really sincerely follow Jesus, I have to live a life that includes no  sex, even if even if I'm married. There were some some people early on who thought that in  this this is why Paul in I Corinthians seven has to say no, you have to understand the God's  intention for marriage, God's intention for sex, is that it is good, right? To be super spiritual  does not mean I will never have sex again with my spouse. That's not what it means to follow  Jesus. So it's really important that we get these things that we get these things right. We also  see them as well. Finally, the goodness of marriage, the God created marriage good that this  is part of his intention for human life. This is not just a somehow a concession to human sin.  But that all these things help us to understand God's good intentions for his people in his  world. And so we define married, we understand what marriage is how Genesis two talks  about marriage, we reaffirm the goodness of marriage, the goodness of bodies, the goodness  of sex, as being key to getting the biblical story key to understanding the story of creation.  And so these are foundational for moving forward for helping us to understand God's  intentions for his world, what goes wrong, and then what it means as his people to walk in the way that that he is called. So in the next video, we're going to unpack a little bit further a  theology of the body and how we should understand our bodies, the meaning of our bodies,  and continue to reflect on Genesis one and two to understand what God is teaching us about  who we are. So until next time, blessings