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