Some Things Just Aren’t Good Genesis 2:18-24

Nobody knows more about something than the person who invented it.  Anything you buy now comes with a small book written in three languages that tells you how it works.  Sometimes it seems life is so complicated. 

The Bible tells us that God created the world.  It should be obvious really, but scientists keep asserting, oh no, it’s all merely a combination of necessary and random chemical reactions.  We don’t need to play the God card to explain everything.  We have science. 

I’m sorry.  Science can tell you how two chemicals will react with each other under certain controlled conditions, but they cannot tell you how inert minerals came together to form a living being that can actually do science.

For the rest of us, we believe that God created the world.  As such, nobody knows His creation better than He does.  When your car manufacturer tells you to change your oil every six months, it’s not trying to burden you with arbitrary, busywork to make your life harder, to test you to see if you are worthy of owning that car.

No, they are simply telling you how your car works and what it needs to run most efficiently.

When we look at commandments in the Bible, we should look at them as the manufacturer’s operations manual.  This is how human beings work.

Having said that, I want to look at Genesis 2:18      Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

For all of human history except for the last few decades, the word man had been used to speak of the human species.  The Hebrew word translated man is the word Adam, or Ah-tham', which means human.  But God did make a man first, but we’re not going to try to suggest here reasons why He did.

The fact that He said it is not good for the human to be alone tells me that this works both ways.  If God had made a woman first, He would have said the same thing.  It is not good for this person to be alone.

Now think for a minute.  Here is a perfect human being in a perfect world with a perfect human relationship with God, and still God says that it is not good for this person to be alone.  And, no, no animal could take that place.  The very next verse says that   19      Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.     20      The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

I think God already knew that beforehand, but maybe he had to convince Adam of that.  I don’t know.

So God created Eve, not out of the ground like He did with Adam, but out of Adam’s own body.  This reminds me of having children, where these little human beings actually are part of you.  They share your very nature and substance.  And parents find themselves loving this little child more than they ever would have imagined they could love someone.

But this is even more than that.  Eve was made out of actual parts of Adam, so that, as one writer put it, the man should ever consider and treat the woman as a part of himself:

Then Genesis goes on:  vs. 24      For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.  

Think of it as one new human being. 

But marriage has gone out of favor in our country.  Fewer and fewer people are doing it.  And they are having smaller and smaller families.

But God said that it is not good for the human being to be alone.

And God created a woman for Adam.  He did not create another man.  He didn’t want Adam to have a roommate. 

I think this is important for at least two reasons.

The first is that God chose that through the union of a man and a woman, new life would come on the earth.  This whole process of having and raising children has at least two purposes: one is to teach us about love. 

In fact, I think the entire human experience is to teach us eternal principles.  Why do we eat?  Because we become what we eat.  Literally.  Everything you see in or on your body one day was something that you ate.  Your body took out what it needed and discarded the rest.  Morally, emotionally, intellectually, it’s all something that you took in, willingly or not.  They all contributed to who you are today.

God’s relationship with humans is like a father and a child.  Jesus said to call Him Father.  But God’s nature encompasses a woman’s nature as well.  When God created human beings, it says that (Genesis 1: 27) God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

But that introduces another subject. 

But the point is that when we see how much love we have for this child, it can help us to comprehend, hopefully, a bit of God’s love for us.

On the other hand, when we were children ourselves, hopefully we learned from our parents what it means to be loved, so it becomes easier to believe that God loves us.

It’s very easy for human beings to be self-centered.  Having children forces you to live for something outside of yourself.  Having pets can do that, but that only goes so far.  They don’t outlive us usually.  And they will never grow up, so to speak.  So children will teach us more about love than a pet.

Another reason for having the human race create children is that we learn by teaching.  A lot of things.  When you teach children how to live, you are teaching yourself.   A lot of times you will teach them not to do things that you do yourself, and you realize you shouldn’t be doing them either.  And you will see why clearer.  So in your efforts to teach your child about life, you will understand life better yourself.

I said earlier that God gave Adam a woman instead of a roommate for at least two reasons.  One was to have children. 

The second reason is that the two personalities complement each other.  Some modern psychologists assert, claim, say that the non-physical differences between men and women are all social constructs.  If you didn’t give boys trucks to play with and girls dolls, there would be no differences between them

I’m not going to argue the point here, but the fact is that God made a woman for Adam and not another man.  Women can bear children, and men can’t.  Though theoretically God could have created human beings such that they did not need a partner to create a new life.  But He didn’t.

That tells me that the relationship is about far more than just having children.  The Bible says that the two become one.  Which suggests to me that one by itself is incomplete in some way.

Now for whatever reasons, some people never get married.  Paul spoke about some people having a gift, so to speak, of singleness.  He said that a person who is not married can be more devoted to the Lord, because they don’t have other people to think of and take care of.

The fact remains that in a perfect world, it was still not good for the human being to be alone.  Some people wrestle with the question of whether to get married or not.  God, your creator, made you in such a way that it is better for you to be married than not.