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Lesson Two: The Origin
of the Family
Genesis 2
Introduction: In the early 1980's, James
Dobson was interviewing a man by the name of Gordon MacDonald, the
pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA, who had written several
best selling books (Ordering Your Private World, Renewing Your
Spiritual Passion). Dr. Dobson's question to the pastor of this
large church was something to this effect, "Satan always targets men
who are effective in furthering the cause of Christ. You have a
thriving church, you have written several best selling books, and
are clearly a threat to Satan's work. How do you suppose Satan is
going to try to attack your ministry?" Dr. MacDonald thought for
several moments and finally said, "I don't know where the attack is
going to come from, but the one thing I do know is that it won't
come through my marriage. My marriage is just too strong."
In 1987, while serving as the
President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, he was exposed and
admitted to being involved in an adulterous affair. After the
public disgrace, he engaged in a process of biblical confession and
repentance, he worked with and was accountable to some godly men,
and was eventually restored to a position of usefulness in the body
of Christ. He wrote a book called Rebuilding Your Broken World
, and once again, he was interviewed by Dr. Dobson. The first
question in the interview was this. "Gordon, what have you learned
from this whole experience?" And his answer was something I want
every person here this morning to really think about. He said,
"What I have learned is that an unguarded strength is your greatest
weakness." I want you to let that sink in. "An unguarded strength
is your greatest weakness."
Last week when I announced
that I was going to be doing a series on creating strong families,
some of you may have inwardly yawned and thought to yourself, "My
marriage and family life is fine, let's talk about something a
little more relevant." Let me caution you against that attitude.
What Gordon MacDonald went through in his life is the practical
outworking of 1 Cor. 10:12 where Paul says, "Let him who thinks he
stands take heed, lest he fall." An unguarded strength is your
greatest weakness. If you have a strong family life, thank the Lord
for His grace in your life, and work hard at making it better. And
if you are struggling in your family life right now, God's Word has
the answers.
Review: Last
week as we started this new series on the family, I shared with you
that my desire / burden is to have strong families characterize
Cornerstone / Greenville Center Baptist Church. Each Sunday, I want
to give you biblical teaching followed up by practical application
so that we could strengthen our families. The family unit has been
under attack from its inception, and we need to know how to protect
ourselves. Strong families are not accidental. We are not
genetically prone to strong families. We don't have a natural
inclination toward them. They are the result of deliberate,
consistent, sometimes tedious, hard work. But the payoff is huge,
because strong families contribute to strong churches which
contribute to strong communities which contribute to strong
nations. But it all starts with the family.
Our memory project for this
series is found in Eph. 6:10-18. Hopefully you were able to spend
some time working on memorizing this last week. Let's say it
together.
10
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
11 Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to
stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our
struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness,
against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly
places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God,
that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done
everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore,
having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the
breastplate of righteousness, 15and having shod your
feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in
addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will
be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 With all prayer and
petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in
view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the
saints.
As we considered this passage
last week, I made three points. If we are going to have strong
families here at Cornerstone / Greenville Center, we are going to
have to 1) do it God's way. It is His armor we are putting on. It
is His strength we are going to appropriate. 2) We are going to
have to understand the nature of endeavor. It is a battle. We are
at war. And finally, 3) we are going to have to rely on the power
of intercessory prayer. The thing that most needs to be done, we
can't do. Hearts have to be changed, and only God can change a
heart.
What I want to share with you
this morning is the origin of the family. Then next week we
will look at the nature of the family and the assault
on the family. All of this is going to come out of Genesis two,
three, and four. Let's start by looking at Genesis chapter two, and
we will read several sections of verses.
Thus
the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts.
2 And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had
done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He
had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God
had created and made. 4 This is the account of the
heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the
LORD God made earth and heaven. 5 Now no shrub of the
field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet
sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth; and
there was no man to cultivate the ground.
6 But a mist used to rise
from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
being. 8 And the LORD God planted a garden toward the
east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
Now let's drop down to verse fifteen. 15 Then the
LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to
cultivate it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded
the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall
surely die." 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." 19 And 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 And 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. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep
to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs,
and closed up the flesh at that place. 22 And the LORD
God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man,
and brought her to the man. 23 And the man said, "This
is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called
Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." 24 For this
cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the
man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
I. The Origin of the Family - Genesis 2
In this passage we just read,
we see that God is the One who instituted this organism we call a
family. It is the result of His purposeful, direct, creative
ability. He deliberately created a male, and gave him the name of
Adam. He gave Adam a vocation - that is, Adam had as his
responsibility in life the cultivating and guarding, or watching of
the Garden of Eden - it was his responsibility and he was created by
God with the capacity to do it. God then deliberately created a
female and gave her the name of Eve. She was created to be a helper
for Adam. The implication is that Adam could not do the job by
himself. God eventually gave Adam and Eve the responsibility of
having children when He told them to "be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth." And so we have the first family.
Now what I want you to
appreciate this morning is that this "thing" we all call a "family"
is not a human invention, it is a divine institution. There is a
big difference between these two ideas. To appreciate this, let's
consider this comparison. Collective education is not
a divine institution - it is a human invention. It is the result of
people getting together and saying "we can educate our children
better if we do it collectively than if we try to do it individually
in the family." I call it a human invention because God did not
decree in His Word that we educate our children this way, nor do we
have examples in the Bible to educate our children this way. Now,
I'm not making a statement either for or against collective
education, I'm simply saying it is the result of collective, human
activity. It is a human invention. That is not the case with the
family.
The implications of this
point are huge. As a divine institution, the model God established
in setting up the family is unalterable, and we tamper with it at
our own peril (similar to laws of nature, like gravity). For
instance, God created Adam and Eve, male and female, and gave them
the responsibility of multiplying and filling the earth. This was
the first family, and that is the model we should follow. God did
not create Adam and Steve, male and male, and give them the
responsibility of multiplying and filling the earth. When you start
to tamper with the model God established, the ramifications are
devastating - personally, sociologically, spiritually, nationally,
and in every other way.
Another example of the danger
to tampering with the model God used has to do with roles in the
family. Adam was created to provide for the family, and Eve was
created to play a supportive role to the man. Her role in life was
to enable her husband in his calling. She was not created to
function independently of her husband and forge her own way in the
world and pursue her own interests. In case this sounds a little
vague, let me give you this real life illustration of role confusion
in a family. In my first church, we had a family who would visit
from time to time. They had four children between the ages of 3 and
12. In this family, the wife had a very good paying job that
provided for the family, and the husband stayed at home taking care
of the children and managing the household.
One of my members asked me
what I thought of that setup and my response was, "I think it is
wrong because it is contrary to the model God established when He
created the first family." The person in my church then said,
"Well, what if the wife has a very marketable skill, and the husband
is content to manage the home. As long as the children are being
raised in a good, Christian home, why does it matter who brings home
the bacon?" The reason it matters who brings home the
bacon is because that is the role the man was created to fulfill.
And as I shared with you last week, when roles get confused in the
home, the children pay a huge price, not to mention the subtle,
subconscious effects the role reversal has on the man and woman.
Think about this for a
moment. Men have a deep need to go out into the world and do big
things. They want to conquer nations, and build skyscrapers, and
explore uncharted territory - that is how God created men. He made
us that way so we would have the capacity to provide for and protect
our families. This is why Paul told Timothy that "if any man
does not provide for his household, he is worse than an infidel, and
has denied the faith." He didn't say this because he was a male
chauvinist who was intent on keeping women under the repressive
thumbs of their husbands. He was reiterating God's original model
of the family where Adam was given a vocation, not Eve! Eve was
created to assist Adam in his vocation.
Women, on the other hand,
have a deep need to nurture and foster. They want to get married,
and have children, and provide a haven for their family - that is
how God created women. This is why Paul tells Titus that "the
young women [are] to love their husbands, to love their children,
5 to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being
subject to their own husbands." Paul didn't say what he did
because he hated women and was merely parroting the cultural bias
against women that was so prevalent in his day. He was parroting
the model God established in the original creation. And even though
you may run across the man or woman from time to time who would
vehemently deny this deeply ingrained, fundamental difference
between the sexes; down deep, that is the way they are, and they
can't help it because family, and roles within the family, is a
divine institution, not a human creation (cf. the role experiments
of the kibbuz system).
What does all this mean for you and me
today?
1) We need to understand and accept our
unique roles that are gender based. They are divinely bestowed and
we tamper with them at our own peril. If we mess this up at the
family level, our churches will suffer, as will our nation.
2) As parents, we need to deliberately
propagate these role distinctions in our children. Dads, we need to
do "manly" stuff with our boys. My dad insisted that each one of
his sons learn a trade before we graduated from high
school. That was the deliberate propagation of the male role.
Moms, you need to do "womanly" stuff with your daughters. Show them
how to turn a building into a home. Develop their nurturing
instinct. Train them how to manage a household. I have a good
friend whose wife insisted that both of her daughters manage the
meals for what at one time was a family of eight. It was her goal
for her daughters to be able to manage an entire household by the
age of 18. That is the deliberate propagation of the female role.
3) Let's remember the final point of
last week's message - we need to rely on the power of intercessory
prayer. Following the biblical model of a family runs against the
tide of public opinion. But we are willing to do it because we know
that God will enable us to do what He has called us to do. And on
top of this, God has invited us to "draw near with confidence to
the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to
help in time of need." So let's invoke this power of
intercessory prayer.
4) The final point I'd like to make is
specifically for anyone here this morning who has never come to
Christ for salvation. We have spent a lot of time talking about the
importance of understanding the origin of the family, and as
important as that is, let me tell you about something that is even
more important - and that is your eternal destiny. The result of
being mixed up about the family has temporal consequences, the
result of being mixed up about salvation has eternal consequences.
So, if you have never talked
with God and asked Him to forgive you for your sins, if you have
never told Him you wanted the death of Jesus to be applied to your
account, why don't you do that this morning? God's promise is that
when you do that, He will bring you into His family, and that's the
best family in the world. |
