Back to the Beginning No.3 The Anaesthetic and Eve

Ronwyn's going to come and read the scriptures to us, but you represent a ministry as well, don't you, in the town? Tell us what that is. I'm involved with the Alpha Pregnancy Counselling Centre in town. How long has that been going? Two years now, we've just had our second anniversary.

How many folk in, say, a month would contact Alpha? Does it sort of peak and truffle? It does, it does. We're finding, as we're now better known, that it's staying, it's growing each month rather than peaking and truffling quite so much. I think since we started, we've seen, with telephone contacts, well over 250 people.

And then there's families and friends associated with them that we've had contact with as well. And when are you open? We open on Tuesdays and Fridays between 11 and 1.30, but if people can't manage to make those times, there's an answer phone, and if they can leave a number, we can make an appointment outside those times. And where is your base? It's at the Oasis Centre on Broadwater by the traffic lights next to Litchfield House.

Thanks very much. Do be remembering Bronwyn in your prayers and her team doing this wonderful work. She's going to read the scriptures to us.

The reading this morning comes from Genesis 2, right at the beginning of the Bible. And I'll be starting at verse 18 and reading through to the end of the chapter. The Lord said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him. Now the Lord had formed all out of the ground, all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. 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 of the air, and all the beasts of the field. 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 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. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. And they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Well, we come to the third of our addresses on this series, in which I'm pulling you back to the beginning. The beginning of the Bible, the beginning of the record of the dealings of God with men. Indeed, the beginning of the human story.

It's good to get back right to the very start and see just what the Bible has to say about the origin of life. Because when you get to the New Testament, you discover that it takes for granted the historicity, the reliable nature of the Old Testament. We've looked at the beginnings of creation.

And we've looked at the account of the making of the first man. And now we're going to be focusing our attention particularly upon the making of woman. The concept of the divinely administered anesthetic.

And the resulting operation, or the operation that God engaged Adam in, resulting in Eve. I've got a friend over in India who's got a very English name, although she is actually very much an Indian. Her name is Juliet Thomas.

And on one occasion, she's a very remarkable speaker of international stature. On one occasion, she was speaking about the creation of Adam. And she said God's reaction when first he made Adam was, I can do better than that.

And along came Eve. Well, I'm not too sure that my dear friend Juliet really has scriptural backing for that. But it's a good story.

And it certainly helps to bring you into the theme of my topic for this morning. The making of woman. I would argue this.

That if you're engaged in counseling, if you are interested in psychiatry or psychology, I'd go further. I would say that if you're a nurse or if you're a doctor, if you're a teacher, if you have in any sense a job that brings you into a one-to-one relationship with other people. You cannot do your job as efficiently as you might unless you have a full understanding concerning the doctrine of man and woman as is recorded in Holy Scripture.

I know that's quite a stunning claim to make from the pulpit. But I make it on behalf of the God who brought this word into being. You see, there is a sense in which the Bible is a book on psychiatry and psychology.

It's a book of counseling. It's God's word to the human race. It defines not only who God is to the degree that human language can sustain a definition.

But more particularly, it tells us about man. It tells us about woman. It tells us about the psychology of men and women.

It tells us about God's interest in men and women. And it tells us what God expects of men and women, both together as sexes and in company in the way that they behave before their creator. So, we're particularly concentrating on the phenomenon of the creation of woman.

I think it was Frankie Vaughan who said in a song that was popular in the 1950s, which dates me considerably, thank heaven for little girls, for little girls get bigger every day. Which just goes to show that in an understanding of the doctrine of woman, you shouldn't start with the media. You shouldn't start with Hollywood.

You shouldn't start with the popular magazines. You have to start with the Bible. And the Bible will tell you this, that the creation of woman differs significantly from the creation of man.

Oh, there is an interconnection, and we'll go into that in a moment or two. But there is also a distinction. And that's a fundamental thing for all of us to realize who have to deal with men and women in terms of our so-called secular jobs.

Man was set, Adam, in this glorious paradise that is called Eden. Everything is there for his comfort, or seemingly so. Every stage of creation passed what I have called the God test.

In each successive bout of bringing from nothing something, and from something, something else, God said, it is good. It is good. It is good.

It is good. And then when he gets to the pinnacle of his creation on the sixth day, having made the animals, he then causes man to be. And he says, it is very good.

It is good par excellence. Good, good, good, good, good, good. And then you get to the 18th verse of the second chapter.

And the ethos seems to be marred. The reasoning seems to change. The Lord God said, it is not good.

Everything else, perfect. But something in paradise lacking. And it is God who is the critic.

It is not good. What is not good? It is not good for the man to be alone. You have to think away what you know of modern life.

You have to think away the crowds. Maybe you would like to do that. But you have to think away music, and art, and biography.

So many things which are basic components to the life that you enjoy now. Which were not present when Adam came fresh from the hands of God into this earthly paradise. There was for Adam tremendous blessing.

There was also a sense of aloneness. I repeat, no music. No books.

No one with whom to engage in discussion, in conversation. And God says, it is not good. And I suggest to you, that here in these verses in the second chapter of Genesis is a very surprising assertion.

Something lacking in paradise. Fellowship is basic to the psyche of man. He needs to be able to communicate, and to be talked to.

He needs to be able to love, and to be loved. And as far as Eden is concerned, there are some options that God offers man. And they are good options.

He can have fellowship with the creatures. And maybe that should be sufficient. After all, the 19th verse says that the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field, and all the birds of the air.

And that little verb, formed there, is the same verb that you read in Jeremiah, when God speaks of himself in terms of a potter. God has formed all these creatures. Well, Adam, go out into the heart of the garden.

And I will cause these creatures to pass before you. It's an interesting thing that always in Scripture, and one of the reasons why I wrote my recent book, God's sovereignty extends to the animal world. So he will send ravens to feed a prophet.

He will stop the mouths of lions. He will cause a dove to settle on the shoulder of the Christ in the process of baptism. He will have an unbroken foal ready for the Christ to ride on.

So this God who controls the animal world brings them before Adam. And Adam uses that intellectual gift that is his to categorize, to classify the animals. But God allows him to engage in this piece of activity.

Not only to develop his intellectual ability, for such Adam has in full potential. But also to underline the aloneness. The lions, they have their lair.

Did Adam stroke the cubs as they playfully came forward? Did he wistfully think that he would like something like that himself? An ability to relate? An ability to have young? Was there some disturbance in the mind of Adam because God caused all these animals to pass in front of him? But Adam will not find the fellowship that he requires within the realm of the animals. For though they are good, they have their limitations. They will never sit down and listen to Mozart.

Not my cats. They will never appreciate an argument in philosophy. They are wonderful.

But there is an infinite chasm between them and us. Their instincts sometimes are as noble if not more noble than fallen man's. But the fellowship that Adam requires, the help meet that he needs, is not from that context.

For from them no suitable helper is discovered. Which is what is told you in the 20th verse or the heart of it. But what about fellowship with God? I mean, can Adam not settle for this? After all, the reason why God created man presumably was on this whole basis of God having someone who would fellowship with him.

Someone made and fashioned in his image. And now I tread carefully. There is a sense in which you need God more than you need man.

But there is a sense in which God cannot give to you the fellowship of equals that you require. For as you are above the animal, so God is above you. Fellowship, yes.

Splendid intimacy with the divine, yes. But God has something else in store. And he's stimulating Adam's desires in this area.

I will make a helper suitable for him. And the Hebrew is, I will make someone who corresponds to him. I will make his opposite.

I will make one in whom he and she can cohere, coalesce, and become a unit. And so you have in this passage and in the third chapter an indication that though the offer of fellowship with the beasts is wonderful, and the offer of fellowship with the Lord who comes down to the garden in the cool of the day is even more wonderful, Adam still, to be fulfilled in the garden, needs someone else. It is not good for the man to be alone.

A surprising assertion. Now I realize that I'm speaking to a mixed audience of people. And that we're a long way past the days of Edenic bliss.

And many of you may fall out, not in terms of disagreement, but in terms of emotional empathy with what is to follow. For although the ideal to which Scripture here refers speaks of man and his co-helper together, and the single state as not being the best, we live in a fallen world where often people in their singleness have not opted for it, not celibates by choice, but at the human level by accident. And I want as a pastor to home in just at this particular point to set you at rest.

For there is within the grace and the economy of God those things which compensate for what at the ideal level you perhaps have not received. But the bulk of humanity, the bulk of the human story, recognizes the wisdom of God and finds itself enveloped in this principle. It is not good for the man to be alone.

And so the whole concept of marriage and cohabitation and so forth develops. So I move on from bringing to your attention from this chapter this surprising assertion to the way that God deals with the problem. And the narrator of the account, who I believe to be Moses, he moves in to what I have called a revealing operation.

He gives a description of such, and he does so in the most wonderful fashion. He tells us how God will make a partner for Adam. And there will be some information given to the questions how and why.

How? Well, God causes Adam, who finds no helper amongst animal stock that is suitable for him, to fall into a sleep. It's a deep sleep. It's a translate sleep.

But it's not hypnotic. As you get no justification for astrology in the first few chapters of Genesis, neither do you get justification for hypnotism. God causes a deep sleep.

That same sort of sleep as befell Jonah. That same sort of sleep as befell Pharaoh in the 41st chapter of the book of Genesis when he had that night of extraordinary dreams. That sleep that the psalmist says God never engages in himself.

For the God of Israel does not slumber nor sleep. He does not fall into a trance, but Adam does. A deep sleep.

Which means that his consciousness of what is happening in his body is lifted. The anaesthetist comes along and Adam finds himself in the state of unconsciousness. The reason? Well, presumably Adam could have felt pain.

Some commentators argue that in Eden that would have been impossible. John Calvin thinks it is. And generally I go along with Calvin on the basis of his tremendous understanding of the whole of scripture.

But whether or not you concede that, it must have been rather a fearful prospect of being fully conscious when someone is digging into your chest. I remember my first encounter with a dentist. Do you? Forgive me young people, those were days when you got gassed.

And I recall in a determined fashion in First Hill County School where the dentist had set up his gear in Pittsmore Sheffield. Though the rest of the kids were gassed and went unconscious, I would not. And my ruse was to hold my breath.

There is a limit to which a six year old can hold his breath. And ere long I was in the land of a deep sleep. Not so easy to be conscious when things are being done to your body.

So an aesthetic envelopes Adam's feeling and consciousness. And a rib is taken from his ribcage. Presumably the first man had, because God has anticipation of what will occur, he has been endowed with one more than you or I. The rib is moved, enclosed in flesh, from Adam.

And as a result of this surgical operation, part of his body is taken away. So that at the end of the procedure, the man on reflection and on seeing what has been made, will be able truly to say, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. But why? Why do you get this delicate description of this theatre, this surgical operation in Eden? Just fanciful? I think not.

On this basis that actually, when you consider it, there is an eminent fitness to what God is doing. Woman is going to be produced. And she will be produced, she will be made in such a way that she will be seen to have a kinship with man.

When the New Testament looks back in Romans 5 and on other occasions, it speaks about man being formed, the human race from one man. It would have been possible for God, presumably, to have taken a handful of clay, as he did in the construction of Adam, and breathed into that clay. And for Eve to have been dynamically made in the same way in which Adam was made.

But there is a difference which is deliberate and important. We come from the same stock. Eve has a kinship with Adam.

And brought into this whole idea of the creation of Eve from Adam, is the investing of Eve with the same dignity. She is not inferior. Nor is she superior.

I mean, if you were to contrive some theory as to how Eve came along, could you come up with anything that is more breathtaking than this? The extraordinary delicacy that there is within this account, I think, in a strange way, is its own evidence for its authenticity. Adam is made. He is put in a deep sleep.

And from his body is taken a rib and flesh. And the very word made is used. The term of the construction almost of a building in some context in the Old Testament is employed to describe what God goes on to do.

The Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man. And there is also enshrined the principle of the equality of woman. Taken from his side.

Not as Matthew Henry says, from his head. For her to have superiority over him. Not from his feet.

As though she was to be servile to him. Which has been, alas, the story of history in its treatment of women up to this last century. But from his side.

From the area where his heart is. The center of feelings and affections according to Jewish physiology and its understanding of the seat of emotions in Old Testament times. John Calvin says, if we were to say that the rib out of which God would form another body had been prepared previously by the creator of the world, I find nothing in this which is not in accordance with divine providence.

God creates woman. To be in a relationship of kinship with man. To have her own dignity.

To have her own equality. So, here we have this revealing operation. In a matter of a few words, we get spelt out for us the amazing story of woman coming onto the scene in Eden.

Those of you, again, who use the language of computers, I made reference to this last week. Then what you have got is a window on verses 26 and 27 of the first chapter. Here it is in its stark simplicity.

Here it is in its wonder. God creating woman from Adam who he has created from the earth and into whom he has breathed the breath of life. What picture does this conjure up in your mind? Bum, bum, ba-bum, bum, bum, ba-bum, bum, bum, ba-bum, bum, bum, bum, ba-bum.

Well, nobody would want to have me instead of the organ. But in a wedding service, that traditional piece is played as a lady walks down the center of this aisle. Hundreds of times during the history of the church.

It's a wonderful day. This lady, let's speak of ideal circumstances. This young woman, dressed in white, chaste, beautiful.

This is her day. This is the day of her marriage. This is the day she has looked forward to.

She's well groomed, perfumed, she's been to the hairdresser. She has her veil. And eventually during the service, the veil will be lifted and she will take vows towards her husband to be.

But it's not just a splendid day for the bride, is it? Who helps her down the aisle? The bride's father. And in an ideal circumstance, this is one of the greatest days. He possibly even watched the birth of the child.

He was, at the human level, partially responsible for the conception. The years have gone by. And if he's a good dad, he'll have been putting away for this day the finance that will be required.

He will want to give his daughter the best send-off. And as far as he is concerned, she is one of the two most wonderful women in the world. And in an ideal setting, he has every confidence in this future man into whose possession, so to speak, he's going to place his daughter.

Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. It is exactly, exactly the same principle as at a wedding. Here is Almighty God and he brings to this first man a co-helper who he, God, has designed for this man.

According to Hebrew tradition, the three most beautiful women in the world were Sarah and Bathsheba and Esther. Each had the right in their day to be crowned Miss Israel. But Hebrew tradition is not quite correct.

Here is Miss Universe, fresh from the hands of God. What is Adam's endearing reaction? If you read it in the revised standard version, the translator takes the liberty and I think he understands the dynamics of the Hebrew correctly when he causes Adam to say, at last, he looks at this woman and he realizes that this is what God has in mind, this help meet and she stands there in all her perfection. Now remember, God has taken from Adam part of him and he will always hunger for that part which has been taken which is one of the reasons why I argued earlier on that no psychiatrist, no psychologist, no counselor, no family practitioner can fully understand the difference between man and woman and also their attractiveness to each other who does not comprehend what Genesis is here teaching.

Taken from Adam is something that he will desire and that desire will have several connotations. There is the erotic side to this. You see, men and women who are into computers, what you need to do from the 23rd verse of the 2nd chapter of Genesis is to open up a window on the Song of Solomon for here you have even more remarkably and daringly set out the basis of this relationship in part.

Here is this woman who is so beloved. Here is this woman so wonderfully adorned. Here is this woman so extravagantly made and equipped and her desire is for her loved one and their seduction and sensuality and spirituality and righteousness.

No one was ever corrupted by reading the Song of Solomon. No one is ever corrupted by reading the biblical teaching of sexuality. Where you go wrong is when you do not read it honestly, when you do not read it in context.

You see, here is Eve and here is Adam and there are points of plug and socket connections. The one from the other, the one relating to the other. She's taken from his side.

He and she will have an emotional empathy. She knows something of who Adam is and shares to some degree his intellectual ability and there will be that intimacy of mind, the intimacy of mind, the intimacy of emotion, the intimacy of will, the intimacy of body. It's all there.

And Adam looks and he is mesmerized. Wow! Look what he's done for me at last! And Eden becomes even a greater paradise. As a result, friends, these things need to be said.

We need to assert the righteousness of human sexuality. We need to assert that behind the phenomenon of man and woman is God the creator. And when Adam is confronted with the masterpiece, in his estimation, of all that God has done, then in an endearing reaction he says, As this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.

And he lapses into poetry because romance and poetry are indissolubly connected. This is the first love sonnet. This is man in raptures.

This is man infatuated, not just by this woman, but by this God, this creator, who has done so many things well on his behalf. And I tell you, that God's presentation and Adam's response gives way to Moses' application. You see, Moses is a preacher.

And so he intrudes upon the text as he writes this up. And he gives you a principle that's lasting for all time. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Here's Moses, excited at the story, at the narrative, as he tells it centuries later. And he spells out this principle. Love is very powerful.

Lust is very powerful. Lust stripped of its evil connotation, which becomes an absorption, a falling in love in the eye, in the body, in the mind, and in the will. Outside, the love of God is the most powerful thing in this world.

That's why there are so many love sonnets, so many love songs. Sometimes the composers have got it wrong in terms of their application, but the heart of what they're saying is right. This is very powerful.

For this reason, a man will turn his back on his father and mother in terms of responsibility, and he'll be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And then in their one fleshness, they will re-examine their responsibility to their parents and so forth. And so the whole thing concludes with marital accord.

The man and his wife were both naked. They felt no shame. Why should they? Why should there be any shame at all? Adam is now complete.

For a while, he had been incomplete, partaken from his body. Not so that God could do a sort of patch-up job, a repair job, but that God could do something that was so mind-blowing, Adam could hardly recoil from his surprise and utter these sentiments, but he does. He finds himself, and he expresses his thoughts.

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. So you see how the Bible does make these clear distinctions between husband and wife, man and woman. A man on his own is never complete.

A church that is dominated by male leadership is never complete. It really is not. I'm not saying that in a contentious fashion.

I'm saying it because I'm persuaded biblically that this is right. You need to have some medium whereby we can bounce off ideas and take some direction from in terms of suggestions for our consideration. We need to listen to our womenfolk as the women need to listen to the men, because the two together is what God ideally set up as being the best leaders, the beginners of the human race.

And we must recognize this. When the church gets this wrong, as the Roman church has got it incredibly wrong, suggesting that celibacy is the highest standard of spirituality than being married, that is ridiculous. When the church gets it wrong, it in one sense waters down the teaching of Scripture and society deteriorates.

When the church has taught, as she has in the past, that sexuality is unpleasant and something that should never be talked about, again, she does no service to the cause of humanity. The Bible can be so frank, so fresh, so intimate, so beautiful. And this is precisely what happens, albeit, friends, in the second chapter of Genesis.

I mean, you haven't got to get to the end of the book, as very often in modern novels, the further into them you get, the more smutty they become. Here in the second chapter, in all its beauty, in all its holiness, God decrees, sets out human sexuality and he speaks about the phenomenal way in which he has brought woman into this world, different from the way in which he has brought man. And he shows how both husband and wife, man and woman, together are complete.

Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. So we thank God for his word and for its teaching to us this morning.

We'll go on next week into the third chapter. But let's take a couple of verses of number four in the supplement. Those of you who've got children and want to slip out to go and get them, don't feel at all embarrassed by so doing.

Let's hear the melody for all praise to God who reigns above, the God of all creation. And then we'll sing the first verse and we'll go on to the last two verses. Let's stand, shall we? Father, we thank you for your word, for its relevance to the contemporary situation today.

Help us to recognize more and more that what you set down at the beginning is for man's benefit and no way to prohibit him from joy We ask, Lord, for our society in these days when there's so much wrong that you will restore it. We pray for people here who in this area of their lives find so much difficulty. And we ask your blessing.

We thank you that you're a forgiving God. We thank you that you're a good God. Steer us back to the past from perhaps which we have strayed and help us, Lord, to build again the old ways.

Those of us who are single, we bless you that in our singleness we can still find companionship with you and companionship at innocent and fulfilling levels with other people across the sexes. So, Lord, we pray that you'll continue to bless this church and help us to honor and own you. Now may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest and remain with each one of us now and always.

Amen. Please be seated. Mrs. Dean, will she call and see Ian McLean? Ian will be in the foyer in just a moment or two.

Ian Taylor, you can be with us this evening. Then we'd be glad to have your company. We'll learn something about the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and we'll also learn something about the Gospel.

And it will be entertaining as well as educational. Hope you'll come along. Thanks for coming this morning.

God bless you.