Clough Manhood Series Lesson 2

The Role of Man/Marriage – Genesis 2

This evening we continue with our second lesson in the manhood series, a series that is topical in approach and secondarily exegetical; a series that will be inductive in approach, that is I’ll be learning things as I go on and therefore I don’t try at the very beginning to include everything and we let the Scriptures sort of flow. Last week we began with Genesis 1, and rather than talk about the male, per se, we discussed the problem of man per se, that is, humanity. We stressed the need for understanding what man is and we found out that the highest creature in the universe is man; that other men may say that there’s life on other planets and it depends how you define life, but whatever it is, God did not come as a Martian. God came as a member of the human race. God created the human race for being the vehicle of the incarnation. This is a final Christian apologetics for the value of man. Man is valuable because of his position in creation, and his position in creation is shown by the fact of the incarnation. It’s a very simple argument, but no one outside of the Christian’s who believe Scripture have available to him that potent argument.

Therefore we came to certain conclusions about this; we came to the conclusion that we ought to be proud of our creaturehood, and we’re not the whining, whimpering people of the human race that humanism would have us try to be, that in fact, we can call ourselves dominion man because man was created to have dominion over all of God’s handiwork. That’s Dr. Rushdoony’s term and I think it’s a good one, “dominion man.” Man is a creature to rule, and therefore he ought to act as though he is the ruler.

We found also that, therefore, nature ought to be subdued by man, and the whimpering crybabies of zero population growth ought to be disregarded because the problem is not overpopulation because God has told us to populate and fill the earth and He has never rescinded that one command. And therefore that command has not and will not be fulfilled until the Second Advent of Christ. Therefore the whimper’s, the zero population growth, insisting that population be limited, are people who are basically socialists at heart, who believe in the almightiness of the state. It’s none of the state’s business how many children I have; that’s my business. And therefore we carry out the mandate of Genesis 1; have as many children as you can care for is the biblical principle. Disregard the quacks and the statistical idiots of zero population growth. There’s more than enough food and resources on the earth to feed a race three to four times bigger than the human race. It’s not the problem of overpopulation; it’s the problem of under use of existing resources. It’s foolishness on the part of people that destroy agriculture with great socialist schemes.

Out of all that we came to some final applications. One of the things that we struck last week was this strange phenomenon that crops up in evangelical circles, and non-evangelical circles, about self- image. All the people that are worried about their poor self-image, and we see books written about self-image. We see Christians going so far to say this is the most single important factor in your life, is you self-image. But if self-image were really as important as all the books say, isn’t it strange the Scriptures never devote a passage to it, when the Scriptures claim to be sufficient unto every good work. Doesn’t that seem to argue that there’s something inherently wrong with what we hear today about self-image, and indeed it is. Self-image is a result; it’s a result of dominion man ruling nature and no person can ever have a good self-image unless he’s a producing person. A person may have a lousy self-image because the person basically is a lousy person; the self-image is telling the message, you ought to listen to it. And the question is not trying to seek to change the image by some subjective emotional hocus pocus but rather to change the lifestyle that led to the lousy self-image. A person was living in defiance of God’s rules, it says that man is here to produce for God; man is here to believe in Jesus Christ and to, in grace, relying upon Him, exercise his dominion. And obviously a person has a lousy self-image; that’s just a synonym for an evil conscience. So let’s stop talking about bad self-images and start talking about bad consciences; that’s the whole problem, not self-image.

Then we applied certain other things by way of application. Women, whether they’re in the home or elsewhere, ought to have the right to see positive results in their efforts. They ought to be rewarded with at least a fraction of their efforts seen as something productive. It may be something around the house; it may be something outside of the house, but the man of the house ought to see that his woman, at least somewhere along the line, experiences some tangible results from the effort of her hands and the efforts that she expends around the home. And that’s the same thing with the man on the job. The man on the job ought to so arrange his work, and if he can’t, then do it on off hours, but some place a man has to see some tangible results of his work. He can’t be the perpetual machine man on the assembly line turning bolts all day long and never see a personal product, personal results of his efforts and expect to be a very contented individual because God did not create you to be a cog in a machine; particularly someone else’s machine. God created you to experience the results of personal production. And if you can’t do that somehow on the job there’s something wrong with the job.

We found, then, that man was made in God’s image. Now let’s take that and compare it to God. God and man have natures; God’s is sovereign; God is righteous, God is just, God is love, He’s omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal. Those are some of the attributes of God; it’s not an exhaustive list but a summary list. Now man is made in God’s image. Let’s see how man corresponds to those attributes. Man has human responsibility that corresponds with sovereignty; that means I have to make choices in life; it means that no one dictates choices to me. By the way, this is something that’s probably going to surprise you before the evening is over about choice in Genesis 2, but I’ve been able, at least I think, to define the problem of calling a little bit more particularly than I have ever before. And you’ll see how this comes out.

There are areas where it is my choice and even God does not tell me which way to choose; it is part of my creativity. And Christians are great in our hour of history, of denying their creativity; of always wanting God’s answer to a problem, when it may very well be that God is never going to give you an answer to your problem because He’s sitting waiting for you to crank out some creative solution to the problem; He’s saying be a dominion man and exercise dominion; stop waiting for Me to give it to you like a robot. You don’t want to be treated like a robot so I’m not going to treat you like a robot. So man has human responsibility.

In correspondence with God’s righteousness and justice He has given us a conscience, a moral sensation meter and we know this, and as we go older in life we become more and more adept at putting tape over the meter so we can’t read it, and so therefore the conscience is plugged into our nervous system and then it manifests itself when it’s not read properly through our minds, then God makes sure we understand that something is wrong with the meter, like tearing us apart mentally, nervously or physically in some way. So conscience will never be violated without paying a price somewhere along the line.

Then we find in comparison with God’s love man can love; it is possible for man to love. That is precisely why Jesus Christ came. Jesus Christ loves us; He loved us in His humanity and He showed His love by His human death. Angels, apparently, can’t show this much love, therefore God did not come and save us in the form of an angel. God is omniscient and therefore man can know. Man has a mind that can really know the universe. Those of you who plan to go to Dr. Schaeffer’s seminary in Fort Worth, those of you who have ordered his books, I hope you’ll read those sections and listen to him explain this like I’ve never heard it explained before; probably one of the greatest men to explain this in our generation, the thrill of the fact that against the 20^th century we Bible-believing Christian say that we can know the universe as it really is and that we’re not looking at a mental model of the universe just, but we are actually learning what the universe really is like, just as God knows except on an infinite plain.

God is omnipresent. God is omnipotent. In these areas there’s really not much comparison, we have human power and therefore we have some analogy to this, but at least in our imagination we can flee and visualize ourselves in difference places and this is a form of visualization where we can think of ourselves in another point in space. Some people are excellent at doing this in the pew. God is eternal, and of course here man is temporal. God is immutable, meaning he never changes, and man ought to be stable. So man’s character corresponds with God’s character, both male and female. And this elevates the female. There’s one thing that is right.. that is right about the modern women’s liberation movement. The one thing that’s right is the insistence that the woman is a human being. Some men haven’t found that out yet. They’re going to find it out in this generation and the tragedy is the pendulum isn’t going to stay in the middle, it’s go over to the other side. That’s just the price some very stupid males have to pay for not understanding and recognizing that women are, in fact, members of the human race also.

Let’s turn to Genesis 2; last time we dealt with Genesis 1. We’re not going to take the Bible a chapter at a time; we’re just taking it a chapter at a time in early Genesis. Tonight we being to diverge; in other words, at this point the Christian manhood series will diverge, and women will find less and less about themselves and more and more about men. If they want more about themselves we refer you to the very good series Barbara {?} has done on Christian womanhood. But beginning in Genesis 2 we have the sexual differentiation of man and women. And this introduces the second divine institution. If Genesis 1 gave us the first divine institution, that man is responsible, that man is a dominion man, Genesis 2 gives us the second divine institution of marriage, sex and marriage.

Genesis 2:18, we’ll go through this text, commenting briefly on parts of it, applying parts of it, and then going through other phases, showing the background of it and applying it. Verse 18, “The LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help fit for him.” But if you’ll let your eye drift up in the preceding context, you’ll see that in verse 15 God gave certain instructions to the man. He gave instructions which were not repeated to the woman, and this is significant. [And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to till it, and to keep it.”] The woman obtained her instructions through the man but not directly from God. And as I have warned you and exhorted you again and again, one of the principles for getting a lot out of Scripture is really simple but it is always look carefully when things first occur in Scripture because that sets the tone for everything else wherever it’s repeated in the rest of Scripture. Time and time again we’ll have people referring to the male/female relationship but time and time again it’s structured on the presupposition that this literally happened in Genesis 2. This is not a tale cranked out by some late religious critic.

Verse 18 is telling us that the woman came along after the man had received his calling to subdue nature, and because of this man has temporal priority over the female. And therefore, he has priority in the relationship. That is not necessarily to say that man is more human or higher on the totem pole than woman; it is simply to say in the team position man is first, for the reason that the man was given the instruction. And Paul refers to this and I’ll prove it to you later on and how this text is reflected in the pages of the New Testament. It’s not a male chauvinist writing this; it’s God that’s writing this. If you want to accuse Him of being a male chauvinist, try it. Verse 18, then, establishes a very good broad base for the relationship.

Now Genesis 2:19-20, the familiar Adam looking for his mate and in the process of doing so creatively exercises his dominion over nature. [“And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. [20] And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help fit for him.”] You’ll notice too that in the middle of verse 19 God brings the animals to Adam. Adam doesn’t go on sort of a zoological hunting trip. The animals are brought to Him. We’ll comment on the significance of this because that same verb is used elsewhere in this chapter. After the animals are brought and Adam is deliberately faced with revelatory data… that’s the point of being “brought,” God creates situations in Adam’s life to which Adam must respond as a creature to exercise dominion. He brings us data against Adam, He puts data in front of Adam’s face and Adam has to respond to that data and he responds to data by studying it and knowing it and naming it. And that’s the first, most elementary, function of a creature made in God’s image. And by the way, that shows us the rest of humanity, the rest of life, all of history, is revelatory, that God is training us, God brings situations into your life. They are not just accidents that happen passively; they are brought into your life. If we can ever learn that lesson… ever learn the lesson of responding with thanksgiving to revelatory data that is brought into our life, instead of saying damn it, where’d this come from. We know where it came from, we ought to ask what happened and why God is bringing this into our lives. That’s the proper response.

Now in Genesis 2:21 the operation, performed, you might note, under anesthesia. “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and He closed up the flesh instead therefore,” and you have Augustine’s famous dictum that it was from the side of man that woman was taken, not from his feet and not from his head, but from his side, showing the essential essence equality, showing that woman, therefore, is created in a very loft place. And also the verb shift; in verse 22, God uses the word banah, this is the Hebrew word, it’s an engineering term and it means to build up. That’s most interesting, the male was created but the woman was built, so when you say “she is well built,” boys, you’re using very biblical… a very biblical doctrinal phrase. Now there’s something, of course, of more serious intent to this than just banah, the woman is a second derivative of creation. And that’s very interesting and has profound implications for the virgin birth. The woman is not created directly from the ground; you don’t have a fiat creation, a rearrangement of the atoms and molecules of inorganic matter suddenly arranged in an operating replicating organic system. That’s not the case. Here you have a replicating organic system in which there’s a human spirit and out of this you have the woman. The woman is created. We don’t understand in Genesis 2 yet why she’s created that way but by Genesis 3 we will. She’s been created this way in anticipation of the fall and she will become, as we have noted in the communion service, the one through whom the light will come into the world. The woman has a special function and therefore she’s made in a special way.

And God brings the woman; in verse 22 the woman is brought to the man the same way the animals are brought in verse 19. It’s a revelatory situation. It’s part of the data and facts of life, that God brings the woman to the person. And then Adam responds to this by noticing what’s going on. I’ll read you a very interesting passage about this in a moment. He responds in verse 23 showing what he recognizes about the woman. “She is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” in other words, what Adam is saying is that she is my kind. He recognizes the image of God in the woman. He recognizes something else. Besides her being “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” suppose, for example, on a theoretical basis let’s say God created another male in the garden of Eden; now that would be another person made in God’s image too, but you couldn’t have the next thing, where it says, “because she was taken out of the man,” there’s still that dependency on the man; there’s still that derivative quality and therefore is the rise of sexual differential in the human race.

And the Bible goes on to describe this in Genesis 2:24-25, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” Verse 24 is addressed to the male, as though it were just to the male, and looking at the woman, but verse 24 is a universal principle that would apply to both sides of a marriage relationship. “…and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” This is talking about sexual intercourse, primarily, and we’ll develop that in a moment from 1 Corinthians, but basically that’s the name of the game in verse 24. You can read all sorts of metaphorical things in it but the “one flesh” is ultimately sexual intercourse.

[25] “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Now again, this has added implications in the sense that you have a total openness soul to soul, but the total openness of soul to soul is expressed in the very next part of verse 25 in terms of physical nakedness. Now there’s something we’ve got to learn from the Jewish people and the Hebrew way of thinking that we do not pick up in our Greek background. We always tend to categorize and divide the material from the immaterial. Now that is not the way the Old Testament is read and you’re going to have to get a new pair of eye glasses to read the Old Testament, to appreciate it, to understand something. Everything is presented as a physical concrete thing. For example, this communion service, we could go into great abstract theological definition about the atonement, but isn’t it remarkable that the Lord Jesus Christ, when He wanted to set up a monument that would be understood did not set up a mental abstraction. He set up a concrete physical thing, real bread that would be common to the human race wherever men are, and wine which would be common to men wherever they are. So He took something concrete and said look, this represents something; it was a concrete thing not divorced and not made separate.

Now in verse 25 we have to be careful we don’t separate this; this is talking about what we will call the psychological side of it, which means perfect openness between the man and the wife and physically it’s talking about nudity. In the Jewish mind there is no difference. That’s why the Bible tends to be prissy about nudity because nudity in Scripture basically is being open with someone else. And the Bible, though it abstracts and discusses other things, will insist on tying these two together. And you can trace this, it occurs every single time this is quoted because I’ve checked it. It always anchors the two sides, the physical and the psychological. In other words, sexual intercourse later on is an openness.

Now, since the fall, we haven’t got to the fall yet, but the fall changes things. And since the fall everyone wears clothes. You say well, that’s kind of an obvious observation. Well, the reason no one has ever postulated outside of Scripture. It’s most interesting. Have you ever seen an explanation of why people wear clothes? The explanation is not because of the climate. The human body can adapt to various temperature regimes; it’s not because it’s cold outside. But it’s very, very strange; very few tribes, even unreached by the Word of God express full nudity. Now why is this? Because there is something that signals us about this idea of defending and covering ourselves up. There is a certain core of privacy that must never be violated since the fall of man and every person, believer or unbeliever knows darn well that’s true. So since the fall both of these are severely limited. Nudity within marriage even itself oftentimes entails embarrassment. Total openness in marriage sometimes does, more often than the nudity. So therefore both of these elements, though tied together in Scripture, both of them are harmed by the fall.

But now here’s the most marvelous thing in our day. We used to have all over the country or particularly southern California the great nudist colonies, who always advocated a back to nature we show type of movement; the hippies and the communes in the 60s tried to go back to some of this and it was very interesting if you ever read their literature because it was deeply theological, it stated one thing, we are not fallen, that’s what the statement of nudity means. It’s a defiance of the Word of God. Now that’s the physical side of it. But now observe what’s happened in even evangelical circles, in growth groups, in psychological various training groups we have the expression of let’s have total openness between us. That is an expression of spiritual nudity and it’s a violation and it represents a very stupid understanding of this verse. Verse 25 is true only before the fall. There is no such thing as total openness in any {?} group, any psychological handholding group or the rest of it. That is as absurd as the old nudity literature. If you want to be a spiritual nude, go ahead.

All right, let’s go to the New Testament and see how the New Testament picks up the theme of Genesis 2. First Matthew 19:4-5, this is to show you that the New Testament takes very, very seriously this narrative. It’s not just a story; it’s not just something, this is a real thing that truly happened and it’s recognized by New Testament authors. In verse 4-5 we have Jesus Christ depicting the answer toward divorce, and in verse 4 he says, “Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning, made them male and female;” and there he quotes Genesis 1, and in verse 5 he says, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother,” and there He quotes Genesis 2. He quotes them together, He doesn’t see them as mutually contradictory accounts of creation; they are compatible, they are logically compatible accounts of creation. He builds the entire doctrine of divorce on a literal Genesis. You’d almost think that Jesus was a fundamentalist.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 11, another passage where Jesus Christ through Paul builds up doctrine for His church; in this case it’s local church relationships of male and female, and in this passage we find this business of covering the man’s head and so on, and the man in 1 Corinthians 11:8 “For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man.” Now look at that; that’s not grounded on some cultural thing that was only true in the first century; that’s what all the great evangelical liberals like to do. Oh, we get to 1 Corinthians 11 and we get to 1 Timothy 2 and it somehow is just cultural accommodation. It’s not a cultural… just read the text, that isn’t cultural accommodation you’re looking at there; that’s a reference to the act of creation. Creation is an absolute, it’s not culturally relative. If there’s any passage in Corinthians that’s not culturally relative it’s 1 Corinthians 11; he builds it entirely on the act of how woman was created, Genesis 2. We have a parallel if you want to chase it down in 1 Timothy 2:13.

Now a long time ago, in the 15^th century, a man lived by the name of John Milton. He wrote a very famous book called Paradise Lost. And in this book he had several passages in which he described the creation of the man and the woman; a great deal of wisdom, although in some cases Milton’s theology is wrong in the area of defining the man/woman role. But I’m going to read some sections of this, some of you might pick up a little culture through it tonight, and in so doing you get some mature Christian reflections on the text, and then we’re going to take you to some more New Testament materials defining just what this sexual differentiation of dominion man is.

In book 8 of Paradise Lost we have Adam talking to God; Adam is alone and he talks to God about his loneliness, and he says: “Let not my words offend thee, Heavenly Power, My Maker, be propitious while I speak. Hast thou not made me here thy substitute, And these inferior far beneath me set? Among unequals what society can sort, what harmony or true delight? Which must be mutual in proportion due, Given and received but in disparity.” And so he goes on and he continues this prayer to God. God, there’s something inherently wrong with me. This is Milton’s understanding of Genesis 2 and what the psychological process was in Adam’s soul.

And so the next scene in the book he goes and describes the operation of God. “Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape, Still glorious before whom awake I stood, Who stooping opened my left side and took from thence a rib with cordial spirits warm, And life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound. But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed, The rib He formed and fashioned with his hands; Under His forming hands a creature grew; Manlike, but different sex, so lovely fair, That what seemed fair in all the world seemed now mean, or in her summed up, in her contained, And in her looks, which from that time infused sweetness into my heart unfelt before, And into all things from her Aire inspired the spirit of love and amorous delight. She disappeared, and left me dark. I waked to find her, or forever to deplore, her loss, and other pleasures all abjure: When out of hope, behold her, not far off, such as I saw her in my dream, adorned, With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow to make her amiable: On she came, led by her Heavenly Maker,” this is his understanding of how God brings Eve to Adam, “On she came, led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen, And guided by his voice, nor uninformed of nuptial sanctity and marriage rights. Grace was in all her steps; Heaven in her eyes. In every gesture dignity and love. I overjoyed could not forbear aloud. This turn has made amends, thou hast fulfilled Thy words, Creator bounteous and benign, giver of all things fair, but fairest this of all thy gifts, nor envious. I now see, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself before me; Woman is her name, of man extracted; for this cause he shall forego father and mother and to his wife adhere; And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul. She heard me thus, and though divinely brought, yet innocent and virgin modesty, her virtue and the conscience of her worth, that would be woo’d, and not unsought be won,” and here’s a very interesting point that Milton’s bringing up, that Adam has to woo Eve to himself, it’s not automatic, it’s not that God says okay Eve, here you are, boom, and takes off. It’s not that mechanical and Milton is careful to protect the mechanical interpretation of Genesis so this why he puts this line in, that she still has to be wooed, “and not unsought be won, not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired. The more desirable, or to say all, nature herself, though pure of sinful thought, wrought in her so, that seeing me, she turned: I followed her, she was what Honor knew, And with obsequious majesty approved my pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower I led her, blushing like the Mourn: all heaven and happy Constellations on that hour shed their selectest influence; the Earth gave sign of gratulation and each hill; Joyous the birds, fresh gales and gentle airs, whispered it to the woods, and from their wings flung rose, flung odors from the spicy shrub, Disporting till the amorous bird of night sung spousal, and bid haste the evening star on his hill top to light the bridal lamp.”

And this describes the wedding night of Adam and Eve. But then after he goes through this and he carries and he describes… this is basically Adam talking {?} and the angels, he’s describing the marriage of himself to Eve but then he comes up with this observation, it’s most interesting. After going through the delights of the sexual relationship that he had with her immediately he then adds this: “Neither her outside form so fair, nor aught in procreation common to all kinds, (though higher of a genial bed by far, and with mysterious reverence I deem) so much delights me as those grateful acts, those thousand decencies that daily flow from all her words and actions mixed with love and sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned union of mind, or in us both one soul.”

Notice what he said; he said how much he delighted in the sex relationship but then he says that wasn’t anything compared to the gracious act “those thousands decencies that daily flow.”

Now when we develop Genesis 2 from the New Testament, to show a few passages on this, you’re going to see that the Bible cuts sex down to size and shows yes, sex is to be enjoyed but sex isn’t where it’s really at. And that’s a message our generation needs; and that’s what’s wrong. Even some of the Christian books that are written about what’s wrong in marriage presuppose that the sex is the central issue and that’s not Scriptural; that itself is a wrong presupposition and creeps into the discussion from the very start. And so it’s interesting that Milton points this out. Yes it’s essential, yes, it’s a delightful thing, but therefore that doesn’t delight me as much as the gracious acts, “those thousand decencies that daily flow, from all her words and actions….”

Well, then Adam concludes talking to Raphael and Raphael turns back to Adam and cautions Adam. Raphael has been sent to Adam to tell him about the coming of Satan and to warn him, and as Adam has gone on and expounded what a great thing this Eve deal is, Raphael says hold it, listen. “Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all love Him whom to love is to obey, and keep His great command; Take heed lest passion sway thy judgment to do aught which else free will would not admit; thine and of all thy sons, the weal or woe in thee is placed; beware. I in thy persevering shall rejoice, and all the blest: stand fast, to stand or fall, free in thine own arbitrement it lies. Perfect within, no outward aid require; and all temptation to transgress repel.” Raphael’s warning, don’t be snowed.

But Milton is too much of a poet to leave the woman’s side alone, so he also has in book 4 what it seemed like to Eve, and this, fellows, will show you something the nature of the woman. Here’s how Milton sees Eve as she looks at the situation. “To whom, thus Eve replied,” because Eve is telling her story, “O thou for whom and from whom I was formed, flesh of thy flesh, and without whom am to no end, my Guide and Head, what thou has said is just and right, for we to him in thee all praises owe, And daily thanks, I chiefly who enjoy so far the happier lot, enjoying thee preeminent by so much odds,” and she goes on, she praises Adam, line after line after line, and then she describes when she first looked at Adam. “What there thou seest fair creature…” Oh, let’s see, it goes on to describe… let me find the place here where she… okay, she wakes up from the sleep, “I first awoke and found myself reposed,” now this is Eve after the operation. She finds herself at a distance physically from Adam. “Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where and what I was, whence thither brought and how. Not distance far from thence a murmuring sound of waters issued from a cave and spread into a liquid plain, and then stood unmoved, pure as the expanse of Heaven; I thither went. With unexperienced thought, and laid me down on the great bank, to look into the clear Smooth Lake that to me seemed another sky.” It’s the picture of the woman first looking at a mirror, the mirror of the water. Now see, even Eve had a mirror, guys.

“As I bent down to look, just opposite, a shape within the watery gleam appeared, bending to look on me, I started back, it started back, but pleased I soon returned; pleased it returned as soon with answering looks of sympathy and love; There I had fixed my eyes till now and pined with vain desire, had not a voice thus warned me, What thou seest, What there thou seest fair creature is thyself. With thee it came and goes:, but follow me and I will bring thee where no shadow stays thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he whose image thou art, him thou shall enjoy, inseparably thine to him shall bear multitudes like thy self and thence be called Mother of human race: What could I do but follow strait, invisibly thus led?” So God takes her away from her mirror and she brings him to Adam. Now she’s looked at herself in the mirror and now watch what she does when she sees Adam. “Till I spied you, fair indeed and tall, under a platan, yet me thought less fair, less winning soft, less amiable mild, then that smooth watery image; back I turned. Thou following cryest aloud, Return fair Eve, whom fliest thou? whom thou fliest of him thou art, his flesh, his bone,” so God turns her around and takes her back. But this is the humor of Milton expounding on the text of Genesis 2. You see, there’s a lot there in the text and in the hands of a skillful person can become a quarry of fantastic riches.

Now let’s turn to the New Testament for some clarification. We’ve seen dominion man, we’ve seen the acts of the rise of sexual differences; we’ve seen, therefore, the sexual differences have to be viewed in perspective. They are not creating two entirely different kinds of people. The overall first divine institution precedes and is the base on which the second one is built. So we have to say and confess that sexual differentiation is secondary to man’s imagehood. It’s secondary to man’s imagehood. We have to cut sex down to size because our generation plays it far over its size. And this is what happens; people mess around and then they feel let down because it really isn’t there, and then they go to other things. The wrongness was thinking that that was the place where it’s all at and it isn’t. It’s in fellowship with God is where it’s at and this can be heaven or it can be hell, depending on whether you have a proper relationship with God.

Now in 1 Corinthians 6:9 there’s a commentary on this “one flesh.” And this commentary defines very clearly what that “one flesh” is talking about. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, [10] Now thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Now is that teaching perfection? No! What that is teaching is people in whom these particular sin patterns are never challenged and never stopped and they’re characterized, therefore, because of the sin patterns, these particular ones, dominate their lifestyle; they show no evidence of spiritual combat to work against these sentences. And Paul says when you see that kind of situation, there’s no evidence of saving faith. But there’s good news here because if you look carefully, particularly at verse 9, you will notice listed there patterns which in our generation are claimed to be constitutional patterns, that is, patterns for which there is no cure. An example would be homosexuality, the “effeminate,” or “abusers of themselves with mankind.”

Now our generation would love to think that that’s not a sin; they would love to in therapy say to the homosexual person struggling with this horrible thing, they’d say well, you know really, you can’t really do anything about it, I’m sorry, we’ve got a very poor prognosis of anyone ever coping with this problem. Well, that’s real hopeful information, isn’t it, if someone’s grappling with this problem to be told that you somehow are genetically doomed; it really turns you on, gives you a lot of initiative to try to fight the problem, doesn’t it. But that’s what men are being told all across the board. That’s what the battle’s all about, when Christians are fighting the government to take over Christian child care centers and other places where the state wants to produce Freudian psychologists on the staff of these places. We don’t want that, it’s a violation of our religious freedom. What are you going to do, every homosexual that’s in a Christian orphanage tell them sorry, Freud says…. What do you care about what Saint Freud says, it’s more interesting than what God’s Word says, but if the Texas Welfare Department has their way we’ll all be Freudians before it’s over.

So this is where the battle is, to preserve this particular doctrine. Notice in verse 11, there’s the good news, “But such were some of you; but now ye are washed,” and there’s the biblical answer about that baloney about these things can’t be dealt with, they can’t be overcome. They can be! And here’s one of the great promises of Scripture over against our generation. The promise of Scripture says that in the first century there were homosexuals and they were cured by Jesus Christ, and they were sanctified out of their problem. And any one of those people, with any of those problems, whether it’s the habitual criminal of verse 10, look at the word “drunkards” there, you don’t see somebody says has a sickness of alcoholism. What a dumb conclusion that is; alcoholism is NOT a disease. It is no more a disease than kleptomania. It is no more disease than being a habitual murderer. Is that a disease? The Scriptures challenge that concept and as Bible-believing citizens you ought to stand up and loudly challenge that absurd notion: alcoholism is a disease. Read this passage, there’s no disease here, it’s just “drunkards.”

[11] “And such were some of you, and you’re washed,” and it means you’re no longer in that category. So it’s baloney, it’s not a disease; if it was a disease he sure got cured quick. “…but you are sanctified,” that’s good news. It’s going to be a struggle, of course, but there’s hope here, for every person facing these horrible problems. Instead of looking down noses at people like this, pray for them, help them, but know that the hope is there in verse 11.

That’s the context of this passage, 1 Corinthians 6:12, “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” And then he uses a proverb in 1 Corinthians 6:13, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats,” it’s talking about desires of the body. He says the desires are find but keep those desires in perspective, “God shall destroy both the desires and the body.” That includes hunger, which is the subject of the proverb in verse 13, but it also includes sex desires; it’s very obvious in the context, that’s the reason they talk about it. So he says yes, the sexual desires are there and yes they’re hard to master, but look, you’re not a slave to them because God is eventually going to destroy your body anyway, “the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. [14] And God has both raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by His own power.” And in the resurrection there is no sex, sorry for some of you who think that’s the sine quo non of life, but in Matthew 22:30, in all eternity there is no sex. Now I hate to ruin heaven for you but I’m sure there will be equal pleasures.

So Jesus Christ says in resurrection there is no sex; Paul says here there is no sex. In other words, it’s cutting sex down to size. It’s saying yes, dominion man is separated and differentiated. Yes, dominion man is parted. But, that division and that differentiation is a temporal differentiation; it is not an eternally significant differentiation. And then he goes on in 1 Corinthians 11:15 to describe the act of sex and notice he defines what that “one flesh” is. “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I, then, take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a whore? God forbid. [16] What? Know ye not that he who is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh.” Now normally you hear it expounded that the “one flesh” is more than just sex; in fact I’ve expounded it that way. But I can no longer expound it that way in the light of verse 16 because you obviously don’t have a deep personal relationship with a prostitute. A prostitute, she isn’t interested in developing a deep spiritual relationship with every John she has in her business. So therefore the “one flesh” the way it’s being used in verse 16 can’t refer to a deep relationship; it’s out of the context. So Paul says the relationship of strictly the sex act itself is the “one flesh” of Genesis 2.

Now obviously there’s more involved in marriage but the point is that that technical expression, “one flesh” does, in fact, refer to the sex act. 1 Corinthians 11:17, “But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. [18] Flee fornication.” As I said when I worked through Deuteronomy and we again referred to 1 Corinthians 6:18, I do not know and I would hope that Christians with medical and psychological knowledge would help us out here; verse 18 is an enigma as to exactly what is implied here, but something happens in that sex act. “Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.” Now it’s an enigmatic statement, it’s just saying categorically there’s something that happens; it’s not the unpardonable sin but it’s saying there’s more to this “one flesh” business than we are accustomed to thinking of.

1 Corinthians 11:19, “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom ye have of God, and you are not your own,” and then he goes on and in the best texts, “bought with a price, therefore, glorify God in your body.” The subject of 1 Corinthians 6 is glorification of God in the body and therefore because it’s glorification of God in the body Paul cuts the body down to size and says whatever the lusts are, food, sex or something else, they are natural desires of the body but they don’t perpetuate themselves into eternity, so look at them as but temporally significant things.

Now, there are some applications to this and so we’re going to conclude by turning to some of these applications. Let’s go back to Genesis 2. Now here’s where I’m sure some of you will vibrate but that’s all right, a good vibration once in a while won’t do too much harm. In the Scriptures I can only find evidence of four callings, that is, specific calls of God to the individual. This is general calling; one is the call of Genesis 1 to dominion; another is the call to salvation. A third is the call to discipleship and sanctification; and a fourth is a call to the ministry of the Word of God. Apart from that I can find no evidence of calling to particular jobs.

Now a question was asked by some man who sent in a feedback card that I’m going to start to answer tonight, and the question was this: I request the Bible’s answer regarding the order of priorities a man should set toward his calling, or job, versus the time spent with his wife and family. A very legitimate question, the old problem of time competition between wife and job. We’ve been led to believe, and I have too, that the job itself is the calling, and then the wife is the helper to that calling. In other words, we’ve pictured it like this: here’s the job, that’s the calling; then the wife is out here as sort of an appendix to the calling but the calling in Genesis 1 and 2 is to man, dominion man to subdue, and the calling is familial calling; that is, we ought to say that the calling to subdue includes both the job and the wife as a unit.

Let’s see how this is reflected, let’s look in Genesis 18:19, when God praises Abraham. In this section God tells us what pleases Abraham as a dominion man, and when he does so it’s very clear that he doesn’t see the tension between the job and the wife. The job and the wife together constitute two sides of the same coin, because in 18:19 look at what God says about Abraham: “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, and do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him.” Do you notice in verse 19 that is talking about a job and his family.

Let’s try to summarize this principle and we’ll carry it on later, but let’s try to summarize it this way. Visualize yourself, men, as Adam, producing a new family, a new human race. There’s your calling. Would you concede, then, if you were given the call of Adam that you would bifurcate your job concerns from your wife? Not at all because it’s through your wife that you’re going to create the children that you’re going to train for the next generation. So therefore the concept of the call, the call to dominion, is a call to dominate via the wife and the job. Now this doesn’t answer that man’s question fully but it begins to form the framework for our solution.

Now we’re talking about people at the same level; it’s not the wife added onto the job, but the wife and whatever the job is. Well, what about choosing the job, wisdom principles? You treat it like Adam did the animals coming; all data is revelatory, your business state is revelatory and you’re left to your own creative common sense to decide. If we would do this it would restore a lot of common sense to Christian men looking around for God’s calling, from one job to the next. The answer that I can give only from Scripture is that you’re left to your wisdom; you’re left to a consideration of the data at hand like Adam was when he faced the animals. God didn’t tell him what part of the garden to hoe, whether to plant this crop or that crop. God didn’t treat the man as a robot; He treated him as a dominion man; dominion man reigns and makes his own choices, and that implies then you must study the Word, study the Word and study the Word. The job, discernment on the job means work/rest principle, it means the principle of fruitfulness, it means the knowledge of biblical economics. In selecting a wife it means the bone of my bone, that she is compatible with me, she is compatible spiritually, educationally, economically with me. In my family it is the choice of operating as a dominion man. All three together constitute God’s one calling.

So you have, then, this entire framework tied together as the call. Let’s review. We’ve got dominion man; we’ve got him bifurcated sexually in time, only in time, not in eternity, there’s no eternal marriages ala Mormonism. And so therefore we have a situation where we’re going to have dominion man restored by means of his wife, by means of the family, by means of the job. They are not antagonistic, they are three parts to the whole.

Ask God, then, each of you men particularly, to bless you according to James 1:5, giving you wisdom; wisdom according to the principles of promises.