7-20-08
Partnership
Building a Joyful Marriage: Part 3
Genesis 2:18

Summary: Increase delight by considering God’s love for your spouse, His desire that your spouse be loved, the goodness of your spouse’s desire to honor Christ, the privilege of being a conduit of God’s love to your spouse, the joy of receiving grace through your spouse, and delight in your spouse’s joy and wellbeing.  Increase desire by tasting of all that and by nurturing desires you already have.  This includes sexual desire, which you owe your spouse.  Be delightful to your spouse out of love, not out of manipulation. 
     The ideal marriage is a relationship of companionship (because God has that kind of relationship with His people) and partnership (because God has that kind of relationship with His people).  Eve was a suitable helper.  A marriage is two people working toward one task.

Review: Increasing Esteem
Deepen your love (contd)
Increase Delight
1. Consider God’s love for your spouse
2. God strongly desires that your spouse be loved by you.
3. Consider your spouse’s love for God
4. Enjoy being the Conduit of God’s love
5. Enjoy God’s grace dispensed through your spouse
Song of Songs (uniqueness)
6. Delight in your spouse’s happiness and well-being
Increase Desire
1.Taste and see
2. Nurture good desires
Sexual desire
Being delightful
1. Companionship
2 Partnership
Woman as helper
Suitable
Partnership with God
Conclusion

Genesis 2:18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all 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. 20 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. 21 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. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 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." 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Review: Increasing Esteem
The greatest command is love.  We are to love God with all our being and love people as we love ourselves.  And nowhere is it more urgent and important to fulfill that command than within marriage.  Love is the supreme duty of wives and husbands toward one another.  The main problem with your marriage and the main problem with my marriage is lack of love.  There is no marriage that does not need a deepening of love.
We saw last week that Adam’s joy and delight, and the end of Adam’s loneliness all came not from Eve’s loving him, but from his loving Eve.  If you want to be happier in your marriage that will come when your affection for your spouse increases.
So before moving ahead with studying the ideal for marriage, we started last time talking about how to increase your love for your spouse.  At the core of love in Scripture are esteem, desire, and delight – particularly delight in the other person’s highest good and greatest joy.  So last week we studied how to increase esteem.  You elevate your esteem for your spouse by…
•	Considering the blessedness of love
•	Considering the image of God in your spouse
•	Considering the fact that your spouse is a brother or sister of Christ Himself, and
•	Considering the fact that the purchase price for your spouse was nothing less than the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you love the Lord, considering those truths will increase the esteem you have for your spouse (or for anyone else you find it hard to love).  If it does not work, then there is a problem with your love for God.

Deepen your love (contd.)
Increase Delight
That is where we left off last time; now let’s examine how to increase the other two core components of love: desire and delight.  We will start with delight.  Last week after the sermon one of the kids asked what delight means.  Delight is when you really, really like something or someone.  If you go to Waterworld and you have a really good time – that is delight.  If you are happy because you are going to get to spend time with your favorite person in the whole world – that is delight.  If you really want to go see grandma and grandpa – that wanting is desire.  And when you go and have a really good time, that enjoyment is delight.  
God wants us to have more delight in people – especially for a husband or wife.  So how do you do that?  How do you make it so that when you look at your spouse you really, really like what you see?

1. Consider God’s love for your spouse
Probably the most common method Scripture gives us for increasing our love for people is to think about God’s love for them.  The more you love God, and the time you spend thinking about how much He loves your spouse, the more that will increase your love for your spouse.  You could spend weeks going through all the passages in Scripture about how deeply and fervently the Lord loves His people.  Here are some of them: 1 John 3:1, 1 Jn.4:9, Ps.31:19, Ps.36:7-9, Jn.3:16, Ro.5:8, Ro.8:32, Eph.2:4-5, Eph.3:18-19, Jer.31:20, Zeph.3:17, Isa.62:5, Jer.32:41.  Zeph.3:17 says that God takes great delight in your spouse and rejoices over him or her with singing.  Isa.62:5 says that God rejoices over your spouse with the joy and delight of a newlywed.  Jer.32:41 says He rejoices in doing them good with all His heart and all His soul.  Spend as much time in those passages as it takes before you start loving your spouse just because of how much affection God has for your spouse.
That is especially true if your spouse is a believer.  But it will work even if you are married to an unbeliever, because God loves all human beings.  And that love is to serve as a motive for believers to love all people, including enemies.

Matthew 5:43-45 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The fact that God loves them, combined with the fact that you desire to be like God, should cause you to love them.  In Psalm 35 David was faced with enemies who fought against him, pursued him, sought his life, plotted his ruin, set traps for him, and testified against him mercilessly– all without cause.  
When David stumbled they gathered in glee, ceaselessly slandered him, maliciously mocked him, and gnashed their teeth at him.  David responded with deeds of kindness, for which they repaid him with evil bringing great sadness and grief upon David.  
And then at some point they became ill and David’s response was to put on sackcloth, humble himself with fasting, and pray fervently for them.  When his prayers went unanswered he went about mourning as though for a friend or brother and bowed his head in grief as though weeping for his own mother.  On another occasion, when the man who had devoted his life to killing David died David lamented with deep emotion.  
You might have a real bum for a husband, but I doubt he is worse than David’s enemies.  And yet David loved his enemies so much that he genuinely, deeply grieved and mourned when they got sick.  So even if your spouse is a cruel, despicable, heartless unbeliever you could love him or her if you thought through how much God loves them (depending on how strong your love for God is). 

2. God strongly desires that your spouse be loved by you.
Not only does God deeply and energetically love your spouse, but He also strongly desires that your spouse be loved by you.  The more you love God the more you will be moved in your heart by what God desires.  And one thing God really desires and that really makes Him happy is when you love your spouse.  That is why He commands it over and over again - because He desires it.  God commands what He desires.  So if you love God at all, the more you think about the astonishing fact that you are capable of doing something that makes Him especially happy and that brings Him pleasure, the more you will desire to do it.
And this principle is also true of loving enemies.

Matthew 5:46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

Think of the purpose of rewards.  Why do people offer rewards?  People offer rewards when they really, really want something done.  The fact that God offers rewards to those who love their enemies shows that God strongly desires that those enemies be loved by His people.  And if that does not compel you to want to love your enemy, it means your love for God is weak (or non-existent).  And if all this is all true of your enemies, how much more true is it of your spouse?  How much greater is God’s desire that you love your husband or wife than your enemies?
So every time you have thoughts of high esteem for your spouse, or you have a feeling of desire for your spouse, or a feeling of delight – however big or small – take a second to think about God’s pleasure in that.  Every time you do something kind with a good attitude – any expression of love at all toward your spouse – think about the smile of God.  Train your soul to become addicted to that feeling of joy that comes when you think about God being pleased with you just for enjoying your spouse.  One of the best ways to learn to love is to take pleasure in pleasing God.  And you please God by taking pleasure in your spouse.  So all you have to do is take pleasure in God’s pleasure in your pleasure in your spouse.  Enjoy the fact that God is pleased by you taking delight in your spouse.  

3. Consider your spouse’s love for God
So those are two ways to increase your delight in your spouse - by considering God’s delight in your spouse, and by considering God’s delight in your delight in your spouse.  What else will work?  A third strategy for increasing delight is fixing your attention on what is attractive about your spouse.  And if you are married to a believer Ro.14 tells us about something that is extremely attractive.  That chapter is all about how to love the people who bug you.  The people were irritated at each other because of how the two sides were handling the matter of eating meat sacrificed to idols and observance of the Sabbath.

Romans 14:3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 
6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord.

The solution to being irritated by the people getting on your nerves is to focus on the fact that they do what they do with the motive of honoring the Lord.

6… He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.

So you look at the person and say, “I don’t agree with his methods, but you got to love someone who has a motive of honoring the Lord Jesus Christ.”  If you love the Lord at all you will love it when someone desires to honor Him – even if they go about it in a way that you do not agree with.  The soul that truly loves the Lord Jesus will have affection for anyone who is making an honest effort to honor Him.  This is why the Lord is pleased when you do this.

18 anyone who serves Christ in this way, is pleasing to God 

What is attractive about your spouse?  He or she has a desire to please the Lord!  Spend time thinking about that until it endears your heart to your spouse.  And if it doesn’t, it shows that your love for the Lord is weak or nonexistent.  

4. Enjoy being the Conduit of God’s love
When we studied about how to increase your love for God from Psalm 63 we found that the most important way is to enjoy the experience of the attributes of God while interpreting them as gestures of His love and effects of being in His presence.  That is why the number one pursuit of my life is to enjoy experiences of the attributes of God throughout the day every day as I seek fellowship with Him throughout the day.  There are a lot of ways to experience God’s attributes but the greatest is to be the means by which those attributes are delivered to people.  If you want to have a profound religious experience; if you want to experience the presence of God in a life-changing way; the deepest way is to experience God’s attributes flowing through you to another person.  If you want to experience God’s peace or wisdom or love or any other attribute, be a conduit or pipeline through which God delivers that grace to another person.

1 Peter 4:10-11 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace in its various forms.

If you are a Christian you have, at your disposal, a measure of God’s grace.  And it is your responsibility to distribute that grace to others as a steward.  And the more we distribute it to others, the more of it we receive from God.
Do an inventory of the stockpiles of divine riches that have been left under your stewardship and spend some time thinking about how the Master would have you distribute them to your spouse.

5. Enjoy God’s grace dispensed through your spouse
Every penny of your husband’s paychecks over the years has been provision from the hand of a loving Father in heaven. Your husband may not make as much money as you wish he did, but the truth is none of us are starving. In fact, we eat like kings – better than most kings who have ever lived. And I couldn’t help noticing that each and every one of you has clothes on this morning. You all have a roof over your head. All those necessities, and luxuries so abundant that you can’t even make a list for your insurance company – you just have to make an educated guess. Wives, don’t just enjoy all that as gifts from God; enjoy it as gifts from God through the labor and faithfulness of your husband. 
Sometimes we feel guilty about how much stuff we have. And in some cases maybe we should. But in most cases my guess is most of the time God would be more pleased with us just simply being full of gratitude and joy in Him over the gifts He has given us than to walk around feeling guilty. So wives, take delight in the way God provides for you through your husband. 
And not just provision. How about protection? How many times have you felt safe with your husband there in a context when you would have been scared to be alone? When that happens you are experiencing an attribute of God (His protective hand) – through your husband. The same with guidance and headship in the home and every other benefit you receive from God through your husband. 
And men, we need to work at developing that perspective too. All the wonderful gifts God gives you through your wife. Your children – gifts from God through her. And all her work as a homemaker, and partner in your ministry, and partner in life in general, and counselor with a unique perspective and special wisdom, and encourager and supporter - all the things she does as your suitable helper.
Every hour of every day when you experience those things you are experiencing attributes of God - the very presence of God – delivered to you through your wife. The same is true of all the physical pleasures of marital love that you have enjoyed over the years. All that is an experience of God’s love too – given to you through your spouse.
Beyond the nature graces of marriage, if your spouse is a believer then he or she has a set of spiritual gifts.  We are all unique.  God packed a different set of strengths and gifts and experiences and delights in each individual.  And the more you learn about your spouse’s unique gifts, and the more you focus your attention on how they point to and reflect the nature of God, the more you will enjoy them.  Remember, the goal is to enjoy God through your spouse.  It was not good for Adam to be alone.  God does not want you to only enjoy Him directly.  You should do that, but He also wants you to enjoy the expressions of His grace that He is giving you through your spouse. 
It is important that you know your spouse’s spiritual gifts, because those are the main avenue through which you will receive grace from God.  If you have lived with those gifts for years it is easy to just take them for granted or think of them as natural abilities.  They are God-given fire hoses of grace that you can drink from every day.  You can think of your spouse like a drinking straw that connects you to the Fountain of living water.
Song of Songs (uniqueness) 
Learn to enjoy what is unique about your spouse.  That was a huge part of the enjoyment of the couple in the Song of Songs.

Song of Songs 1:9 I liken you, my darling, to a mare harnessed to one of the chariots of Pharaoh.

A mare is a female horse.  That is a striking image because Pharaoh’s chariots were pulled only by stallions (male horses).  So what he is saying to her is, “When I compare you to all the other women, you stand out as if you were one woman in a world of men.  You are so beautiful and so feminine that compared to you all the other women might as well be men.”

Song of Songs 2:2 Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens. 

Again, the point is that compared to all other women she stands out like a flower among thorns.

3 Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

A large part of the joy of marital love is enjoying the uniqueness of your spouse – and then expressing that verbally to each other.

6. Delight in your spouse’s happiness and well-being
Remember the mark of genuine love that Jesus gave us in Jn.14:28 If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father.  Love enjoys the happiness and good fortune of the beloved.  So the sixth way to increase your delight in your spouse is to make him or her happy.  Do something that is especially delightful to them, and then when they are happy, put yourself in his/her shoes and just enjoy their happiness. 
Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive, but that only applies to giving out of love.  If you give out of mere duty that is not blessed at all but when you bring joy to another person so that you can enjoy their happiness that is real blessedness.
Increase Desire
So, you increase your esteem for your spouse by
•	Considering the blessedness of love
•	Considering the image of God in your spouse
•	Considering the fact that your spouse is a brother or sister of Christ Himself, and
•	Considering the fact that the purchase price for your spouse was nothing less than the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then you increase your delight in your spouse by…
1. Considering God’s love for your spouse
2. Considering God’s enjoyment of your love for your spouse
3. Considering your spouse’s love for God
4. Enjoying being the conduit of God’s love
5. Enjoying the grace of God that flows to you through your spouse
6. Making your spouse happy and enjoying his or her happiness. 

1.Taste and see
The third aspect of love is desire.  I talked about delight first because once you increase delight, increase of desire will be pretty much automatic, because you desire that which you really enjoy.  The biblical formula for increasing desire is “taste and see.”  The more you sample the delightful things about your spouse the more you will desire them.

2. Nurture good desires
Secondly, make much of your good desires.  Sometimes you can have just a fleeting thought about some good thing about your spouse, and you barely pay any attention to it, and a moment later it is forgotten.  Don’t let that happen.  Any time you have any good desire make much of it.  Ninety percent of the battle in the Christian life is developing good desires.  And so when you have one, pay attention to it, make a big deal about it in your mind, nurture it like a little plant that is about to die that you are trying to save.  Try to make it grow – nurture it and cultivate it and feed it.  You know how when you dwell on a sinful desire it gets stronger and stronger?  The same is true for good desires. 
Sexual desire
That applies to anyone you are trying to love.  Nurture any desire you have…
- to be in their presence and 
- to experience what is wonderful about their personality and 
- to receive the benefits of their gifts and the grace that flows through them.
You can cultivate that kind of desire for everyone you love.  But when it comes to your spouse, in addition to that kind of desire there should also be physical and romantic desire.  The book of Song of Songs is all about marital love, and it begins with the woman expressing her desire.

Song of Songs 1:2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth-- for your love is more delightful than wine. 3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. 

The word for love in v.2 is actually the Hebrew term for lovemaking.  She desires his kisses and his way of lovemaking and his unique smell.  Just hearing his name is a pleasure for her.  We should be doing everything we can  to develop that kind of desire for our spouse.
And we should do all we can to become more desirable in that way to our spouse.  In many, many marriages one spouse has a lower level of desire for physical intimacy than the other.  If you have little or none of this kind of desire for your spouse you are defrauding your spouse – regardless of what you are doing physically. 
Just read the Song of Solomon.  It is God’s description of marital love.  Read through that book and see how it reads if you substitute your feelings for your spouse in place of the feelings expressed in that book?  Would that destroy the book?
And by the way, one thing I have noticed as I have been reading that book the past few weeks is the energy with which the woman pursues the man.  That book is written mostly from the woman’s point of view.  She begins the book, and she does most of the talking.  She instigates and seduces and pursues much more than he.  I don’t think that means women have more responsibility in that area than men.  However I do think that it should dispel any idea that it is somehow not fitting or becoming for a wife to initiate marital intimacy.  Both partners should work hard at seducing the other.
We will probably look more at that book as this study progresses, but for now I just want to alert you to the role of romantic and physical desire in marital love.  Even if you provide physical fulfillment for your spouse, that alone is not enough.  You do owe your spouse that, but you also owe him or her desire.  If your desires would ruin the poetry of that book then they are ruining your marriage.

1 Corinthians 7:3-5 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.  4 The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.  5 Do not deprive (lit defraud) each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 

You are not to defraud your spouse in this area, and one reason why is because if you do you place your spouse into a position of being vulnerable to temptation.  In other words, you need to provide that which will protect against temptation.  Does physical fulfillment alone accomplish that?  It might help, but is it going to guard against seduction that comes from someone who truly finds your spouse attractive and really, strongly desires your spouse?  If you are just doing your physical duty, but your spouse knows that you don’t have any real strong, compelling desire to look or touch or whatever, and then someone else comes along who does desire your spouse in that way, you have just placed your spouse into a position of vulnerability to temptation.  And Paul calls it fraud because those desires are part of what you owe your spouse.  And those kinds of desires can be nurtured the same way as other desires.
I said last week that it is not enjoyable to be loved by someone you do not love.  However when you do love the person it really is wonderful when that person desires you.  You would not believe how many problems in your marriage would disappear if you just made it really clear to your spouse that you are extremely attracted to him or her, and that you have powerful desires.  And if you do not have them it is your responsibility before God to develop them.

Being delightful
Now, if you have read very many Christian books on marriage you know that what I have been saying is very different from what is normally taught.  One of the most common things you hear these days is a teaching that sounds biblical at first, but is really the opposite of love.  They say something like this: “Wives, if you want your husband to treat you with tenderness and understanding, show him respect.  Men crave respect and women crave love and affection.  So show your husband respect, and submit to his leadership, and honor him, and then he will be inclined to show you love.”  And it goes the other way too.  “Men, do you want your wife to submit to you and show you respect – love her and be understanding and tender and affectionate.  And when you do that she will give you the kind of honor and respect you are looking for.”
When they present that advice, it sounds biblical.  Ephesians 5 definitely teaches that the main task of the husband is to love and the main task of the wife is to respect.  But where the advice becomes worldly is in the motive.  You do not respect your husband in order to get him to love you.  You respect your husband because you love him and God.  You do not love your wife in order to get her to respect you or to respond in a certain way toward you.  When you offer your spouse love or respect or anything else in an effort to get them to give you what you want, that is not love.  That is just selfish manipulation.  It is a business transaction.  It is what the world does.  It is not biblical love.  Really it is just love  of self disguised as love for your spouse.
Does that mean I do not care at all about my wife’s response to me?  No.  I should care about whether she loves and respects me, because that is the path to joy for her, and if I love her I will care about her joy.  But there is a world of difference between me saying, “I am going to please my wife so she will treat me better” and “I’m going to please my wife to make it easier for her to find joy in being what God calls her to be as a wife.”  That first motive is selfish; the second is loving.

1. Companionship 
Okay, so now that we have a good understanding of how to increase our love for each other, let’s get back to our study of God’s ideal for marriage.  Before going off on that little detour we were in the midst of a study of God’s ideal for marriage, and we started with Gn.2:18 and companionship.  God designed marriage to solve the problem of aloneness.  The ideal marriage is a deep and profound friendship and companionship.  Your spouse should be your best friend.
It is not acceptable to just live together in some kind of cordial arraignment where there is no deep friendship.  You should not have a friend in your life who is a closer friend than your spouse.  Why?  Because marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and His Church.  And the Lord Jesus Christ is our closest friend.

James 2:23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend.

Jn.15:14-15 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

That is part of the gospel.  And our marriages are walking proclamations of the gospel – especially that part – the way in which God and His people love each other.  So when our marriages fall outside the bounds of the ideal model God has designed, we are living out a false gospel.  And our marriages become a lie about God.  And so we must strive to emulate that relationship between Him and His people, which means if you have a friend in your life who is a closer friend to you than your spouse, you need to work harder at building your friendship with your spouse.

2 Partnership
Woman as helper
That was the first point we saw.  Now we can get to the next ingredient for an ideal marriage.  We see this one also in v.18.

18 I will make a helper suitable for him 

What does it mean that woman is man’s helper?  1Co 11:9 says man was not created for woman, but woman for man.  Women are literally God’s gift to man.
But in what way is the wife created for her husband?  She is his helper, but what sort of helper?  Is she supposed to help him by serving him, like a maid?  Or is it some other kind of help?  The answer is in the meaning of the Hebrew word.  We think of a helper as an assistant – or a secretary or gopher, or errand boy.  None of that comes anywhere close to the idea of this Hebrew term.  Here is the definition of this word: relief or aid, as one who helps the miserable and destitute.  It is always the idea of helping the helpless, and most of the time helping them because of the fact that they are in a miserable condition.
This word is never used in the sense of assisting to make a project easier.  It is always used of assisting in order to make a task possible.  The point is, without the helper, the task cannot be done.
Normally this word is not used to describe human beings.  In the Bible it is always used to describe God, except for here where it is used to describe the woman.  There are some cases in the historical books when the verb form is used to refer to an army helping another army that was at risk of being routed, but all the rest of the 110 times it appears refer to God.  It is the word in Psalm 121 - I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?  My help comes from You..."
So Moses is taking a word that is normally only used to describe God and applying it to Eve.  The point of that is to show that Eve is the very help of God.  “Where does my help come from?  My help comes from God, and her name is Eve” – that is the idea.  That is the sense in which Eve was created for Adam.  He needed a helper – someone to rescue him – someone to come along and make what was an impossible task, possible.
A married couple is not just two people both fulfilling two callings under one roof.  A married couple is two people fulfilling one calling.  Your calling is complex.  It involves everything God expects of you: your ministry at church, family, friends, work, personal life – everything.  And unless you are like Paul or Jesus – specially called by God to be single for the sake of the Kingdom, then you need a spouse to accomplish your calling.  So the ideal marriage is not only a companionship, but also a partnership.
Later we will talk about the different roles for husband and wife, but when we do, do not confuse that to mean different tasks.  It is not that you do your job and your wife does her job.  There is just one job, and you cannot do it without your wife’s help.  Only when you fulfill your unique role and she fulfills her unique role can the job be done.
Suitable
The word translated suitable (or “meet” in the KJV, or “fit” in the ESV, or “like” in the CSB) is an interesting word.  It literally means “according to in front of him” or “corresponding to what was in front of him”  There was a task sitting there in front of Adam.  Fill the earth and subdue it.  As soon as God gave him that task Adam was in dire straits, because he was not capable of filling or subduing and ruling the earth on his own.  So God came to his rescue with one who was suitable, corresponding to the accomplishment of Adam’s task.
But God did not provide this suitable rescuer right away.  He announces that He is going to do it in v.18, but does not actually do it until v.21.  What happens in between?  In those verses in between God parades all the higher animals before Adam.  And then at the end of that process v.20 says…

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 

No animal qualified as a helper that corresponded to Adam’s God-given task.  No animal would do.  It had to be someone who was also in the image of God.  Nor would another man do.  It had to be someone very different – a compliment rather than a duplication.  And from that we learn that the differences between male and female are crucial for the combined ability needed to carry out God’s calling.  Don’t get frustrated because your spouse is so different from you.  If your spouse were not different you would be unable to fulfill your task as a couple.
Partnership with God
Now, is that aspect of the marriage relationship a picture of the relationship between God and His people?  Yes, I believe it is.  Obviously there is no sense in which we are God’s helpers.  However there is a very real sense in which we work in partnership with Him.  One of the most amazing realities there is, is the fact that almighty God chooses to do so much of what He does through us.

Colossians 1:29 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

It is absolutely amazing that the omnipotent, almighty God would work in any kind of partnership with specks of dust like us.  And yet He does.  And the closeness of that partnership is so profound that you cannot even make a clear distinction between what we are doing and what He is doing.  Paul’s ministry was God’s doing and it was Paul’s doing.  It was not half Paul and half God.  It was Paul’s labor, God’s energy, and God’s powerful working – but through Paul.  It is such a real partnership that God even allows really important things to go undone if we fail to do them.  That is the relationship between God and His people.
So when you have a husband and wife off in two different directions doing two different things and there is no partnership in what they are doing, their marriage lies about the way God works with His people.
So the first thing we learn about the ideal for marriage is that it is to be a companionship that solves the problem of aloneness.  The second thing is that it is to be a partnership that rescues the man from his inability to fulfill God’s call on his life.

Conclusion
So what is God’s ideal?  Five parts.  The first two are companionship and partnership.  The other three we will look at next time.  For now let’s just take a moment to enjoy being the people of a God who
* is a companion to us, 
* who allows us to be partners with Him in His work, and 
* who has entered into a covenant relationship with us.
And when you take the steps we talked about to increase your love for your spouse, let the motivation come from the eternal importance and the supreme urgency of living out marriage as God designed it so that it tells the truth about Him.

Benediction: 1 Thes.3:12,13  May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 13 May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

Devotionals: 
Day 1: Increasing Delight: Consider God’s love for your spouse
Delight is when you really, really like something or someone.  God wants us to have more delight in people – especially for a husband or wife.  So how do you do that?  How do you make it so that when you look at your spouse you really, really like what you see?

1. Consider God’s love for your spouse
Probably the most common method Scripture gives us for increasing our love for people is to think about God’s love for them.  The more you love God, and the time you spend thinking about how much He loves your spouse, the more that will increase your love for your spouse.  You could spend weeks going through all the passages in Scripture about how deeply and fervently the Lord loves His people.  Here are some of them: 1 John 3:1, 1 Jn.4:9, Ps.31:19, Ps.36:7-9, Jn.3:16, Ro.5:8, Ro.8:32, Eph.2:4-5, Eph.3:18-19, Jer.31:20, Zeph.3:17, Isa.62:5, Jer.32:41.
Zeph.3:17 says that God takes great delight in your spouse and rejoices over him or her with singing.
Isa.62:5 says that God rejoices over your spouse with the joy and delight of a newlywed. 
Jer.32:41 says He rejoices in doing them good with all His heart and all His soul.
Spend as much time in those passages as it takes before you start loving your spouse just because of how much affection God has for your spouse.  That is especially true if your spouse is a believer, but it will work even if you are married to an unbeliever, because God loves all human beings.  And that love is to serve as a motive for believers to love all people, including enemies.

Matthew 5:43-45 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The fact that God loves them, combined with the fact that you desire to be like God, should cause you to love them.  In Psalm 35 David was faced with enemies who fought against him, pursued him, sought his life, plotted his ruin, set traps for him, and testified against him mercilessly– all without cause.  
When David stumbled they gathered in glee, ceaselessly slandered him, maliciously mocked him, and gnashed their teeth at him.  David responded with deeds of kindness, for which they repaid him with evil bringing great sadness and grief upon David.  
And then at some point they became ill and David’s response was to put on sackcloth, humble himself with fasting, and pray fervently for them.  When his prayers went unanswered he went about mourning as though for a friend or brother and bowed his head in grief as though weeping for his own mother.  On another occasion, when the man who had devoted his life to killing David died David lamented with deep emotion.  
You might have a real bum for a husband, but I doubt he is worse than David’s enemies.  And yet David loved his enemies so much that he genuinely, deeply grieved and mourned when they got sick.  So even if your spouse is a cruel, despicable, heartless unbeliever you could love him or her if you thought through how much God loves them (depending on how strong your love for God is). 

Day 2: Increasing Delight: Consider God’s desire that your spouse be loved

Not only does God deeply and energetically love your spouse, but He also strongly desires that your spouse be loved by you.  The more you love God the more you will be moved in your heart by what God desires.  And one thing God really desires and that really makes Him happy is when you love your spouse.  That is why He commands it over and over again - because He desires it.  God commands what He desires.  So if you love God at all, the more you think about the astonishing fact that you are capable of doing something that makes Him especially happy and that brings Him pleasure, the more you will desire to do it.  And this principle is also true of loving enemies.

Matthew 5:46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

Think of the purpose of rewards.  Why do people offer rewards?  People offer rewards when they really, really want something done.  The fact that God offers rewards to those who love their enemies shows that God strongly desires that those enemies be loved by His people.  And if that does not compel you to want to love your enemy, it means your love for God is weak (or non-existent).  And if all this is true of your enemies, how much more is it true of your spouse?  How much greater is God’s desire that you love your husband or wife than your enemies?
So every time you have thoughts of high esteem for your spouse, or you have a feeling of desire for your spouse, or a feeling of delight – however big or small, take a second to think about God’s pleasure in that.  Every time you do something kind with a good attitude – any expression of love at all toward your spouse, think about the smile of God.  Train your soul to become addicted to that feeling of joy that comes when you think about God being pleased with you just for enjoying your spouse.  One of the best ways to learn to love is to take pleasure in pleasing God.  And you please God by taking pleasure in your spouse.  So all you have to do is take pleasure in God’s pleasure in your pleasure in your spouse.  Enjoy the fact that God is pleased by you taking delight in your spouse.

Day 3: Increasing Delight: Consider Your spouse’s love for God and enjoy being the conduit of God’s love
A third strategy for increasing delight is fixing your attention on what is attractive about your spouse.  And if you are married to a believer Ro.14 tells us about something that is extremely attractive.  That chapter is all about how to love the people who bug you.  The people were irritated at each other because of how the two sides were handling the matter of eating meat sacrificed to idols and observance of the Sabbath.

Romans 14:3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 
6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord.

The solution to being irritated by the people getting on your nerves is to focus on the fact that they do what they do with the motive of honoring the Lord.

6… He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.

So you look at the person and say, “I don’t agree with his methods, but you got to love someone who has a motive of honoring the Lord Jesus Christ.”  If you love the Lord at all you will love it when someone desires to honor Him – even if they go about it in a way that you don’t agree with.  The soul that truly loves the Lord Jesus will have affection for anyone who is making an honest effort to honor Him.  This is why the Lord is pleased when you do this.

18 anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God 

What is attractive about your spouse?  He or she has a desire to please the Lord!  Spend time thinking about that until it endears your heart to your spouse.  And if it doesn’t, it shows that your love for the Lord is weak or nonexistent. 

4. Enjoy being the Conduit of God’s love
When we studied about how to increase your love for God from Psalm 63 we found that the most important way is to enjoy the experience of the attributes of God while interpreting them as gestures of His love and effects of being in His presence.  That is why the number one pursuit of my life is to enjoy experiences of the attributes of God throughout the day every day as I seek fellowship with Him throughout the day.  And there are a lot of ways to experience God’s attributes.  But the greatest is to be the means by which those attributes are delivered to people.  If you want to have a profound religious experience; if you want to experience the presence of God in a life-changing way; the deepest way is to experience God’s attributes flowing through you to another person.  If you want to experience God’s peace or wisdom or love or any other attribute, be a conduit or pipeline through which God delivers that grace to another person.

1 Peter 4:10-11 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace in its various forms.

If you are a Christian you have, at your disposal, a measure of God’s grace.  And it is your responsibility to distribute that grace to others as a steward.  And the more we distribute it to others, the more of it we receive from God.
Do an inventory of the stockpiles of divine riches that have been left under your stewardship.  And spend some time thinking about how the Master would have you distribute them to your spouse.

Day 4: Increasing Delight: Enjoy God’s grace dispensed through your spouse

If your spouse is a believer then he or she has a set of spiritual gifts.  We are all unique.  God packed a different set of strengths and gifts and experiences and delights in each individual.  And the more you learn about your spouse’s unique gifts, and the more you focus your attention on how they point to and reflect the nature of God, the more you will enjoy them.  Remember, the goal is to enjoy God through your spouse.  It was not good for Adam to be alone.  God does not want you to only enjoy Him directly.  You should do that, but He also wants you to enjoy the expressions of His grace that He is giving you through your spouse. 
It is important that you know your spouse’s spiritual gifts, because those are the main avenue through which you will receive grace from God.  If you have lived with those gifts for years it is easy to just take them for granted or think of them as natural abilities.  They are God-given fire hoses of grace that you can drink from every day.  You can think of your spouse like a drinking straw that connects you to the Fountain of living water.
Song of Songs (uniqueness) 
Learn to enjoy what is unique about your spouse.  That was a huge part of the enjoyment of the couple in the Song of Songs.

Song of Songs 1:9 I liken you, my darling, to a mare harnessed to one of the chariots of Pharaoh.

A mare is a female horse.  That is a striking image because Pharaoh’s chariots were pulled only by stallions (male horses).  So what he is saying to her is, “When I compare you to all the other women, you stand out as if you were one woman in a world of men.  You are so beautiful and so feminine that compared to you all the other women might as well be men.”

Song of Songs 2:2 Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens. 

Again, the point is that compared to all other women she stands out like a flower among thorns.

3 Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

A large part of the joy of marital love is enjoying the uniqueness of your spouse – and then expressing that verbally to each other.

6. Delight in your spouse’s happiness and well-being

Remember the mark of genuine love that Jesus gave us in Jn.14:28 If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father.  Love enjoys the happiness and good fortune of the beloved.  So the sixth way to increase your delight in your spouse is to make him or her happy.  Do something that is especially delightful to them, and then when they are happy, put yourself in his/her shoes and just enjoy their happiness.  
Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive, but that only applies to giving out of love.  If you give out of mere duty, that is not blessed at all; but when you bring joy to another person so that you can enjoy their happiness that is real blessedness.

Day 5: Partnership
Genesis 2:18 I will make a helper suitable for him 

What does it mean that woman is man’s helper?  1Co 11:9 says man was not created for woman, but woman for man.  Women are literally God’s gift to man.
But in what way is the wife created for her husband?  She is his helper, but what sort of helper?  Is she supposed to help him by serving him, like a maid?  Or is it some other kind of help?  The answer is in the meaning of the Hebrew word.  We think of a helper as an assistant – or a secretary or gopher, or errand boy.  None of that comes anywhere close to the idea of this Hebrew term.  Here is the definition of this word: relief or aid, as one who helps the miserable and destitute.  It is always the idea of helping the helpless, and most of the time helping them because of the fact that they are in a miserable condition.
This word is never used in the sense of assisting to make a project easier.  It is always used of assisting in order to make a task possible.  The point is, without the helper, the task cannot be done.
Normally this word is not used to describe human beings.  In the Bible it is always used to describe God, except for here where it is used to describe the woman.  There are some cases in the historical books when the verb form is used to refer to an army helping another army that was at risk of being routed, but all the rest of the 110 times it appears refer to God.  It is the word in Psalm 121 - I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?  My help comes from You..."
So Moses is taking a word that is normally only used to describe God and applying it to Eve.  The point of that is to show that Eve is the very help of God.  “Where does my help come from? My help comes from God, and her name is Eve” – that is the idea.  That is the sense in which Eve was created for Adam.  He needed a helper – someone to rescue him – someone to come along and make what was an impossible task, possible.
A married couple is not just two people both fulfilling two callings under one roof.  A married couple is two people fulfilling one calling.  Your calling is complex.  It involves everything God expects of you: your ministry at church, family, friends, work, personal life – everything.  And unless you are like Paul or Jesus – specially called by God to be single for the sake of the Kingdom, then you need a spouse to accomplish your calling.  So the ideal marriage is not only a companionship, but also a partnership.
Later we will talk about the different roles for husband and wife, but when we do, do not confuse that to mean different tasks.  It is not that you do your job and your wife does her job.  There is just one job, and you cannot do it without your wife’s help.  Only when you fulfill your unique role and she fulfills her unique role can the job be done.
Suitable
The word translated suitable (or “meet” in the KJV, or “fit” in the ESV, or “like” in the CSB) is an interesting word.  It literally means “according to in front of him” or “corresponding to what was in front of him”  There was a task sitting there in front of Adam.  Fill the earth and subdue it.  As soon as God gave him that task Adam was in dire straits, because he was not capable of filling or subduing and ruling the earth on his own.  And so God came to his rescue with one who was suitable, corresponding to the accomplishment Adam’s task.
But God did not provide this suitable rescuer right away.  He announces that He is going to do it in v.18, but does not actually do it until v.21.  What happens in between?  In those verses in between God parades all the higher animals before Adam.  And then at the end of that process v.20 says…

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 

No animal qualified as a helper that corresponded to Adam’s God-given task.  No animal would do.  It had to be someone who was also in the image of God.  Nor would another man do.  It had to be someone very different – a compliment rather than a duplication.  And from that we learn that the differences between male and female are crucial for the combined ability needed to carry out God’s calling.  Do not get frustrated because your spouse is so different from you.  If your spouse were not different you would be unable to fulfill your task as a couple.
Partnership with God
Now, is that aspect of the marriage relationship a picture of the relationship between God and His people?  Yes, I believe it is.  Obviously there is no sense in which we are God’s helpers.  However there is a very real sense in which we work in partnership with Him.
One of the most amazing realities there is, is the fact that almighty God chooses to do so much of what He does through us.

Colossians 1:29 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

It is absolutely amazing that the omnipotent, almighty God would work in any kind of partnership with specks of dust like us.  And yet He does.  And the closeness of that partnership is so profound that you cannot even make a clear distinction between what we are doing and what He is doing.  Paul’s ministry was God’s doing and it was Paul’s doing.  It was not half Paul and half God.  It was Paul’s labor, God’s energy, and God’s powerful working – but through Paul.  It is such a real partnership that God even allows really important things to go undone if we fail to do them.  That is the relationship between God and His people.
So when you have a husband and wife off in two different directions doing two different things and there is no partnership in what they are doing, their marriage lies about the way God works with His people.
So what is God’s ideal?  Five parts.  The first two are companionship and partnership.  The other three we will look at next time.  For now let’s just take a moment to enjoy being the people of a God who…
* is a companion to us, 
* who allows us to be partners with Him in His work, and 
* who has entered into a covenant relationship with us.
And when you take the steps we talked about to increase your love for your spouse, let the motivation come from the eternal importance and the supreme urgency of living out marriage as God designed it so that it tells the truth about Him.