Sermon: The Two Shall Become One

God's Plan of Physical Marriage a Foreshadow of Our Spiritual Marriage
#1748B
Bill Onisick
Given 17-Feb-24; 35 minutes 2024-02-17

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We are going to begin at the beginning so let us go ahead and get back there to the beginning. We are going to examine God's plan from the beginning for the "two to become one."

In Genesis 1, as we read about the creation, we see God made multiple pairs: heaven and earth, sea and land, light and darkness. But the last pair that God makes is very special.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 2:18 And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."

Now, the translation-helper could falsely convey a bit of an inferiority here, like a bit of an apprentice. The woman is created to be much more than just a mere helper to do the dishes. She should do the laundry too. No, I am just kidding! (My wife okayed that joke.)

But I really want us to look at this word helper for a minute. It is Strong's #5828, azar. And we see this same word translated helper used throughout the Psalms to describe our relationship with the Lord. Psalm 33:20 reads, "Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield." Same word in Psalm 70:5, "Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer. And in Psalm 115, it is repeated, actually, three times for emphasis, "Trust in the Lord; He is their help and their shield."

The same word "help" there in our relationship with relying on the Lord is used for helper, the wife, in the relationship to the husband. I find that very interesting. The woman is an equal companion to the husband created, just like the man, in God's image. She is created to actually complete him. And I really want us to grasp here how that word is used to describe the relationship between man and woman and the same word used to describe our relationship with God the Father.

Let us pick up in verse 21 now.

Genesis 2:21-24 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

So God created man and woman in His image. The woman was created to complement the man, complete him, and the man is to join, that is, cleave unto his wife.

Now, the Hebrew word translated cleave here is dâbaq, Strong's #1692, meaning to cling, adhere, abide, follow, be joined together.

Let us go over to Deuteronomy 10 and let us see where this same word is used again.

Deuteronomy 10:20 "You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name."

Hold fast is the same Hebrew word, dâbaq, that we just read earlier.

Deuteronomy 11:22 "For if you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do—to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him—"

Again, the same Hebrew word there that we saw, that the man is to cleave, hold fast to his wife.

Deuteronomy 30:20 [I really like this one.] "That you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life. . ."

Can we see how special this relationship is between husband and wife? This was the design from the beginning.

Now, I am not suggesting that the relationship with the wife supersedes God. Of course not! But using the same words to describe our relationship with God as our relationship with our spouse should give us an appreciation for how tight we are to be bound together in a relationship.

Back to Genesis 2:24. I will read it again. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall be joined [cleave, cling] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." So one flesh, that is, united, alike, all together. And we see from the beginning, God's design was for one man and one woman to join together and become one. They bring different attributes to the relationship and they literally complete each other.

Now, some argue that along the way something changed because we see so many examples of prominent leaders in the Old Testament, like the father of the faithful Abraham, like Jacob, like David, like Solomon, having multiple wives. Some would argue that that was God's change in a plan. But we are going to see here that no, there was no change in the plan. Of course, we know this, but it is really interesting as I studied into this. It came up in a Spokesman's Club several weeks ago and it got me thinking about it. So I started to study into it. So let us go into Exodus 20 real quick.

Exodus 20:14 "You shall not commit adultery."

This is an easy one. We know that. But let us go over now to Deuteronomy 17. This is actually pretty clear too.

Deuteronomy 17:17 "Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away."

To multiply here simply means to increase from one to more. There is no cap here. Anything more than one is multiplying and increasing beyond one wife. And we know as soon as somebody took a second wife, they almost always took a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth.

Deuteronomy 21:15-16 "If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the unloved, and if the firstborn son is of her who is unloved, then it shall be, on the day he bequeaths his possessions to his sons, that he must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife in preference to the son of the unloved, the true firstborn."

So why did I read this? Seems like I am disproving myself. Well, not really. Some would point to this saying, "Well, since it's written, if a man has two wives, that God clearly condoned it, it was ok." Well, now that kind of falls apart because let us go down to verse 22. We could use the same logic here.

Deuteronomy 21:22 "If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you should hang him on the tree. . ."

We cannot use the fact that something was documented in the Bible as the fact that God has condoned it to be okay. And that is what some will do when they point to those scriptures. That is what some will do when they point to the scriptures related to the kings that had multiple wives: just because it was documented it must have been okay. But I do not think it is okay. I do not think God ever really intended for it to happen. He let it happen. But let us keep reading on here.

I think the important point is just because something is recorded in the Bible does not make it law, does not mean that God endorsed it. Now, if God says "thou shall do" this, of course, that is law. But if we record somebody making a mistake, we learn from that just like if we record something that is a good deed. Like we saw Abigail (we heard about that from Ronny earlier) we learn from that. So let us go back to Genesis 4. I want to look at the first example of multiple wives because I really think we could probably stop here.

Genesis 4:16-19 Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and born Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Lamech. Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah.

So Lamech, the great, great grandson of (or fifth generation I believe) from Cain (who was the first murderer) is the first documented man to have more than one wife. Now, Richard always points out the importance of the first instance in the Bible and so we might could stop here really because this is the first instance. And let us read on, let us just read about this Lamech for a minute.

Genesis 4:23-24 Then Lamech said to his wives [this is some of the first mansplaining ever recorded]: "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my speech! For I have killed a man for wounding me, even a young man for hurting me. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold."

Hmm. Interesting, interesting. He is basically saying, "Listen up, you inferior women! Don't you dare cross me! You better do what I say when I say it! I killed a man for something less so get in line." Here we see the prideful nature of the first occurrence of a man that took two wives. And we could just stop right here because I do believe that is the bottom line on top. There is not a whole lot of good that came from having more than one wife.

There are some great examples. Ronny gave one today. I do believe Abigail is a great example. And it is very interesting the way God works that out. But most of them are not so good as we are going to see here today.

Let us go to Genesis 15 now and look at another example. This is one we are all very familiar with, the father of the faithful.

Genesis 15:4-6 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, "This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir." Then He brought him outside and said, "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he [Abram] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

So all seems pretty good here. God is promising to create many, many, many great grandchildren through Abraham. Abraham says, "I believe you." And then we go to the next chapter.

Genesis 16:1-5 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, "See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her." And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, "My wrong be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me."

It is interesting here. I do not know if you picked up on it but twice, Moses, the writer of this book, clarifies that Hagar, Sarah's maid, is the Egyptian, the sojourner. Now, this situation is actually a bit reversed from a situation that happened a few years back. She is a sojourner in a foreign land. But I want to call attention here to the first instance of this underlying Hebrew word translated Egyptian four chapters earlier. Turn back there with me.

Genesis 12:12-14 Therefore, it will happen, when the Egyptians see you [this is Abraham talking to Sarah], that they will say, 'This is his wife'; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you." And so it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful.

We know this story pretty well. After Abram, the sojourner in Egypt, lies about Sarai not being his wife, the Pharaoh takes her in to be part of his harem. But we read in verses 17 and 18 that the Lord plagued him with a great plague, his whole house was plagued, and so Pharaoh calls Abram immediately and says, "Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?" And he quickly sends them on their way with all their possessions.

Now we are going back to Genesis 16 and we see this time it is Abram taking Hagar, the Egyptian who is the sojourner in the land of Canaan. And I think it is basically God saying, "Abram, you knew better. You saw the same thing, you saw what happened when Pharaoh tried to do this to you, and here you are, you did it to Hagar! Don't you see how I punished him?" Now, it is clear that Sarah was a bit desperate here and she wanted to take matters into her own hands, but Abram could have refused. And I think it is part of becoming at-one with our spouses by the way, right? It is not just blindly listening, it is having a conversation. "What does God really want from this situation? What should we do?" And it is that level of reciprocity and relationship that allows us to be better together and to get to a better answer.

Abram just listened. He did not have that conversation. I think in his gut he probably knew a little better but maybe not. We should note that it was after 10 years that this happens. So after 10 years that Abram is living in the land of Canaan he goes in to Hagar and we see the result. Immediately, as soon as he has multiple wives, turmoil and division. Sarai wants to send her handmaid away, only for God to bring her back. And we see this account of having more than one wife ends very poorly and causes issues for many generations to come.

Now, in Genesis 17, we see that the faithful God would indeed fulfill His promise. He makes a promise, He is going to fulfill it. But they had to be patient.

Genesis 17:21 "But My covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year."

We are going to move on now from Abram. It does not feel like that went really well, having a second wife, does it? Let us move on to Genesis 29. We are going to kind of just skip this one. But we are all very familiar with the trickery of Laban that led to Jacob having two wives. This was not his intent. This kind of got brought on him, so a little different scenario. But regardless, Jacob has two wives, Leah and Rachel, and from the start there is bitter rivalry and envy and it impacts their children and causes major division. Again, hardly an endorsement for multiple wives.

Now we are going to go to David and we can tie a bit into Ronny's message. He did mention David having a roller coaster life, and he certainly did. I mean, after all, David was a man after God's own heart. Some will take that expression a little too far to basically mean he could do no wrong, to suggest that since he had multiple wives, God must have been okay with it. It was great, David, you can have as many as you want. I am not sure that is the case. We do not know for sure. But let us look at it and I will let you decide what you think.

First off, we see in I Samuel 13:13-14, Samuel is telling Saul, "You have acted foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of God." He then tells him as a result, your "kingdom will not endure. For the Lord has sought out for himself a man [David] after His own heart to do what the Lord commanded you." He does not say David, I just was clarifying.

David was certainly not as rebellious as Saul. We know this. Deep down David wanted to obey God, right? But his works of the flesh, his passion, often got the best of him. So we cannot take this expression "a man after God's own heart" to mean God endorsed everything that David did. No, God certainly did not endorse David's many sins, like the grievous sin of adultery and murder. He allowed it to happen so that we could learn a lesson, but He did not want it to happen.

This brings us to II Samuel 12, verse 8. And this is a bit of a cornerstone verse, this is actually what got me going down this study a bit. So let us turn there. We are picking up the section where after God patiently waited, He patiently waited for David to repent. He is now confronting David with Nathan. He is confronting David's great sin as he explains the punishments that He is going to bring on him. Let us start in verse 7.

II Samuel 12:7-9 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the Lord God of Israel: 'I anointed you as king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and put your master's wives into your keeping, and gave you the house [dynasty] of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight?'

So first God reminds David that He alone anointed him king, that he received nothing on his own. He would have been dead, in fact, if God had not saved him from Saul's hand. God then delivered Saul's house, the entire royal dynasty, into his hands, including his wives. And God tells him very broadly here at the end, "But if that had been too little, if you had just obeyed My commands and asked for more, like maybe a larger kingdom, I would have given you more."

The context here is very important. The context does not specifically say if you wanted more wives, I would have given you more wives. Now you could try to assume that, right? But there are a lot of other scriptures that we have read that would suggest that more wives is not necessarily a good thing. So I tend to read it as, "I would have given you other things. I would have given you things that would have brought you more happiness if you would have asked for them." And as we look at the example of David and his multiple wives, I ask: how much good fruit came from it?

Again, Abigail might be the one example, right? We do not read a lot about her history or her son. We do not know. But nothing negative was written so maybe that was a good result from a second wife. We do not know. But his lust for Bathsheba led to the sin of adultery and then the sin of murder. Then the violence followed him the rest of his life. I mean, just read about what happened to David—his son actually raping his daughter and a son murdering another son. And then his son basically trying to usurp him, trying to kill him, and take over his throne.

And of course, we come to the most grievous example in the entire Bible, David's son Solomon.

I Kings 11:1-3 But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites—from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, "You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn your hearts away after their gods." Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.

So the culmination of all of these multiple wives leads to this very grievous example. I mean, just think about how outrageous this example is! Is God trying to give us a message here of how it starts maybe slow but it leads to something just horrible. How could the original intent of marriage be kept with 1,000 women? How do you get intimate relationships with 1,000 women? I do not know. But as a wise man once said, "I don't know why anyone would ever want more than one wife. One is plenty!" (That was John Ritenbaugh, by the way.)

As we look at the fruit of multiple wives and all these broken families, I think it is pretty clear that God allowed it to happen to teach us an example. Now, we could actually go back to Deuteronomy 25:5 and we could read about the levirate marriage, not Levi as in a tribe, but the Latin word levir, meaning the husband's brother. And if you remember this, basically, it is a special circumstance with the intent to preserve family relationships and property. If a man died without a child, a brother-in-law would marry her. And the first son that was produced in that union was considered the legal descendant of her dead husband.

Now, the assumption many make is that the brother-in-law could have already been married. And it is true. If you look at that scripture, it is silent, it does not specify an unmarried brother-in-law. But what is interesting when you look at the two examples in the Bible, first in Genesis 38 we have Tamar and Onan. After Onan's older brother Er is killed, Judah tells Onan, his younger brother, he must marry his wife's brother Tamar. Now, there is no mention of Onan having another wife here. Only that he purposely does not give Tamar a child because that child would have had right to the firstborn's inheritance; and God kills him for that. (That is a story for another day.) And then Judah, though, promises his much younger son who we know is not married, but says she is going to have to wait. (Again, a story for another day because that did not work out well either.)

And then the other example of this marriage in the Bible is the story found in Ruth. Ruth's first husband died without leaving a child. She meets Boaz who happened to be a relative of Ruth's late husband and asked him to be her kinsman-redeemer, that is, to marry her and preserve the land that her husband had owned. And Boaz agrees. But first, he has to talk to the other relative, an near kin who actually releases the obligation and lets Boaz marry her and he clears the way for her to maintain her late husband's name and property.

Now, the question is: was Boaz married? We do not know. There is no mention of him being married, there is no mention of any other children.

So the two instances there would suggest perhaps the intent of that scripture was the unmarried brother-in-law is supposed to take the wife. Again it is unclear, but many will take these scriptures out of context and they will try to use these to justify that it is okay to have more than one wife. They use it to justify God was okay with it.

We find the imagery of marriage used throughout the Bible to portray God's union with His people and His deep love and unwavering commitment to Israel. (We can tie back into Clyde's message now.) And when Israel rebels, God is portrayed as having godly jealousy like a man with his wife. We often see Israel's spiritual adultery recorded in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea. Jeremiah 3:20 reads, "Like a woman unfaithful, you, Israel, have been unfaithful." (NIV) We also see the idolatrous church conveyed as an adulteress in Isaiah 1 and Isaiah 23.

But throughout it all, one thing remains. God is a faithful husband while Israel was lured away by other nations to worship and, in a sense, marry their other gods. And when the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign, He calls them an adulterous generation in Matthew 12:39.

So I believe as Israel was influenced by rulers of the other nations, they adopted their custom of marrying multiple wives as a sign of power and to expand their kingdom through marriage. The parallel lesson to me is pretty clear from what we saw here. Adultery and idolatry go hand in hand. God allowed physical adultery and multiple wives just like He allowed Israel's spiritual adultery as a lesson to the end time church.

Please turn with me to I Corinthians 11. The New Testament is very clear, by the way, on qualifications of teachers and spiritual leaders. No need to turn there but in I Timothy 3:2 and 12 and Titus 1:6, they confirm a bishop and deacon must be the husband of one wife.

I Corinthians 11:11-12 Nevertheless, neither is a man independent of woman, nor a woman independent of man, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God.

Paul is explaining that once a man and woman are joined in marriage before the Lord, the two are one, inseparable, and they mutually need to complete each other and comfort each other. And just as the woman was born from a man, originally as God took one of Adam's ribs, a man can only be born through a woman. This is the way God designed and created it, neither are inferior, neither are superior. The man is to cleave, cling, to his wife as the two complete each other to become one in harmony with God.

II Corinthians 11:2-3 For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Yes, Satan has led many to corrupt the simplicity that is in Christ. For from the beginning God designed for the two to become one and so too are we called as the Bride of Christ to be betrothed to one Husband.

Let us turn over to Ephesians 5 as we start to wind down.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.

Ephesians 5:31-33 For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

From the very beginning, brethren, God's awesome plan was for two to become one. The marriage covenant is by design a type of the union of the Redeemer with His people.

Paul's admonition here is twofold, both to our physical marriages and to our spiritual marriage to Jesus Christ the Redeemer. As Jesus responds to the Pharisees question on divorce in Mark 10:6-9, He says, quoting from Genesis, "But from the beginning of the creation, God 'made them male and female.' For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh."

It was man's prideful and selfish desires that led to this practice of really degrading women and taking so many wives. Their adultery and idolatry usually went hand in hand. The fruit of these examples is really not good. And when we really think about the type of the physical marriage to the spiritual marriage, how could anyone develop an intimate relationship where the two become one when he has 1,000 or even more than one? It cannot happen. Just like we cannot develop an intimate relationship with our God and Father if we have anything that is distracting us, if we have other gods in this world, if there are idolatries that are distracting our time and attention, we can easily become married to them in our minds and not married to the one Eternal Creator.

And that is what I believe the bottom line on top message is here as we look at all the examples of those that had multiple wives. It did not go really well for them, it did not go very well.

From the beginning, God created the marriage covenant for the two to become one as a living demonstration of the loving and faithful relationship He wants to have with us. We are the Bride, and as Clyde mentioned earlier, we have to work to get ready, brethren, for this is the end time. We have to fill up our lamps with the oil, with God's Spirit. We have to seek Him earnestly. We have got to repent and obey His commandments and work hard to develop a tight relationship with Him, to literally cleave to Him.

We look forward to the ultimate fulfillment in Revelation 19:9. For truly "blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!"

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