No Man Is an Island - Part A

If God invented it, then I think Jesus was right when he said, What God has joined together, let not man separate. It's God's institution. We want to find out what he says about it.

Today on Connect with Skip Hitek, Skip begins a new series titled, Keep Calm and Marry On, an open scripture to examine what God said about the institution of marriage when he created it in the Garden of Eden. Now, here's a resource bundle that will make a great gift for a mother in your life or for your own study of God's Word. Someone once estimated the cost of the services that mothers perform.

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While we can't repay our mothers, we can honor them. Here's a great suggestion. It's a special bundle of resources we're calling the Heart Songs Package. It features heart songs. There's a Psalm for that, a powerful five-part series led by Lenya and Janae Heitzig designed to teach you to depend on God's love, power, and comfort in every season of life. You'll explore what the Psalms say about love, jealousy, fear, security, and longing.

Maybe you can think of a time when you really, really wanted something. This Psalm is kind of about that. It's this longing, this desire, this hunger that the Psalmist is expressing, and his longing is for home. In addition to this encouraging series, you'll also receive the Sheology Quiet Time Journal, perfect for daily Bible reading to make notes as you follow the Heart Songs Series or for your personal prayer time. Plus, you'll get a bag of Skip's Library Roast Coffee, the coffee Pastor Skip chooses when he studies in his personal library. The Heart Songs Package is our thanks for your gift to support the broadcast ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig.

So request your Heart Songs Package today when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Genesis 2. As Skip begins his message, no man is an island. On a show of hands, how many of you remember Gilligan's Island? Raise your hand. Okay. Okay, now I gotta ask this again.

How many of you saw it not as a rerun, but originally? You have fewer hands. Really? Wow.

You know what I found out? It only lasted three seasons. That is, it was filmed three seasons, but then of course it enjoys a life of perpetuity. It's in reruns every week. Gilligan's Island was about seven castaways who were attempting to survive on an island that their boat got shipwrecked on. I think it was seven.

Gilligan, the skipper too, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor, and Mary Ann here on Gilligan's Isle. Okay, so I remember the song. It's in my head. And if you remember, it was about a three-hour tour. Remember that song? A three-hour tour that turned into three seasons. A constant theme being we have to escape from this island.

Well, that is more or less the idea of God Almighty when it comes to the establishment of marriage on the earth. To help a person escape the island of self. You say the island of self. What's that?

It's simple. The island of self is a place where personal freedom and personal pleasure are the highest values. It's a place we were all born on.

We've all lived on. Unfortunately, it's a place that many of us go back to even after we say I do. Go back to that island.

Go back to putting up walls and being guarded and not letting anyone, even our spouse, in the island of self. I discovered something when I was married. I was a wonderful person until I got married. I mean, I was wonderful. I got up and I decided where I want to go and I liked where I decided to go, what I decided to do. I didn't have to check in with anybody. All my decisions were great decisions.

My room was as clean as it needed to be. After I got married, all that I thought that I was really wasn't as true as I thought. I wasn't as wonderful as I thought because now I'm rubbing up against another personality which is showing me not just a lot about her but a lot about me. And I discovered I'm not as wonderful a person as I thought. You get two lives and you rub them together and there's going to be friction. Any two lives. Do you realize that every person on earth is incompatible with every other person on earth eventually?

The issue becomes what do we do now in discovering the differences and maximizing the relationship? Well, that's why we're kicking off a series that we're calling Keep Calm and Marry On. We borrowed the phrase. It was a World War II phrase that comes to us from England. When the war they thought was about to start, the British Information Bureau believed that the war would demoralize the British people within the first week. They wanted to send a message to the public from King George VI and so instead of a picture they put at the top of the banner, the poster, a crown which represented his authority. A message from the king and it was simple. Keep calm and carry on.

So British. The hope was that the calm experienced on the inside would help people endure the war going on the outside. Keep Calm and Marry On is the name of this series. Why exactly are we doing it? After a protracted study in the Gospel of John for two and a half years, why switch gears toward this topical endeavor? It's simple. Let me give you a few reasons. Number one, because marriage is the foundation of society.

Any society, all societies from time immemorial, it's always been the family and the core of the family is the marriage relationship. Another reason is because there is a war. There is a battle.

Shots are being fired over the bow. There has been and there is currently an all-out assault by social institutions, educational institutions, political institutions, and even in some cases religious institutions to undermine by redefining what marriage is. Third reason I'm doing it is because I've discovered that Christian couples that I know are sincerely struggling. They're struggling in fact emulating their worldly counterparts.

You probably already know this. This isn't news to you that the divorce rate among believers is almost identical to the divorce rate among non-believers. We're struggling in this. A fourth reason is because the church is oddly silent about issues that the world is very vocal about. For some reason we just feel like we can't talk about those things. They'll talk about fidelity. They'll talk about sexuality. They'll talk about homosexuality, very vocally, but we, on the other hand, we just don't want to broach the subject and when we do, we don't do a very good job of it.

We've gotten some interesting feedback on our signs that we posted around town and on the front of the building and it always interests me to hear the feedback. I'm interested in what people think about, well, anything, but principally a positive message like sex, love, and self-control. We're trying to turn that phrase from the 60s on its ear if you remember the phrase sex, drugs, and rock and roll. They've hijacked the whole idea of something God invented. We didn't do it to be sensationalistic, but to frame it in its right biblical context.

Sex with love and self-control is where God intended it to be. So we want to get back into that conversation. Now I realize that that not everyone here is married.

Can I just add yet? Yet. You may not be single today. You may be divorced.

You may have struggled through a long or are struggling through a long relational issues. I understand that. I know that. I am aware of that.

Some of you are widowed and you're not married now or yet. I also know that some are listening to this series and they're so excited. They can't wait to get into it week by week. Others aren't that excited. Others are listening with jaded ears.

Yeah, I've heard this stuff before. I don't know if the Bible can really be trusted. It's outdated. It's passé. It really doesn't speak to my situation.

So you have already at the beginning dismissed much of what the Bible clearly speaks about. That's unfortunate. Hold on. Keep calm.

Carry on. And let God speak to you during this series. And just because the topic doesn't speak directly to your personal situation, for you to say, well, maybe I really won't get all that excited or be involved or attend because, you know, after all, I'm not married right now. Well, that's like saying we're going to teach today on worship and singing and, well, I'm not coming because I don't have a good voice or we're going to teach on trials. Well, I've had such a great week. I don't need to come. Listen, all of these principles are for all of us.

Do any of you know anyone who is married? Then these principles will even help you to help them find the solutions that God gives. Genesis chapter 2 is before us, and I've had you turn there because it is what we call the passage of primary reference. Four times the New Testament points back to the verses we're about to read because it's the first time God said anything about this issue.

Now, why is this important? Because we immediately discover something obvious, but it needs to be underscored, and that is marriage was God's idea. He invented marriage, relationship, sex, society, all of it. It's not like we read in the Bible that one day a bright light went off in the brain of a human being who said, I got a great idea.

Let's get married, and it will be a great tax benefit as well. No, God invented it, and because God invented it, only God can regulate it. If man invented it, then we would have the right to end it, terminate it, negate it, marginalize it, do anything we want with it. But if God invented it, then I think Jesus was right when he said what God has joined together, let not man separate. It's God's institution. We want to find out what He says about it. We're going to read Genesis 2, beginning in verse 18, down to verse 22. We're going to Skip trying to unravel the scientific basis for this kind of creation.

We have done that in previous studies. We're dealing relationally here. There's two issues, not three, not four, two, this morning we want to look at. The problem and the plan. Man's problem, God's plan. Man's problem, alone on an island. God's plan, being rescued from the island. Verse 18, and the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to the beasts of the field.

But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. 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. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman. And he, that is God the Lord, brought her to the man.

In reading this, something abrupt catches our attention. It's the first time in Scripture we read where God comments and says something isn't good. Way back in Genesis 1, beginning in verse 4, begins a six-fold refrain where God says, this is good. And God saw that it was good six times. And so here's the pattern. God would make something and he'd kind of look at it and go, that's good. Make something else, that's good.

Six times. The seventh statement in chapter 1, verse 31, is the capstone of all of it. Then God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good. So in reading that God says, good, good, good, good, very good, now we come up with the contrast and God said, it is not good, gets our attention. In fact, in the original Hebrew, the construction places the negative phrase not good at the beginning of the verse. The negative phrase not good at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis. So it would literally read, not good, not good is man alone.

It's an emphatic statement. Not good that man should be alone. I will confess to you, before I was married, I thought it was great for man to be alone. I had a good time. I had a very fulfilled life.

I lived three blocks from the ocean, had a very quiet roommate who wasn't there most of the time, a stack of surfboards in the garage, and a cat who I saw once a week because he tommed around the neighborhood. Life was good. This is great. What could be better than this?

I work part-time. I have a lot of fun. Here's God saying, not good, not good, man alone. Before I dissect with you what not good means, can I just say that there were certain things that were good about this? Number one, simplicity was good. It was simple life for Adam.

It was just a relationship between God and him. Very few rules, only one real prohibition. Adam, you have options. You can go wherever you want. You can do whatever you want. You can eat whatever you want, except there's one tree, hands off, don't touch that. It's the only prohibition. Very, very simple, and that was good.

Adam had what every guy dreams of. Perfect environment, lots of lush vegetation, smog-free environment, no traffic, no traffic lights, no country music. No, I'm sorry. I wanted just to throw that in. Sorry. It was paradise.

Ain't no paradise without country music. I know. I can hear it.

No emails, please, on that one. Simplicity was good. Something else was good. The responsibility was good. Adam had a job. Talk about the perfect job. He got to name animals. His job was having the animals pray before him and go, I'm going to call it that.

Now, in my own warped thinking, I always have a little fun with this, and I'm thinking that Adam started the day really ambitious. Okay, here it goes. Hippopotamus, five syllable.

That's pretty good. But then, as they kept coming, he shortened it. Rhinoceros four. And then it's like elephant.

But then the end of the day, he's getting tired. It's cow. Dog. Cat.

Pretty good. It's a hippie's dream. Natural world, naming animals, life is good. Simplicity, responsibility.

What wasn't good? God states, it is not good that man should be alone. What does that mean?

Well, let me begin with the obvious meaning. The obvious mechanistic, physical meaning is that it would be impossible for Adam to just be himself to fulfill the commission that God gave him to fulfill, stated back in chapter 1, verse 28. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. You can't fill the earth.

You can't do that by yourself. There's no parthenogenesis with one entity. But more than that, when God said it is not good for man to be alone, he was not just thinking of the procreation necessity. He is addressing another dimension that human beings have, and that is a social dimension.

There's more to our being than just physicality. God created human life to have fellowship with him and to have interaction, fellowship, and social activity with other people. It's not good for Adam to be alone. Dr. Leonard Kramer, a psychiatrist who specialized for 30 years in treating depression, said, and I quote, the human being is the only species that can't survive alone.

The human being needs another human being. So isolation is not the divine norm. Community is.

And you know why community is? Because man is created in whose image? God's image. In the image of God, he made man. And if man is created in the image of God, then the man, like God, must be social. Because if you think about it, God is a triunity. Am I right, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Interacting together in perfect love for us to be created in his image demands that social dimension, that fellowship dimension, because we're made in his image. The Jewish sages in commenting on this were a little bit rough, a little bit strict.

Their commentary runs like this. Whoever has no wife exists without goodness, without a helpmate, without joy, without blessing, without atonement, without well-being, without a full life. Indeed, such a one reduces the representation of the divine image on the earth. And you're going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Skip, do you mean that it's bad to be single? No, I don't mean that. I just quoted to you a commentator.

Who cares what the commentator says? The Bible doesn't say that. In fact, the Bible would say, not only is it okay to be single, it's important you fulfill a very important role. When God said it is not good that man should be alone, that is the norm. Marriage will become the norm as the foundational building block of all society. It is good for man to be married. It's not good for him to be alone. But please don't misunderstand, marriage is not the only good.

I want to reinforce that with a few examples. Joseph became the prime minister of Egypt and saved the world from famine as a single person. Daniel was a confidant to the king of the world, Nebuchadnezzar at the time, as a single person. Elijah the prophet stood headstrong against idolatry and for God, bringing the nation back to God as a single person. The prophet Amos was the eighth century prophet who brought the nation back on track as a single person. John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus Christ, of whom Jesus said he's the greatest person who ever lived, did all of that as a single person. Paul, the great apostle, writer of much of the New Testament, one of the greatest missionary workers ever, did all of that, we believe, presumably, as a single person.

And that leads us ultimately to Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world of whom the Bible is written about, who performed the great redemption of the sins of mankind as a single person. And one person writes, and I agree with him, it's impossible to believe that the same God who permitted his own son to die a bachelor would regard singleness as wrong. However, I must quickly add by saying that singleness is good, but it relates to the Bible. Singleness is good, but it requires a calling and a giftedness, just like marriage requires a calling and a giftedness. Singleness requires a calling and a giftedness.

Matthew 19 speaks of God giving people a gift of celibacy, to perform things they could not as a married person. It's a gift. I know some of you are thinking, God, please don't give me that gift. Send me to a faraway mission field, but don't give me that gift. If you think that way, you don't have that gift. If you had that gift, you know you have that gift.

You'd have a contentment already built in. Now, I'm saying all this. Number one, if you're single, please don't think that you're unimportant or you're a second-class citizen. You are okay and important. You fulfill a very crucial role.

And I'm saying that for another reason. If you're married, please don't try to marry off all your single friends. I got to get them married. I'm the matchmaker from heaven. They're thinking of another place, perhaps. Allow the Holy Spirit to get involved in the process.

He may use you, but He doesn't need you. It's not like they're living a sub-life because you haven't found a mate for them yet. I guess it all boils down to the principle of Paul in Philippians 4, 11. I have learned in whatever state I am to be what? Content. Content.

That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series, Keep Calm and Marry On. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep teachings like this one today going out around the world, connecting you and others to God's Word. We want more people around the world to find rest and hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ and His promise to return for us one day. And you can help make that happen through your gift today to keep these messages that you love coming to you and to others.

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800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. Come back tomorrow as Pastor Skip concludes his message, No Man is an Island, and explains that marriage can still work in the way God designed it to. Marriage was God's design to address the first problem that He noticed in His creation, which was separation, isolation, aloneness. God's solution to that was marriage. But it doesn't always work. It should work. It can work. God designed it to work. Connect with Skip Hyton is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.