| 2006 | January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
| 2008 | January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
| 2009 | January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
| 2010 | January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
Notice, dumb matter--the heavens and the earth which God creates out of nothing, nothing but His will and His Word, He forms, fashions and fills with creatures He calls forth by means of nothing but His same loving will and Word--the heavens and the earth, dumb no more, and all their many-splendored creatures in all their vast array, I say, these all heed God's voice and hearken unto His all-creating and sustaining Word.
And by God they live! They do not merely exist. By God they subsist. Notice, too, that man whom God formed out of the dust of the earth and into whose nostrils God breathed the breath of life, so that he became a living being, man, whom God made in His own image, God-like, also hearkened unto the voice of his Creator.
Heedful of the vocation to which God called him, man worked the Garden of Eden into which God placed him, eating freely of every tree in the garden, and refraining from eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in accordance with God's command.
"So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name" (Gen 2). In accordance with the wisdom God gave him, then, man named every living creature with which the land and the heavens teemed.
"The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man", out of all the vast array of God's creatures, notwithstanding the fact that these were all good, "there was not found a helper fit for him."
God had determined that, though everything else in all creation, including the man himself, was good, very, very good, it was not good for the man to be alone. God proposed to make a helper fit for him. And what God proposes, sooner or later He disposes (or disposes of)!
"So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man."
And the man, who knew what it was to be of like substance with his Creator, which was very, very good, now knew God's love and care in a whole new way, as he learned what it was to be of the same substance as his helpmate given him by God to be a helper meet for him, as he would be for her, since, though it was good to be male and female created by God in His own image, it was not good for man to be alone, male or female.
Presented by God with God's present, a partner made of his own substance, the man responded, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."
Yet, no mere cutout replica was she of the man, much less a cheap knockoff, but a full-fledged creature made in God's likeness in her own right, every bit the complement of the man as he was for her, simply taken from the man according to God's sovereign will, in keeping with His Word and in accordance with His order of creation.
"Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife," and, it goes without saying, she leaves hers and cleaves to her husband. And, heeding God's voice, cleaving to Him, together they become one flesh, male and female, under one God, in one Godhead.
This is the one-flesh union of one man and one woman, in and under God, which is the substance of Christian matrimony and the essence of Christian marriage. Listen to God the Son. Heed His Word. Cleave to Him. "So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not put asunder" (Mt 19:6).
And man and woman listened to God and hearkened unto His voice and cleaved to God and to one another, in faith, in love, until the Serpent came along and tempted them and they fell for the fatal bait, and fell from God's grace and heeded the devil's voice and stopped up their ears and hearts to God and were estranged from God and each other. . .until. . .until. . .
. . .Until Christ, the very image of God and man, came along and took away the sin which separated them and still separates us; took it away by nailing it to the Cross and dying for it and us, and reconciled us by rising from the dead and taking Satan out of the way also. But that, my friends, is another topic for another day! Amen.
- Pastor Erickson