Marriage Isn't Cure For Loneliness Genesis 2:4-20 Series

Well today we’re going to talk about loneliness. The reason we’re going to talk about that is because we all experience the challenges of loneliness in our lives. We need to have a plan for dealing with that. So part of what that means is we need to know how to handle our own selves when it comes to those feelings of loneliness. I want to talk about it, I want to define it, I want to talk about what it looks like. The reason I’m stopping in the passage right now, the passage isn’t really about loneliness, but the passage is about being alone. Those are two different things. When God says to Adam, “It is not good for man to be alone,” He’s going to create a marriage partner for him. But if we move too quickly to the marriage side of this then we end up missing something very important here that has to do with loneliness. Even though the passage isn’t about loneliness, why am I going to talk about it now? Because the world takes the ideas from this passage (even though they might not acknowledge them from the Bible), they take the ideas of being alone and getting a mate to try to fill the needs of loneliness and that’s a mistake. So I want to deal with that problem as we go through God’s word and as we talk about it together. So we’re going to get to this idea of loneliness.

If you open your Bibles or you have your Genesis workbook you can open it to Genesis 2:4. Because as we look at this passage in Genesis 2:4 to the end of the chapter, we’re going to take this verse by verse and end up in this place where we need to talk about this issue of loneliness. So we’re studying the book of Genesis and as we do we’re going through it verse by verse. Let’s pick up our story in Genesis 2:4.

Now the first thing I want to do, even before I get to the passage is I want you to know this. There's a major change between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. In Genesis 1:1-2:3 we have the whole story of creation. The name that’s used to describe the Creator is Elohim, the term God. It refers to God Almighty. But when we move into verse 4 everything changes. Instead of the thirty-two times the word Elohim is used in verses 1 of Genesis 1 to chapter 2:3, we have a dramatic shift and that word is not used by itself again in chapter 2 starting in verse 4. Eleven times we have a different name for God and that name is Yahweh. Yahweh-Elohim to be exact. But God changes His name because He’s going to do something very important to help us understand it. So as I read our passage at first, I want you to see what that looks like and then we’ll talk more about it. But really it’s God’s personal name and how it ties in.

Let’s read it. I’ll talk some more about that as we see this major shift now moving to chapter 2:4-7. Now chapter 2 is really going to go back and fit into the place of Genesis 1:26 when God said we’re going to create man. So we’re going to put this back in there and He’s going to elaborate now a whole creation of people and what that looks like. So that’s why we’re in Genesis 2:4-7. Let’s see what God has to say.

It says there – These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

The first thing I want you to notice in this passage is that God is described as the LORD God. Yahweh. That’s His personal name because now He’s going to get very personal. The creation of man is such a personal experience that we’re going to go through it again in Genesis 2 this with interaction. I’m going to show you what that interaction looks like.

The name Yahweh is God’s personal name. My first name is Scott. It's like when we talk to God it’s His personal name. The word God Elohim is this God Almighty. Now you’ll know whenever you see in the Old Testament that when the name for Lord is all capitalized that is where this word Yahweh is in the text. If it’s a capital L and small o-r-d that’s when the name Adonai is used which means Lord. The word LORD here does not mean lord. This is the word and the translators put this in so we can know this and you’ll see this in the beginning of your Bible it’s described here. It is how we’ll know this is the name Yahweh.