Side by Side

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

SIDE BY SIDE

Gen 2:18-22

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.

NIV

Why is it one of the important truths that it is not good for man to be alone? All creation, every living thing, was created male and female, for God had already commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. On the sixth day, as stated, he made male and female, but now we are getting into the details of how he did that.  First, he made a man and gave him charge over the garden to tend it, for the garden provided all the man needed for food. However, this man was alone; there was no suitable helper or helpmate. God formed the man from the dust or dirt of the land with his own hands and breathed life into him, but he did something different when he made the woman. He took a rib from the man's side to make the woman. First, we believe that was an important act of God with a specific purpose. The Hebrew word used for the suitable helper is Ezer, which means aid, one who helps, and when combined with the word for mate, which is in the Hebrew, Neged, which has many uses, but in the context it is used to mean parallel to, or in front of, opposite, from before the eyes of, opposite to. In other words, as the woman was taken from the man, they are not the same, but quite different. Nevertheless, God determined that the woman's expressed purpose was to aid the man. That is an extremely unpopular concept in Western culture. Because she was made from a rib, or the side of man, it appears that God wanted the woman to walk at man's side, or that they were to walk side by side as equal creations of God, but with different functions. God did not take a bone from the man's head to put the woman in charge of him, nor a bone from his foot to put the woman subject to him, as some Eastern cultures have established. Side by side, to walk together, with the woman being the aid to the man. Without being chauvinistic, we have, for the most part, lost that truth in our modern culture in several ways. First, it is not good for man to be alone; this applies when men are chosen to serve the Lord in some ministry. The overseer must be the husband of one wife, meaning a single man would not be called into ministry, for he has no aide mate. Second, this world has gone so far from God's truth, with men trying to be women and women trying to be men. This is true in both the gender sense and the purpose sense. In our culture, we have witnessed the equality of men and women taken out of the context of God. God made the woman and brought her to the man. It is that simple, but we will see how the man responded to the woman God brought to him. We could see this as man and his helper, or living side by side.