“Silent witnesses: a rib”
Genesis 2:21
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Glynn “Scotty” Wolfe did one thing in life, and he did it often. He got married. In fact, he holds the world’s record for being the most married man at thirty-one times--more than Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor, and Henry VIII combined.
Starting at the ripe old age of twenty-two, he married teenagers and grandmothers, farm girls and drug addicts, most of them young, all of them beautiful, some for months, some for years, and one for nineteen days.
His technique was crude, but effective, people said. He made them laugh. He gave them money.
He married his first wife, Marcie McDonald, in 1926. But she died a year later, so what are you going to do? Then came Stephanie Delaney in 1928, Victoria Ernest in 1931, Katherine Johnson in 1932, Rachel Jennigs-Prescott also in 1932, and Charlotte Devane in 1935.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
By the way, his last wife, Linda Wolfe, also just happened to be the most married woman ever, claiming a string of twenty-three husbands!
So what would ever drive a man to marry so many times?
Those who’ve studied him from a psychological perspective suggest that, just as soon as he committed himself to someone, he had feelings of remorse. Then after hitting a few bumps in the relational road, he started to look around for other options.
For example, he left one wife because she ate sunflower seeds in bed. He divorced another because she used his toothbrush.
But after having some nineteen children, forty grandchildren, and nineteen great-grandchildren, he died in a California nursing home in June of 1997, forty-five days shy of his eighty-ninth birthday. With all of $336 to his name, he was cremated, then buried in a county grave. Only one son attended his funeral.
In the words of three-time married Garrison Keillor, “Every marriage has its ups and downs. There are the days when you look at your spouse and hear choirs humming Alleluias, and there are the days when you wonder, ‘Who are you and what is your stuff doing in my house?’ Those are the days when you play golf. Fishing works, too, or writing sonnets, or digging post holes. It keeps the two of you apart for a few hours, and usually that’s all you need.” And he said, “The rules for marriage are the same as for a lifeboat. No sudden moves, don’t crowd the other person, and keep all disastrous thoughts to yourself.”
God has something to say about marriage. In fact, He has a lot to say about marriage. And the very first words He ever said are found in Genesis chapter 2, starting at verse 18: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens 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. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 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 that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘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’” (Genesis 2:18-23).
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
Just as soon as God created the heavens and the earth in chapter 1, then made the sun, the moon, and the stars, the Bible says He filled the earth with creatures of all kinds. Chapter 1, verse 20 says: “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” And verse 24: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds--livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”
Finally, last of all, best of all, He made man. Chapter 2, verse 7: “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.”
Now I want you to notice something for me. Notice that each and every time God created something, He said it was good: “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10)...”And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:12)...”And God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:18).” Then in verse 31, He took it one step further: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good,” (Genesis 1:31), extraordinarily good, more beautiful than anyone could ever imagine. It was that good.
Now look at chapter 2, verse 18: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good…”
What’s not good? I mean, the garden was perfect, the food was perfect, the scenery was perfect, and man, Adam, was perfect too. So what’s not good?
The verse continues: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Now you’d expect that, just as soon as God saw something that wasn’t good, that He’d fix it, that He’d make it good.
But not yet. There was something that had to happen first.
Verse 19: “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.” Then verse 20: “The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.”
You see, before God would make Eve, two things had to happen. First, God had to teach Adam how to be a leader, how to have authority. By giving him the right to name the animals--”that’s a giraffe, that’s a monkey, that’s an armadillo, that’s a whippoorwill”--He was training him to be the king of creation, the earth’s vice-regent, answerable only to God.
And one more thing--God had to train him to be not just a man, but a husband. For as he surveyed all the creatures that God had made, he saw Mr. Giraffe and Mrs. Giraffe, Mr. Crocodile and Mrs. Crocodile, Mr. Eagle and Mrs. Eagle. And so it went throughout all of the animal kingdom--always male and female, male and female.
But where in all of creation could he find someone like himself?
So as God asked him to name the animals, He was creating in him a gnawing hunger for a life partner, what he would soon discover in a woman named Eve.
Without a wife, he could never be a husband. Without a queen, he could never be a king. Without a helper fit especially for him, he would never have anyone to talk to, to laugh with, and to taste ripe oranges in the sun.
Verse 21: “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man…”
God, the original anesthesiologist, and God, the original surgeon, put him to sleep, because He was about to perform a very important and very delicate operation.
And here was the operation: “And while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.”
Why a rib? Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote this, “The woman was not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved.”
And just as soon as God formed Eve from that rib, the Bible says He brought her to the man.
Can you imagine the scene? There’s Adam lying flat on the ground, just beginning to wake up from his divine anesthesia. And as he opens his eyes, he sees the Lord, and standing right beside Him is a beautiful, blushing creature with a fast-beating heart, looking at him in wide-eyed anticipation.
And as he ran down his long, mental list, he couldn’t connect her with any of the animals that God had already made--not a giraffe, not a rabbit. Definitely not a porcupine.
She looks like him. In fact, she looks a lot like him, but clearly she’s very different in several important ways. Who or what is she?
And in his joy and wonder, he blurts out the very first thing he could think of, the very first love song ever written. Verse 23: “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.”
“Woman,” he called her. It’s a word that means, “soft.”
In his book, Straight Talk to Men, author James Dobson tells a story of what happened early in his marriage to his wife, Shirley. He said that, just when he thought he had conquered the dragon of overcommitment, he was suddenly faced with six weeks of work that should have been spread out over six months. And for those six weeks, it was a race for survival--speaking at various functions, facing deadlines on a new book, recording three new albums as well as a weekly radio broadcast, not to mention a random IRS audit--everything, all at once.
Finally, in early October, it came to an abrupt end as he spent two days speaking to crowds ranging in size from two hundred to eight thousand. And as he headed back home, he slumped in his plane seat thinking, “Finally, it’s over.”
When he made it home, Shirley greeted him warmly at the door. As usual, they talked about their children and recent events. He fell asleep, exhausted.
The next morning, over breakfast, Shirley said, “Uh, Jim, as you know, seventy-five members of a singles group are coming over tonight, and I need you to help me get ready for them. First, I want you to wash down the patio umbrella for me.”
Immediately, his blood pressure shot up to 212, he said, and steam began to curl from his ears. He thought, “Doesn’t she know how hard I had worked? I’m not an iron man. I need rest too, and no matter what, I’m going to have it!”
Though he doesn’t remember exactly what he said, he does remember that she suddenly stood up, walked into the house, and slammed the door.
Later that night came that awkward time called, “bedtime.” He climbed into his side of the king-sized bed and parked as close to the edge as possible. So did she, clinging tenaciously to her “brink.” At least eight feet of mattress stood silently between them. Though no words were spoken, there were frequent sighs from both sides, accompanied by rolling and tossing. What followed was one of the worst nights of sleep in his life.
So what went wrong? At least two things. First, he said he failed to realize that, though his work schedule for the last six weeks had been terrible, hers was too. She had, after all, cared for their two young children all alone. And for another, he came to realize that overcommitment was the number one marriage killer, setting off a chain reaction of irritability, self-pity, selfishness and withdrawal.
So what lesson did he learn? Take time to reconnect. Take time to understand. As he said, “Why should we work ourselves into an early grave, missing those precious moments with loved ones who crave our affection and attention?”
As God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Before we leave this text, there’s one more thing to say. When God made Eve, the very first bride, He performed an operation. He cut a slit into Adam’s side. Literally, she was born from the wound in his side.
Sound familiar? It should, for when Christ, the second Adam, died, a soldier pierced His side. And as that blood and water flowed, He gave birth to the church, His bride.
As Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her...so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”
We thank You, dear Father, for Your wisdom, guidance, patience, and protection. Most especially we thank You for the gift of Your Son. Help us to find our hope and strength as we rest in Him, for His sake. Amen