She Came from His Side

July 19, 2025 - Genesis 2:18-25

I’m Pastor Rich Bitterman, a country preacher from the Ozarks. Guy Howard, the old Walking Preacher, once wore out his boots traveling from church to church, meeting strangers and sharing the gospel. I’m doing the same today on digital roads. Each post is a visit. Each verse is a step. Let’s walk the Word together.

🪔 Today’s Truth:

You were made for more than aloneness. You were made for Him.

It began with silence. Not the silence of absence, but of completion.

The sun traced soft shadows through a garden unspoiled. No violence. No hunger. No aching joints. No history yet. Only morning.

And then, the Word of God: “It is not good.”

It is not good that the man should be alone.

He was not broken. He was not yet rebellious. The dirt still remembered the breath of its Maker. But there, in paradise, with every sense filled and every hunger met, man stood without peer and yet not whole. And God, who sculpted galaxies and insects, said, This is not how it should be.

The Ache in Perfection

We do not often picture Adam lonely. We imagine him naming animals like a child in a zoo, swinging from branch to branch, muscles flexed, perfectly satisfied. But Scripture tells it different. The garden was beautiful. The work was satisfying. The presence of God was near. Still, Adam was alone.

Not good.

So God teaches through absence. He parades creation before the man…not to entertain, but to instruct. Fur, feather, fang. Creatures walk, crawl, fly. Adam names them. He perceives their natures. He exercises dominion with the power of speech, that glorious, God-reflecting trait. But for all his insight, no creature matches his soul. No eyes meet his and recognize the eternal.

The parade ends. And Adam knows.

He is alone.

Flesh of My Flesh

God acts. Not with dust this time, but with bone.

He reaches inside the man and draws out a rib, not from his head to rule over him, not from his feet to be trampled under, but from his side.
(As Matthew Henry once said, near his heart to be loved, under his arm to be protected.)

The man stirs. He sees her and breathes a word older than poetry:

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

This is not discovery. It is reunion. She is not an afterthought. She is the echo of something he always knew he needed.

Not Just Marriage, But Humanity

This is more than a wedding. It is a window. In these early verses we see the scaffold of existence:

• Spirituality: Adam is not just a chemical accident. He is a living soul. He walks with God. He speaks. He worships.

• Relationality: Isolation was the first thing called not good. The ache for another is not a result of sin, but of design.

• Responsibility: Adam names. He stewards. He works. Dominion is not dominance, but caretaking. He was not made to drift.

• Covenant: He is bound to his wife, to creation, to God.

And marriage becomes a mirror of all this. Two becoming one. Not metaphor, but miracle. God joins what He separated. And it is good.

A Wound That Spoke

But even in this joy, there is a wound.

Adam bore a scar, though painless. The first bride came at a cost. Sleep. Separation. A giving of self.

It will not be the last time a groom is pierced for his bride.

This is no throwaway image. Scripture will return to it again and again. Paul will call it a mystery…a picture of Christ and the church. A wedding sets the stage for the gospel.

So when our age mocks marriage, redefines it, dismantles it, what it is really doing is clouding the window. The world no longer sees what love is, because it has forgotten who God is.

The First Covenant

Marriage is not the only institution in Eden. There is also a command.

“Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

This is not a casual suggestion. It is a covenant. The terms are clear. The consequences are eternal. And Adam stands not only as man, but as Mankind. He represents us all.

When he eats, we fall. The curse is not just biological…it is legal. He was our federal head. His guilt becomes ours.

But so does the hope.

The Last Adam

There is another garden. Another Adam. Another test.

Not a tree of death, but a cross of shame. And Christ, unlike Adam, obeys. He resists the serpent. He bears the curse. He enters death for His bride.

The rib was taken from the side of a sleeping man. Blood and water flowed from the side of a crucified one.

One brought a woman to life. The other brings the church to glory.

In Adam, all die. In Christ, all are made alive.

The Structure Still Stands

Some think these are old stories. Dusty myths. A poetic way to explain hormones and monogamy.

But Genesis 2 is not an echo. It is an anchor.

It tells us who we are. Why we marry. Why we ache. Why we work. Why we worship. And why no matter how advanced we get, we remain restless.

Remove this chapter, and you remove the foundation. Remove marriage, and you lose the picture. Remove obedience, and you invite death.

But keep it and you find your way home.

The Better Wedding

The Bible begins with a wedding and ends with one. A garden gives way to a city. A bride walks down a better aisle. And the Groom, scarred and sovereign, declares once more:

“This is bone of My bones and flesh of My flesh.”

The first wedding whispered it. The last one shouts.

Blessed are those invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Run to Him. Not to Eden. Not to morality. Not to your best intentions.

Run to Christ. He is the Groom who never fails, the Adam who never falls, the Savior who still says, “You are Mine.”

And this time, the union will never break.

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