Ecclesiastes Lesson 22

Surviving Socially/Surviving Woman – 7:26-29

This is another one of the sour grapes portion of Solomon’s works, and it results from his negative volition in life, and he had some bad experiences and one of them was his relationship with women. So in verses 26-29 he says his sour grapes. We’re going to examine this section because a lot of people on the male side of the fence will probably sympathize with Solomon and some of his observations, but we’re going to trace through carefully why Solomon had his attitude toward women that he had, where it came from, why he had it, and what’s the correction for it is.

In verse 26 he begins a new section. We have finished the first section of this set of proverbs and the second one that we’re beginning today extends from 7:26 through 11:6, and this whole section is the second set of human viewpoint proverbs. We’ve already discussed the first set, we have worked with chapter 2, discoveries of the individual life; chapters 3 and 4, man’s position in the universe; chapters 5, 6 and part of 7, the first set of human viewpoint proverbs.

And now we come to this fourth report of this book. And we have in this report number four three subdivisions or three sub-areas. The first one, chapter 7:26 down through 8:9 have to do with surviving in society. Solomon is dealing with two areas, the area of surviving with women and the area of surviving political intrigue and the state authorities of his time. So he selects two as examples and he’s going to give guidelines for avoiding trouble in these areas. Now again, please remember this is human viewpoint emanating from Solomon’s spiritual problem. Then chapter 8:10 through 9:12 he’s going to be stressing surviving the evil in society and the injustices of society, how you react and respond to them. And then in chapter 9:13 through 11:6 he shotguns us with a set of proverbs as he did at the conclusion of the previous section.

So this again is one unit in the book and this section of surviving in society, the first example that he’s going to use, verses 26-29, is man’s relationship with the woman. He begins in verse 26 with a participle. “And I find more bitter than death the woman,” now “find” here is a participle which means that when Solomon wrote this he was viewing as though he was constantly finding this out, he was still in the process of finding it out; this is a continuous process to Solomon’s mind. He says daily I am finding this truth out, I am finding day by day by day “more bitter than death is the woman,” now in the King James it reads, “the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands,” etc. It sounds as though he’s isolating a particular kind of woman in the way that reads. In other words, there are women that he doesn’t find more bitter than death, but those “whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands,” those are the ones that he finds more bitter than death, but that really isn’t the force or the point of this passage. The point of the passage is he finds more bitter than death women, namely because this is generalized for all of women. So this shows again his sour attitude in this area.

“I find more bitter than death the woman,” it means woman generically, “whose heart is snares,” this is not just a relative qualifying clause, this means it’s amplifying why it is he doesn’t like the woman, he doesn’t like the woman because her “heart is snares and nets, her hands are bands.”

Now if you want to get a little background on how Solomon started to come to this conclusion, turn to 1 Kings 11. In this area you’ll find that Solomon had lots of material to work with; it wasn’t a conclusion he arrived at after his first date. 1 Kings 11:1-3, this is a summary by a man who wrote this book because the objective of writing Kings was to answer the question, why did the nation Israel go down in 586 BC. The man or men, whoever they were, that wrote this book conducted a post mortem analysis of the decay of the nation and they went through each of the reigns of the kings, commenting and comparing each reign of a king with the Law of Deuteronomy. And so you have the standard, the absolute righteous standard of God laid out in the book of Deuteronomy, you have the analysts who are preparing this book of Kings, taking that standard and measuring every king by that standard. And then he says all these kings come short of God’s standard and invited discipline upon themselves and upon the nation, this is why the nation collapsed.

Toward the end of his analysis of the reign of Solomon, after describing all of the glorious things that he did, in chapter 10:23 for example, “So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth in riches and for wisdom. [24] And all the earth consulted Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.” So Solomon was a very prosperous man. He reached a tremendous pinnacle the nation Israel has never reached that pinnacle since. But then in 11:1 he says there were some flaws in Solomon’s reign, some crucial ones. “But King Solomon loved many strange [foreign] women; together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. [2] Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you’ for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clung unto these in love. [3] And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.” With 700 you could turn away anything, but they turned away his heart.

In verse 4, “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods,” now the text is significant of why; the Bible does not say there’s something wrong with women so don’t mess with them. The problem here is that Solomon was told do not mix with Gentile women, in particular in verse 1 he lists some of these Gentile women that Solomon carried on his flirtations with. One of them was the daughter of Pharaoh. The reason for doing this was not just romantic; the reason for doing it was political for in that day when a nation would make a treaty with another nation they would try to intermarry the royal family, solidifying the treaty because the idea was….

For example, if country A made a treaty with country B then if you had a person of the royal family of country A married to one in Country B you would have someone sympathizing with you at the highest echelons of government, plus the fact these people would be used to certify treaties. So when it says “the daughter of Pharaoh” it indicates that Solomon evidently had political dealings with Pharaoh. These political dealings were sealed by an intermarriage with Pharaoh’s daughter. Again, the “women of the Moabites,” indicating he had relationship in the political area with these different peoples, people that God had said listen, you are not to mix with these, I can provide your needs. This is a principle that you have to understand because it sets up the rest of Solomon’s problem. The reason why he got mixed up in the first place was that he was trying to fulfill a human need in an unauthorized fashion. It was a legitimate need, in this case political, security of the nation, also a romantic need, but you cannot fulfill these needs if you are a believer and think you can fulfill them in the energy of the flesh. If you do you will be miserable and sorrowful the rest of your life, and Solomon had all the promises of God, God had assured him that He would take care of the security of the nation, he wouldn’t have to depend on Pharaoh’s armies, he wouldn’t have to depend on the Moabites, he wouldn’t have to make all these treaties because God was the Lord and He could certainly take care of the international realm. So similarly Solomon did not have to go out with 700 women to enjoy himself; if he had trusted the Lord he would have been led to the right woman for him.

Now it’s interesting, in many other portions of the Word of God you have men marrying women and the marriage is described in detail. In other words, the man’s woman is part of the man’s life and she gets an area in the Word of God. For example, Isaac and Rebekah, we’ll see that later on and we’ll see these other cases where the woman in the man’s life becomes his number one object, in one sense you might say, and it’s the right woman, and the two go together in the ministry. But it’s interesting if you study the biography of Solomon you never find one woman that really sways him in his life. He has a lot of women but never one in particular, and you could say why did he do this as a wise man? All you have to do to analyze Solomon is go back to his father; David couldn’t keep his eyes off all the ladies and so he had three or four of them and Solomon was brought up in this environment. So obviously he does the old man one better; if David can have five or six women then he can go out and five or six hundred, and that’s what he operated on, whatever daddy did I’ll do better. So he went out and he really outdid daddy all right, except he had a miserable home life, he had a miserable existence and he never, never, as far as we can tell from the Scripture, Solomon never satisfied his love life in this area. He could never do it because of the fact that he went about it in energy of the flesh, trying to fulfill a genuine legitimate need but fulfilling it from the standpoint of human viewpoint.

Now turn back to Ecclesiastes 7 we’ll observe further how he came to this conclusion. With all of the experiences that he had, with the 700 wives and the 300 concubines, with all this experience, he concluded that the general characteristic of women is that their hearts are “snares and nets,” they are grasping people who are always out to get something. Now given Solomon’s position you can see why; the kind of women that Solomon carried on his relationships with were those kind of women. Pharaoh’s daughter was out to get one thing, to get that nation to go along with the policies of Egypt; she was a conniver, and Pharaoh’s daughters down through history have had the reputation for getting into the royal courts, tearing them up, just so they could advance the policies of Egypt. The marriages were marriages of political convenience only and these women were maneuvers. And Solomon, again and again in his life would marry this Egyptian, he’d marry this Moabite, and it would turn out after a week or so that she was just planted in his court to try and sway his foreign policy, try and get as much from Solomon as she could, try to get hold of the massive wealth, try to get hold of the great gold reserves that Solomon had, try to get hold of the tremendous military knowledge that Solomon had through his navy, etc.

So these women were all grasping, and so Solomon out of his discouragement with one woman after another, finally he says these women, “their hearts are snares and nets.” And “snares and nets” are Hebrew words used for traps, people who would deceive and then trap. And he says that’s what I find these women to be. And probably if he’d read his Bible he could go back to Eve and [can’t understand words] Eve trapped her husband; now that’s not really true because he was stupid enough to go along with it, but she did in one sense provide a trap for her husband, Adam. So he says that one of the things that I find very discouraging about the nature of the woman is that they are always out to mislead, to deceive, and ensnare the man.

“…her hands as bands” and the “bands” here is the word in the Hebrew that indicates the physical marriage, in other words, they’re in it for that too, and they’re in it to get as much as they can. “…whoso pleases God shall escape from her,” now remember Solomon, when he says these words don’t think and read into them what you’re used to reading into them because you’ve got to take all these words in the context of the book. When Solomon says “who so pleases God” he simply means the wise person, he says if you have some moxy, if you’re with it, and you really know what’s the score, you will stay away from these people, you won’t mix with them and the result is that you can live a happy life because you can live by yourself and you won’t have any women around to bother you, you won’t have any of them around to ensnare you, you won’t have any of this problem of heartache and sorrow, etc. So he says avoid them.

And he says “he who is pleasing to God,” that is one who is wise, “will certainly escape from her,” that is Woman, with a capital “W”, “but the sinner shall be taken by her,” passive voice, he will become her victim. And the “sinner” here is a man who doesn’t know anything as far as Solomon is concerned, he’s naïve, he gets himself involved and finally finds himself trapped in her snares. So you can see verse 26 represents a pretty bad case of sour grapes.

But it is legitimate in certain areas, for if you have a woman out of fellowship, if you have a woman who’s operating in the energy of the flesh, oftentimes her character will be just as Solomon described it in verse 26. They will be exactly this way. Now he didn’t make this up, verse 26, verse 26 is real life experiences with these women and it’s legitimate because it was built up out of hundreds and hundreds of situations where he had this thing and he said you just watch out for it. If you read Proverbs, that Solomon was largely responsible for, and study it you’ll see it better there, even then he was very concerned to communicate to his sons this area, this problem.

Verse 27, “Behold, this have I found, saith the Preacher,” and the word “preacher” doesn’t mean preacher as it does in the rest of the portions of this book, it means koheleth, we don’t really know what that word means except it comes from the verb in the Hebrew that means to assemble and it appears that it has something to do with a man who calls together a group of people in an assembly to teach them wisdom. It’s a combination of an assembler and wisdom teacher. And he says… this is Solomon’s title throughout the book, “this have I found,” he is going to give a conclusion. By the way, kohel, which means to assemble to teach shows you something, that it’s no good to get together for assembly worship unless the Word of God is there, unless there’s something worth gathering for.

“This have I found, saith the Preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account.” Now this last phrase is interesting because it tells you how Solomon operated, how he came to his conclusions and how he governed his relationships with his women, “one by one,” meaning that Solomon worked with one woman at a time; although he had 700 wives it appears that this… if this verse is representative it tells us that he kind of loved them and left them, and that’s the way it operated, he didn’t mix all 700 at the same time, that’d be impossible anyway, but the point was he worked through one and he got tired of her and he dumped her and then he went on to somebody else and dumped her, and just kind of went down the line. And this is his description of what he did with his women. “…one by one, to find out the account” and the word “account” here comes from the verb that means to plan or design. And what this word means, evidently, is the perfect woman. In other words, he wanted, you might say, the ideal, he worked through all of the [can’t understand word] trying to get back to the ideal woman and he never could find her. So he says I have done this one by one, 1 Kings 11 gives you the background on this, “in order to find,” “to find” is a purpose clause, I did this one by one, studying each one of these women in order that I might find, really get down to the basic facts, what is woman, and I never found this out.

Verse 28 tells you that he never found it out. “Which yet my soul has sought, but I have not found.” Solomon, in all of his wisdom was never able to understand the women, he never came into contact, he felt, with what was really there as far as a woman. “…one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found.” His point is that he has never found the perfect woman, no matter how hard he’s looked, he’s examined it carefully, and he has never found it. Remember this book was written toward the end of his life, after many, many experiences with women, and then he says I still haven’t found the woman, what she is I don’t really understand, I’ve never found the perfect one for me.

Verse 29, “Lord Jesus Christ, this only have I found, that God has made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions [devices].” His point here is that real truth is beyond man’s grasp; man was made upright and to Solomon this word means unfrustrated, it means in a normal area of life man had pleasure, but the trouble with man is that he always tries to find out absolute truth, he’s never satisfied where he is. He always wants to find all these ideal things out and when he goes to try and find these things out he frustrates himself, just as he says I have been frustrated, I have tried to find the perfect woman and I can’t find her and it’s been one lifelong frustration.

Now this is amazing and some of you ought to take notes because Solomon was the playboy of the ancient east; he had a playmate every day of the month, practically, if you want to put it that way in contemporary terms. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines and yet he never was satisfied. Why? Because of the way in which he went about it. We are going to see now that the Scripture gives us a principle governing the male/female relationship that can produce happiness and prosperity in this area and it has nothing to do with the way Solomon went about it. You can’t shotgun it, and you can’t go along with all the great theories about experimentation and about all the rest of it, as Solomon tried and failed, because you will never get to what is really behind that drive; the drive is to find out what is a woman.

Now let’s go to the Biblical doctrine to correct Solomon’s point and to do this we go back first to Genesis 1, and we’ll go back to the Biblical doctrine of sex and marriage. This has a tremendous impact as far as we’re concerned today because people are basically in our society trying the same approach that Solomon tried, namely let’s jump around, not get too involved with any one person and maybe sooner or later up out of sheer chance I’ll get to the bottom of the problem. So we have people going around very frustrated and finally they turn on the sour grapes like Solomon; and so there’s actually no happiness in this area, it’s stupid to fool with it, all you can do is get burned and so why bother. That is an illegitimate conclusion, it is a correct conclusion if you insist on doing it in a non-Christian fashion, yes, the only thing, the only hope that you have to look forward to on the non-Christian base is Solomon’s position of Ecclesiastes 7. But this doesn’t have to be.

So we go back to Genesis 1 and we go back to why it is that we have the difference in the sexes. Man was created, Genesis 1 tells us, to complete the master plan of God. In Genesis 1:16 it says that “God man in His image.” Literally in verse 26, “And God said, Let us make man in our image,” speaking of the Trinity, and when he emphasizes Trinity, of course, the corollary to the doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine of personality. In spite of what the Jehovah’s Witnesses and a few other people who are basically Unitarian, who do not believe in the Trinity, you cannot defend personality unless you adhere to the doctrine of the Trinity.

If God is not Triune in His personality then you really do not have personality at all. God’s personality is expressed in the Trinity; if there is no Trinity, then God has no personality because Trinity means that in eternity before the creation of the world at this point, for all eternity back here God existed as a person. But a person cannot exist alone, this is a fundamental point that Scripture makes, it has been found today, no man is an island, there’s no such thing as a normal person living totally by themselves, a solitary person. And this is why if God is only one in His personality He is a freak type and He is not the model of true personality in the Bible. God had to enjoy other persons or persons within Himself, He had to have a diversity within Himself and that diversity we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the three in one. God is one in essence, He is sovereign, He is righteous, He is just, He is loving, He is omniscient, He is eternal, He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and immutable. Those are His attributes but God also is personality and this personally is expressed in the Trinity.

That’s why Jesus could declare in John 17, Father, before the creation of the world You loved Me. In other words, there were personal relationships going on before creation. God did not have to create man to keep Him company in the universe. God was not a lonely God out on cloud nine somewhere in the middle of the Milky Way and wondering and getting pretty lonely and feeling sorry for Himself and brought things into existence, and that’s the cause that you have to have if you deny the Trinity. The moment you deny the Trinity you deny personality. That is why the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity is absolutely essential.

Now when God makes man He creates him in His own image, meaning that God makes man personality. This means immediately, Gen. 2:18, this means something. Genesis 2 is not a conflict with Genesis 1, it is an expansion of the sixth day of creation. “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him,” meaning I will make a help that matches him. In other words, here is man; Adam was made as a solitary personality but no person can be a person in solitude. Therefore God says, since it’s not good for man to be alone… and remember, the fall hasn’t come yet, we’re not talking about sin but basically man’s function is designed, is incomplete unless there’s another person around. And so God makes the woman, and the woman, she is not called Eve until after they both have trusted in Jesus Christ. At this point she is known as isha, and he is known as ish or Adam, ish means male, isha means female and that’s how they are spoken of in Scripture.

So the woman is made for Adam because Adam is not to be alone, he can’t be alone if he is to function as a personality. The woman has been brought… and more than that, we’ll amplify this in a moment, but notice the last part of verse 18, “I will make him” or for him, and sometimes people read that as an help meet, that’s not the right way to read it, “a help fitted for him.” That’s the way it should be read. In other words, it’s not just a help but a helper that’s especially designed for him as a man. So this is the first point of the Biblical doctrine of sex and marriage, that man was created as a functioning person in God’s master plan

Now in addition to that, man was given a job to do. This Genesis 2:18 that we’re looking at, says that the woman is a help to the man. This implies that the man needs help; it implies that the man is in a situation that he cannot exist, not just as a person, but that he’s under the need of an outside helper because he can’t function normally without this outside help. Now why is it necessary that she be a help? It’s interesting that the word “help” in verse 18 is usually used throughout the Bible for God. For example, many of you memorize Scripture and you have probably gone through various Psalms and proverbs and you’ve seen that little expression, “He is our shield and defender, our help” or something like that, that word sometimes translated as “shield” or “defender” is the word help that is used here. It’s a powerful word that usually occurs for God. The only other time it seems to be applied to a person in the human race is here in Genesis 2 when this term that is usually used of God is brought over and used of the woman; she is to be the help for man.

Now how is the woman supposed to be the help of man? This goes back to chapter 1 where he tells them, these are the two areas in which the woman is to help the man. Verse 26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,” and so on, God created man and verse 28, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish,” that means to fill out, “the earth, and subdue it….” This means that Adam was in a situation, the Garden of Eden, there’s a reason it’s called Eden, by the way, the Garden was not called Eden, the Garden was one part of Eden, Eden was an area, and inside this area Adam was told to be on the defense but he’s not going to sit here all his life inside the Garden; there’s a world to conquer out here. Evidently this was the angelic conflict going on where Satan, the challenge between man and Satan would be either in the Garden or it would be outside, and Satan could indwell any animal, apparently in that day, he happened to have chosen a serpent to indwell and he got into the garden. But had Adam licked the problem in the Garden he still would have had another problem; the problem is outside the Garden Satan would have been there too.

And so Adam was to produce, and to reproduce and have a family, and his children were to move out and conquer. Now every once in a while you have some idiot come along and ask where Cain got his wife; Cain got his wife from one of his sisters; there was one family, Adam and Eve, and they had many, many children, they were fruitful, don’t forget the usual problem of incest was not an issue here because you had genetic purity at the beginning; now you have genetic deterioration as a result of centuries and centuries of the fall and so there is a problem with incest today. It was not a problem in that day.

So you have this family move out and you were here to have the brotherhood of man. Here’s the concept of the brotherhood of man, you were to have literally one family over all the earth and Adam was to be the ruler. And of course there wasn’t death here, they were to be ruled and live as long as God chose to have them around. And so they were to move out and of course the process would be through reproduction, procreation. So that was one area, the woman was to help by bringing a family about, in order that that family might move out and expand and cover and subdue the earth.

The second area, however, was not this outside or the offense phase but was in the defense phase and that’s found in chapter 2. Notice that in verse 18 where it says that the woman is the help for the man occurs just after the challenge to man, verse 17, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” And so therefore the woman was placed in a right relationship where she was to be spiritually strengthening to the man. She was to strengthen him in his conflict. Now it was the man’s responsibility to carry on the conflict but the woman was to help him in his conflict. And Eve wasn’t around to malign, criticize, and dissipate Adam’s energy in family squabbles; Eve was there to help Adam accomplish the job that God gave to him. Since God gave the job to Adam of defending the Garden, he needed a helper; the helper was there for this job.

Now that’s the second thing of the doctrine of Biblical sex, and that is that man was given a test and he was placed on earth in the angelic conflict, woman was to help him in this area.

Now we come to the third point on the Biblical doctrine of sex and that has to do with sex itself. Genesis 2:18 and following. “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help” and so on. In verses 19-20 God gives him an appreciation course by showing him all the animals, he can’t communicate with them, they do not have personality as he does, and so therefore God, verse 21, “caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam,” now this is not allegorical, this is literal, and don’t you buy this garbage that some Christians have and they read in some book, oh this is just a sweet little story. If this is a real sweet story do you realize that the doctrine of imputation, the doctrine of justification, and the doctrine of salvation completely falls apart because salvation depends on the whole human race coming out of Adam, including his wife. God did not start the human race off with a pair, He started it off with one, from which He got the female, so that she would be “bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh,” and Adam as one man would be head of all the human race. If this is not true then you have Adam and Eve the head of the human race, you have the human race headed by a pair. That’s not true, the human race is headed by one, Adam, and then you have Eve derived from him.

Then it goes on and says, verse 24, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” Now in verse 24, the time in which it was written, or course, was Moses’ day and that’s a comment introduced by the editor. Verse 23 is Adam’s hymn, the first song in the world was a love song of a man for his woman: “This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man,” but then the editor comments, verse 24, and it’s interesting who does the commenting.

Evidently Moses said now people, I want you to understand something, when this marriage is set up, in-law relationships place a second and third rate role. In other words he says here the man is to leave his father and his mother and they are to set up a new unit. You see, Moses had a lot of in-law problems, himself personally and he had it in the camp, he wandered around with in-law problems in the tents of Israel for forty years. Probably half of his counseling was due to in-law problems. So he said look people, notice back here when the whole thing started, and he says I want you to realize, for that reason you get out from under in-laws, you get out from under parents, you get on your own two feet and slug it out yourselves. You don’t mooch off of them, and all the rest of it that goes on because sooner or later what’s going to happen in this marriage, you have two people and you start getting involved with parents and then the parents start directing the marriage and then you have a mess. There’s no faster way of breaking it up than having the parents butt in. So verse 24 is a mandate for independency in this marriage relationship, breaking it off and saying that they can be on cordial terms, honoring the father and the mother, but the father and the mother are not to interfere in this relationship.

So in the area of sex, in the area of marriage there is to be a union. This is the foundation of divine institution number two. Divine institution number two operates on a principle, it operates on love and it operates as that love is expressed through sex.

We turn to 1 Cor. 11:7, and we’ll see here where the divine institution of marriage ends up with a certain status for the woman. The third point is that divine institution number two was given for man to fulfill the plan of God, Gen. 2:18 and following, 1 Cor. 11:7, “For a man indeed,” this is about the head covering, etc. but then notice, “forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God’ but the woman is the glory of the man.” Now what does “glory” mean? Glory means… when you say so and so, the man is the glory of God, what does the glory mean? Glory means a revelation, it means that inside the man, for example, Jesus Christ had the glory of the Godhead indwelling. What does this mean? It meant that when you looked at Jesus Christ and you knew Jesus Christ then you knew the Father through Him, the glory of the Father. You came to know the Father because Jesus Christ’s character reflected the Father’s character.

Now it’s interesting that the Father expresses Himself through the man; here is Jesus Christ or in the sense that Paul means, any man, the man is “the glory of God,” but “the woman is the glory of the man.” Now this is why the story in Genesis 2 is not just a story; the woman does not come as part of the original pair; she is a deliberative product from the man. This, incidentally is why angels and all other people in the Bible are all looked upon as male, you don’t have female angels running around in the Bible, only male. And there’s a reason for that, it’s not just an accident. The female, as far as personality goes in the higher creation is unique to the human race; angels do not have it. So we have the woman, she is the glory of the man, in other words, the man expresses himself through the woman; she begins to radiate the character of her man; she becomes a means of radiating his character, just as the man radiated the character of God. This shows another function in this relationship, that the man actually, you might say, doubles his glory. Not only does he himself radiate but he radiates in and through his woman. And this is what it means in verse 7 where “the woman is the glory of the man.”

Then he ties it directly to Genesis 2, “For the man is not out of the woman, but the woman is out of the man. [9] Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman was created for the man.” And it ties it directly to Genesis 2, so if you want to dump Genesis 2 and say oh, that’s allegorical, okay, then take a razor blade and cut out 1 Cor. 11 because that’s also allegorical. See you can’t dump a portion of the Word of God and then expect to hold the whole thing together. You start letting it fly in one area and the whole thing goes; the Bible is an indivisible unit.

So this is an area of marriage in divine institution number two, but we can go further and say is it possible to look upon divine institution number two, tying all this together, into a simple model, tying all the facts of Genesis 2, all the facts of 1 Cor. 11, all the facts of Ephesians 5, the great classical passage, is it possible to tie these together, maybe it’s over simplified but is it possible to make an easy to see model of divine institution number two functioning properly. And I believe it is; I believe if you take these various passages together, after studying all the passages, you get a composite picture that looks something like this: First you have the man, then you have the plan of God, then you have the woman, in that order. Now watch this logical order, go back to the story of Genesis 2. For whom was the plan of God given? Adam or Eve? It was given to Adam. When was it given to Adam? It was given to Adam before the woman came along. All right, Adam was already in his situation defined by the plan of God for his life at that point. Then to help out, not just Adam, but Adam in the plan of God, the woman was brought to his side. You see, the woman was not just brought to help the man, but she was brought to help the man in that situation in the plan of God, which means that just as God built Eve to match Adam in the job Adam had to do, it means that this sets up a model for marriage, namely that the man is to function as the head of the home to find the plan of God for that family.

For example, a lot of young people come asking how can I tell the one for me. I don’t believe, frankly, you can really tell with all certainty unless you’re clear on the plan of God for your life. That comes first. If you know where God is leading you you have an objective standard or measure so that you can ask yourself, does this person in whom I’m interested over here, does she match that; do I see where she can help me in this situation that God is leading me into. Is she a help fitted for me? That’s basically the question that the man has to answer in the situation. So it shows the tremendous emphasis, tying in the plan of God with the man, not with the woman.

But now look, what do you find today in the fundamental church? You hear it when you go to Bible classes, Bible conferences, you go to prayer meeting, who is it that basically is considering the plan of God. It’s the woman. Where are the men? Then you tie that with the fact that never in the history of the church have we had such an unstable family situation; don’t you see there’s a correlation. There’s a correlation there. Of course you have instability, if this is a model of marriage and the marriage is to function this way, then the whole thing hangs on the fact that the man, like Adam, gets with the plan of God for him personally, gets his assignment, then you have the stability because then the woman knows what she’s supposed to do. But the woman basically is a responder in this situation; the man is the initiator, he’s the one that initiates. We’ll see this in Ephesians 5. The man gets the plan, just as Adam, then the woman fits, but she’s out of place if the man….

For example, let’s take a hypothetical illustration, let’s take a case where you have a man who does not know the plan of God for his life; he’s single. He’s a believer but like 90% of believers he doesn’t know what’s going on, never studied the Bible, doesn’t understand these things, has never actually mastered the basis of the Christian life. So he wanders around and starts dating, then he can’t make up his mind, he thinks he falls in love with 3 or 4 different girls and he can’t make up his mind. The problem is that he’s got to have some standard beyond the relationship, he’s got his horizontal relationship worked out down here but all the pieces don’t fit together that way; this is why it’s so hard. It fits together when he himself experiences the direction and leading of God in his life that only comes through the consideration of the Word of God applied to his situation. So here is this man, minus the plan of God. Now how is he going to function to find a woman who is fitted for him and the plan of God that he doesn’t know. Now oftentimes, of course, the person coming into marriage does not know the least about the plan of God. I’m talking about the general direction, if a person is already moving in the general direction of the plan of God for his life God will lead and make clear these issues. But the reason oftentimes why God doesn’t make it clear is because the man isn’t moving in the right direction. When he is, these issues fall into place.

Now in Ephesians 5 you see a characteristic of a man and a woman. Eph. 5:22, after verse 18, notice this is after verse 18, the filling of the Holy Spirit, immediately the result of the filling of the Spirit are giving of thanks, submitting yourselves one to another, and “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,” now this is balanced in a minute so wives don’t worry about it. Verse 22 it says, “Wives, submitting to your own husbands,” my only point in bringing this out is that isn’t it interesting that you go back to Genesis 3 and the fall of man, where does sin first show up in the marriage relationship. After the fall of man, Adam and Eve have problems, immediately, that’s the very next verse. Now here you come over to the New Testament and you have the filling of the Holy Spirit where both people in the marriage are submitting to the will of God, where does spirituality show up first? In the marriage relationship. See, there’s a parallel, you go back in Genesis and sin shows up first there; you come over to the New Testament, filling of the Spirit, where is it manifested? Right there. Now it’s not an accident that this happens because of course marriage is impossible, basically, on a non-Christian base. It’s possible but not in the sense that the Bible says it’s possible, not in the sense of the fulfillment the Bible promises.

Verse 22, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. [23] For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the savior of the body.” And many people stop there, but you should also say verse 25, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church.”

Now we’re still on this model of man, the plan and the woman. Now let’s look at this illustration carefully. Here’s Christ, here’s the church, let’s draw the analogy; here’s the man and here’s the woman. Now look at that carefully; who loved who first? Did the church love Christ first or did Christ love the church first? Romans 5 says “while we were yet sinners Christ loved us.” Christ loved us before, so therefore who is it that initiates the love in that relationship? Christ is the one that initiates it; He’s the initiator. All right, now He initiates, the church basically responds to His initiation. Go back to the Old Testament, which came first the Ten Commandments or God’s redemption of the nation Israel? God’s redemption of the nation Israel. He didn’t say folks, all you have to do is get together, keep the Ten Commandments and I’ll save you. That wasn’t what He did. What He said is I’ll save you from Egypt, now keep the Ten Commandments; the Ten Commandments were the response of the nation to the love of God.

So here you have Christ, same thing, He died for us on the cross while we were yet sinners, the initiation moves from the top to the bottom, from Christ down to the church. Then this passage, go back to the passage that says “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband as unto the Lord,” analogy, the Church responds to Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ first loved the Church. You can’t respond to something that’s not there; that’s what sets off the cycle. So when you come over here and you bring the analogy over; who sets in motion the cycle? It’s the man that sets in motion the cycle, the woman completes the circuit this way. Now all marriage problems from a breakdown in that cycle at some point. Somewhere the cycle breaks down; it either breaks down with the man in that he initiates in a wrong way, doesn’t know how to initiate, doesn’t know how to express his love to the woman, or the woman doesn’t read his signals and responds in the wrong way and finally you get both circuits off. Now my experience is that the only way to re-establish the cycle is to start all over, just momentarily in your minds cancel out the cycle and start all over with the man and the woman, based on these mechanics, and the man has to set in motion the cycle first. The man basically has to initiate to start the cycle because the woman has to respond, just as spiritually who was it that died for the Church? Christ died for the Church first, then the Church responded to Him, His action. And so here is the same kind of thing. The woman was built to respond.

Now think of what Solomon has found, in Ecclesiastes, the passage we went through, what was his problem? The women were the initiators there, the women were the ones who were coming into his life and trying to grasp and run Solomon’s life. Now what had happened? The cycle had been reversed and this is carnality, and this is what happens. Sin reverses the cycle so that the man becomes passive, he becomes the one who now responds to his wife, his wife becomes the initiator and she’s the one that does the initiation. Now this is one of the signals for carnality, they cycle completely reverses just as in the heresy of works who is it… the Church in the heresy of works tries to save itself and live the Christian life by initiating, that is the Church says if we do this, if we do this, if we do that, if we do this, then Christ will do this. Now that’s completely reverse, so in the heresy of works you have the Church starting off trying to woo Christ to bless it. Now that’s wrong. You don’t [can’t understand words] as the heresy of works, but the cycle of grace that knocks it out is Christ starts the cycle, the Church completes it. The man starts it, the woman completes it. Error: the Church starts it, they try to woo Christ to complete it; the woman starts it and tries to woo the man.

Now this is, by the way, the fourth step in the Biblical doctrine of marriage, that you have the man plus the plan of God plus the woman in this cycle, where the man initiates and the woman responds. Now a side step, 1 Peter 3, oftentimes it happens that a woman will respond to the gospel and here husband does not. Then what happens? What happens in that situation, because you can see the problem immediately. Those of you who have been following what we’ve said you can see this is the most crucial problem of all problems because if it’s really true that this is so, here’s the man, here’s the woman, the man starts in, the woman is built to respond, but the woman has already responded to Christ; she’s on positive volition, he’s on negative volition, now where does that leave her. She’s in a mess because she can’t initiate; if the man is won to Christ he can lead the woman and do it within the cycle of marriage. But if the woman receives Christ now she’s in a mess because she can’t legitimately reverse the cycle. See, if she tries to preach to her husband and nag him etc. what is she doing? She is trying to initiate to him to get him to respond, and that breaks the cycle.

But the Bible doesn’t leave us without instructions, and 1 Peter 3 tells us what to do in that situation. “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands that, if any obey not the word,” you see they had the same trouble then, “if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation [behavior] of the wives.” Now the King James word completely drops the meaning here; the word “conversation” means behavior pattern, and the whole point is not conversation, they are not won by the conversation of the wives, they are won with the behavior pattern of the wife, and so what the woman has to do here, and it requires a tremendous amount of trust in the Lord, in that she can’t preach to her husband, she has to win him to Christ by responding in a very calculated way. Now it’s true, we won’t call this maneuvering or calculating, but the woman is capable of calculating and [can’t understand words] all sorts of things and what Peter is saying is, wives, use your heads, you know how to get your husband to do thins without telling him to do things. All right he says what you do is you do the same thing spiritually. You can maneuver your husband, in the good sense of the word, without preaching at him, verse 1, that’s his point, don’t nag the man. If you nag the man, that’s it. You might as well forget it. I have tried to counsel men who have been nagged by their women and you might as well just forget it. I would rather talk to a campus atheist than talk to some man that’s been nagged by his wife, because it’s impossible, you just can’t do anything because this cycle has been broken.

Verse 2, “While they behold your chaste behavior pattern with fear,” now that’s not fear in the sense we think of it, it means respect, with respect to the Lord and His words, [3] “Whose adorning, let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hear, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel, [4] But let it be the hidden man of the heart…” every once in a while in fundamental circles somebody comes to verse 3, oh, that means that women should comb their hear with a fan, that means they should never wear makeup and all this. This is not true in the south, but in the north this is the legalistic fundamentalist area; you look at the women and you wonder if they ever heard of the word makeup, or lipstick, don’t they sell it here or what’s the problem. The problem is that they have misused this verse. It’s very humorous because if they were consistent in verse 3, it doesn’t require much ingenuity to see that they wouldn’t be wearing any clothes, because it says not wearing of apparel or putting on of apparel. Well if you’re not going to have braiding of hair then why wear clothes; he says don’t do it but they don’t take that part of the verse.

Verse 4 is the emphasis, it means where is the emphasis, “But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. [5] For after this manner,” you see Peter immediately anticipates something, immediately when he hits verse 4 he says I know what you’re thinking ladies, you’re not a woman and you don’t know and you can’t appreciate our problem and he says okay, I’m going to settle that argument. Verse 5, “For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands, [6] Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham,” and so on and so on.

He says it can be done because it was done, that’s his argument. He says I’m not going to say that I’m a woman and understand your problems, all I can say is I can point to other women who have done it, so it is possible; that’s Peter’s answer. So here at this point, and I find that this basically in our fundamental areas is one of the great problems, where the woman will respond to the gospel or even respond faster. This is why I have no Bible classes during the day hours because I never want the women to get ahead in this area. I feel that if I had a woman’s Bible class then what would happen, and this is a tension because you really don’t want to keep people ignorant, but on the other hand what I’ve found often times is that in the women’s Bible class the women will get so far ahead of their husbands that the man just reacts against it and it starts to turn him off. Now it doesn’t have to be, it does not have to be this way; this is not a pitch against women’s Bible classes, it’s just given the situation in Lubbock Bible Church I don’t feel it wise at this time to have them. But if 1 Peter 3 were uppermost in the women’s’ minds it means that they could go ahead and learn all the Bible doctrine they want to as long as they don’t use it as a club to beat their husbands with. And that’s what 1 Peter 3 is saying.

Let’s go back now to the Old Testament for an example, just to show this thing can work; Peter says it worked, let’s go back in another area, the area of deciding partners for marriage, the right man and the right woman concept. God put a short logical step to deduce from the Word of God that for every man there is a right woman and for every woman this is a right man. Who is the right man for the right woman? How do you match them up? Well, you match them up by the fact that if God has created each one of us and knows us by name, not by IBM number, not by credit card number, He knows us by name; if God knows you by name it logically would mean that He has created you with a purpose in life. If he’s created a man with a purpose in life, then it means, since Genesis 2:18 tells us it’s not good that man be alone, certainly on this side of the fall it’s not good that man be alone, and barring one exception it’s the will of God that every man and woman marry. The one exception is 1 Cor. 7 where you have the gift of celibacy, that is given to both the man and the woman in the situation of Christian work or other activities when God takes care of various activities in libido, He takes up the slack in that area. But normally it’s the will of God, you can bet on it, for every man, for every woman to be married, apart from 1 Cor. 7, that is the exception.

Now the man, it’s not good to be alone, we deduced that from Genesis 2:18; we know that’s true. Well if that’s true, and since Phil. 4:19 says that He shall supply your every need, then it’s the need for this man to have a woman to complete the plan for his life. So from Gen. 2:28 and Phil. 4:19 we can deduce just on the basis of those verses that it’s God’s will and that He has and will provide a woman for him, and visa versa. But you can show from the Bible that it’s more than just deduction. We have examples of this; I’ve already given you one, Eve. You say well Adam couldn’t miss, he only had one to choose from. Well I can tell you another example, turn to Genesis 24, Isaac and Rebekah.

Isaac is a man, Isaac has a need, it’s not good that man be alone, God is going to provide for him, particularly for Isaac because of the covenant that has to come through him, and so God is going to provide for Isaac. Gen. 24:5, He does so through the cultural areas of the time. Now you cannot take the exact procedure that God used in Genesis 24 and say that that’s the way God is going to provide for you today; that’s not true because this was written in a different culture but the principle is the same. Abraham decides that it’s about time that his son had his woman and so in verse 4, this is Abraham talking to his servant, “You shall go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. [5] “And the servant said unto him, Suppose the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from where you came? [6] And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son there again. [7] The LORD God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke unto me, and who swore unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land, he” the end of verse 7, “he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from there.” In other words, God would work it out so that the right woman would appear to the servant so that Isaac, there would be a right man/right woman relationship.

Verse 12, “And he said, O LORD God of my master, Abraham, I pray Thee, send me,” and this is the servant praying this, he’s out on the road, he has to meet the right woman, and so he asked the Lord for guidance, and he said, “O LORD God of my master, Abraham, I pray Thee, send me good speed this day, and show kindness unto my master, Abraham. [13] Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water; [14] And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; let her be the one whom thou hast appointed for thy servant, Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shown kindness unto my master.” And it goes on to describe how this worked out.

And then at the end he said something very interesting, when he explains it, verse 26, “And the man bowed down his head,” after he had met Rebekah, and his prayer had been answered, and he thanked the Lord, “and worshiped the LORD. [27] And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of my master, Abraham, who has not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren.” Now that phrase, “I in the way,” literally in the Hebrew, is a disjunction; in other words the sentence is going along and to emphasize the point, the man says “I, in the way, the LORD led me.” It’s to draw emphasis to the fact that this man was on positive volition and was moving. God can’t steer a parked car and the point was that the servant was in the area, he was obedient to the word that he knew, you can’t be led of the Lord by information that you don’t know, you start with what you do know, and respond to that and then God gives you more. And so he says I was in the way, I didn’t know anything, I knew certain principles, I knew certain principles of prayer, I used those, “I, being in the way, the LORD led me.” And the Lord led him in this area. So here we have a historical illustration of how God provided a right woman for a right man.

Now there are two summary principles to this area; not only is there a right man and a right woman relationship but the resulting marital union out of this right man/right woman is not automatic. The right man/right woman relationship is the potential, but it by itself does not automatically produce a glorifying marriage. The marriage is produced by following the will of God after the point of marriage. For example, let’s go back to the plan of salvation; phase one, the time I receive Christ; phase two, from the time I receive Christ until the time I die. Now you can trust the Lord but does that guarantee that you’re Christian life you’re going to use all the assets that God has given; does it guarantee that you’re going to be filled with the Spirit 100% of the time? No, it depends on your own obedience, your own moment by moment choice. Same here, when you have the right man/right woman come together in a marriage that does not mean that the marriage is going to be automatically all right, we see in Isaac and Rebekah, in the illustration I just gave you God led them together but that did not make that marriage automatically okay. What made it okay or made the difference was the positive and negative volition exercised toward God throughout the rest of that marriage.

See, here’s the problem, if you have the right man and the right woman… don’t get all shook now that you might not be married to the right man or right woman, illegitimate application here, I’m setting it out from the standpoint of the single people. So here you have the right man/right woman, they come together. Now if the right man is following the plan of God, for which the right woman was designed to help, then there’ll be harmony. The harmony is produced, not by some sort of psychological adjustment that goes on, of course that’s there, but how stupid to look on Christianity as if some sort of a naturalistic sociological adjustment by just idiots saying well, so and so isn’t compatible. Well you name two people that are compatible after the fall with two sin natures dwelling together; nobody’s compatible so that’s not a legitimate argument. Where the compatibility comes is when the man seeks the plan of God, the woman being designed to fulfill the plan of God to him, there’s harmony. That’s the base of the harmony, that’s where the harmony is produced and the other things come flowing out of that, they’re secondary. But there’s where you get this harmony. The harmony comes through the third party, the Lord Jesus Christ. There are actually three parties in the marriage, two, the man and woman, the third is the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore if the man and the woman follow the Lord Jesus Christ, that will produce the harmony. And this, incidentally, is the only thing I know that is capable of the power and the energy needed to solve many marriage difficulties. Often times you have people in such great trouble that if you relied on psychological gimmicks it would never work, never work, never produce anything, but if you rely on that third party that unifies, then you’ve got it and then it becomes a challenge to follow this out.

So the conclusion to right man/right woman is that it produces the potential but the relationship is up to you. We will conclude by turning to Proverbs 5. We have just skimmed the surface so don’t take this as some sort of a comprehensive exposition of the doctrine. I have just skimmed the surface to show you the principle so that you wouldn’t buy Solomon’s line. The reason why Solomon had sour grapes was that he proceeded to try and find the right woman for him without consulting the plan of God; God made Solomon, God knew His plan for Solomon, God gave the plan to Solomon, and God probably, somewhere in Israel, had a right girl for Solomon, and Solomon, because he never followed the plan of God in this part of his life probably never did find the right woman for him. Of all the 700 women that he had probably not one of them was the right one for him, because he never got with the plan of God.

In Proverbs 5:15-20 we have the Christian antidote to the sexual promiscuity of our society. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the strongest thing that Christianity can do in any situation, whatever the problem is, that we can always out produce and show that we have something better than Satan in his competition, Satan always tries to produce something that looks good, but no counterfeit has the value of the genuine. A counterfeit dollar looks good but underneath it isn’t, and it’s the same thing with sexual promiscuity. Our young people are being barraged, in the short years since I have left high school it’s unbelievable the shift that has occurred, absolutely unbelievable. My heart goes out to young Christians trying to live for Jesus Christ in this society; they are getting deluged, and no government program is going to solve the problem. Don’t think Congress is going to pass legislation and get rid of a little pornographic literature and it’s going to solve the problem; it’s not going to solve the problem, it’s too deep and too satanic for that.

There is one thing, however, that will solve the problem and it’s found in Proverbs 5:15, “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. [16] Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. [17] Let them be only thine own, and not for strangers with thee. [18] Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. [19] Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. [20] And why wilt you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? [21] For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his goings.”

What’s the point? The point is that the correct thing to the counterfeit is the genuine and the genuine thing the Bible offers to withstand all of the onslaught, all of the distortion, is a tremendously wonderful, blessed, strong, powerful marriage relationship that includes the sexual areas described in the Word of God. That is the antidote and this is the most powerful thing that young people can be given, to be given to see that it’s worth waiting for. It is worth doing it God’s way because the results are so fantastic, are so much greater, the dividends are so much more than doing it this other way that it’s worth waiting for. It’s worth it. In other words, the Scriptural doctrines and the truths of the Word of God will be proven empirically in history by acquiring them in each one of our lives. And this goes in the area of sex and marriage as well as all other areas. The strongest antidote is the genuine.

With our heads bowed.