Clough Proverbs Lesson 35
The Wrong Woman – Proverbs 5:1-6
Now our lesson
this morning is going to take some time so I hope you are ready to hear because
we’re going to start with five questions; this is a little backlog, we’ve got
six questions on the feedback cards that I have to answer first, and then when
we get though those we’ll get to the lesson.
The first one says would it be feasible for someone to teach a class on
the divine viewpoint of teaching, or are there tapes that we can get. There are lot of people in education who
would be interested. Unfortunately, our
facilities at the moment aren’t such that we can accept or do anything about
that request; it’s a legitimate request but I don’t know what we can do about
it. The only thing I can suggest would
be as far as content of teaching be sure you master the divine viewpoint
framework, and as far as method of teaching look at the Gospels, the four
Gospels, and notice how Jesus Christ teaches His own disciples.
Do not
accommodations and compromises which God entered into with man get in the way
of positive volition? And is there not a
better ways for God to operate. Do the
people understand really? This is in
connection with the evening service more, but this deals with the problem of
how God accommodates Himself to man’s sin and He does not hold men responsible
for certain things that actually are in violation of His righteousness. For example, according to Matthew 19:6 Jesus
Christ said that God did not hold accountable man for polygamy in the Old
Testament, and then of course we know that polygamy is a sin by God’s absolute
standards. And so therefore doesn’t this
an accommodation that God works with the Law then make it a confusing picture. Well, the confusion exists, yes, but in a
world that is fallen God can only deal with it in grace, and since God can only
deal with it in grace there will always appear to be some sort of contradiction
until the last judgment. If you really
want God to be consistent then the only logical thing for God to do is to judge
you all right now and I’m sure you don’t want that, but that actually is the
only way for God to be consistent.
The third
question; did you say where Matthew
In using examples
to teach your children wisdom do you focus on examples found in the Word, and
if you use personal examples how do you prevent from dragging out dirty
linen? I don’t mean all the sordid
details but in general how do you point out your failures as instructors. I think at times and places, certain times
and places, it helps for the parent to share for some of his own failures with
the child providing that these failures are carefully phrased within the scope
of the Word, so that, for example, you can show your child look, when I
violated the Word of God here, then this was the result; so you can show your
children that when we do violate the Word it applies to everybody, including
the parents. You can destroy your own
authority by just saying well son, I did this and I did that and so on and he
just sees that as an excuse. That’s not
the way to do it; the way to do it is phrase it in connection with the Word and
say that this is a sin in the Word and I violated it and this is the result. So therefore the emphasis is always on the
Word and its standards.
Another
question: You said that a transfer of
responsibility occurred from parent to child, then the consequences are the
child’s. Then if a child get sexually
involved and he faces serious results do parents still not intervene. For example, a daughter gets pregnant. Does the child solve it herself or to back to
the parents for instruction. If the
child is responsible, how can the parents stand back and watch it and at the
same time not let the child take it as scorn or bitterness? Well, when I said transfer responsibility I
mean that this thing is a gradual thing, that it starts with the small details
of life. You let, say it starts off with
chores around the house, and you have a certain responsibility to that and you
may set up punishments for that in the early years for not doing it. But then when you start to transfer
responsibility for the main directions in life, an example, study techniques,
the kid gets the benefit or the cursing from his own behavior pattern, it will
be his grades. And then when you go into
the problem of sex and so on you deal with a bigger problem and in this case
the (?) age was 15, in that situation I would say that obviously the parents
were to help. Parents can help with the
result… but the issue that I made last week from Proverbs 4 is that the child
should experience the results to the point where they understand the cause and
effect relationship. The child if he
comes to you afterwards for advice you can give him advice; there’s nothing
stopping you there. The point is that
you have to have some hands off and enough to let them feel the hard ground
when they hit. And this can’t be done
overnight, it’s got to be a gradual transfer.
So in this case it would depend on how old the child is and so on, but
you keep your baling your child out from thing after thing after thing do you
know what you’re doing? You’re just
teaching your child how to do it again and somebody else will bail them out. So there has to come a time when you decide
you’re not going to bail him out and let him just get clobbered.
One final
question, I have not seen the place of the organ or the piano in the New
Testament church; I have not seen where it is forbidden or denied. Please give me the reason we need the reason
we need these instruments of music when God has given us voices with which to
sing and worship. Does He not love our
voices, which He created, much more than the music of a man-made instrument? Well, I don’t know, it depends on the
voices. If you have a voice like mine
I’m sure God would prefer the instrument.
But in all seriousness the answer to this question is that obviously God
allows the instruments and indeed welcomes them because the Psalms were all
sung by instruments and the names of the instruments are given at the heading
of the Psalm. So therefore in Ephesians
Let’s turn to
Proverbs 5. This continues the large
section that we started in chapter 4; chapters 4 and 5 deal with the problem of
the family, the exhortation to use wisdom in the family. And from Proverbs 4:1 through chapter 5, the
end of it, we have this emphasis on the family and how the family is used to
transmit wisdom, from father to son, father to son, father to son, and we have
studied some of the principles in the family that apply both to believer and
unbeliever. And therefore we come today
to an extension of this. Proverbs 4:1-9
deals with the fatherly advice to a son; this is David advising Solomon. Now up to this point it’s been Solomon doing
the teaching; here Solomon is doing the teaching, yes, but he is repeating what
it was that David told him, so it’s actually David’s teaching passed on and
transmitted through Solomon. And then in
Proverbs 4:10-19, this was the dawn of responsibility; and this recognizes the
principle that there will come a time in your family when the children are going
to have to exercise responsibility and you have to train them on how to do
it. It does not come automatically;
people have to learn responsibility and be trained in responsibility. This is why we have so many irresponsible
people in society today.
Now Proverbs
4:20-27, the last part of chapter 4, was the son’s readiness; that means that
he is ready now to exercise responsibility.
And we said there were three points that measure whether a son is ready
to exercise responsibility or not. The
first one was that he can care for his heart and his mouth, and that means that
he has a responsibility for his own spiritual growth, and he knows how to
handle himself in these areas; not that he knows all the answers but he knows
how to get the answers if needed. The
second point was that the son knows how to remain stable amidst all the
confusing details of life.
The third thing,
the third point was that the son knows how to solve day to day problems from
the Word. And this third point is very
important and that is the point that you as a parent are going to have to teach
your children. This involves when a kid
comes home bellyaching, crying, and all shook up about something that happened
in school today, or something else that you catch them doing, that you sit down
at some point, when you have time to do this, it can’t be rushed, but it
doesn’t have to take a long time, and as close in time to the problem as
possible, that you sit down and you find out first what is the problem. That’s the first thing you have to find
out. Secondly, what did the kid do about
the problem, what was his response to the situation. So you find out two things before you start
anything else; you find out what the problem is; what the child did in response
to the problem. And then the third thing
that you have to find out is what does the Bible say about the problem and
guide him by the Word. What is the
biblical response to the problem?
And then the
fourth thing to do is to train by example; give him an assignment and say I
want son, in a week I want you back here and I want you to have done this,
this, this and this. I want you to apply the Word in this area and this area,
figure out some specific areas that he can apply the Word. Now if you’ll do this consistently over a
time period you will develop a mentality in your children where they will learn
no matter what the situation is, not matter how upsetting it is, they will have
the mentality, now listen, my father and my mother used to sit down and go
through the Word and I know somewhere in this book we have a solution to the
problem, I’m going to find it. So you’ve
created a mentality of solution, so that the kid doesn’t have a problem hanging
on his shoulders for a month after month and year after year. He resolves it quickly and efficiently from
the Word.
Now this takes
skill and this takes practice and it doesn’t come quickly; it comes gradually,
and it comes only after you have taken time to work this through with your
children. The first couple of times (?)
you’re going to have to do it all but you will find as you train them they’ll
be able to do it more and more; particularly when they get up to the point
where they can read Scripture, and go into this themselves and they have good
Bible background, if you train them to take notes on the sermons and the
teaching here, if you train them by tapes you train them to take notes and to
organize these notes so they can get them.
Taking notes is nothing if they go home and stick them in a pile and you have this great pile of notes, look,
there’s all my knowledge right in that box there. That’s great but how are you ever going to
retrieve any of the knowledge, get a file folder, set them up by books and by
doctrines. And get a two-drawer file
somewhere in your house and it’d be good for the whole family, and you take
notes here, all right, put them in file folders, go all the way through the
books of the Bible and put your notes there, and on the other draw you can do
it by doctrine, doctrinal categories and go through it alphabetically there. And so you have some reservoir of materials
that you will accumulate, and then use to pull out and solve these
problems. And one of the fantastic
benefits of using this is the fact that later the children will come to know
that the Word of God is true because they have seen it work so fantastically
well I their lives. So he knows the (?)
where the Word of God works because the Word of God has been seen to work in
this problem, this problem, this problem and this problem, and they look around
and they see all their peers falling apart and panicking and facing all sorts
of problems with these weirdo solutions that are put forth and they had a time
when they put forth biblical solutions and they can see the difference; you
don’t have to say anything, it’s obvious.
So that’s an important area of training children.
Now in Proverbs 5
we come to sex, and you couldn’t wait to get here. And this, obviously, this whole chapter deals
with a father teaching his son about sex.
Now if some of you vibrated during the 1 Samuel series I’m sure you’ll
really vibrate during Proverbs and by the time we finish Proverbs 5 there’ll be
very little left to your imagination.
And this is because the Word of God deals with these problems as it deals
with any other problem. And this is
going to be a test to whether you can stand the Word. This is a test to see whether you can stand
the Word of God because the Word of God speaks in every area including
sex. Obviously, sex is one of the
biggest problems as you can see from the distribution of material in chapters 4
and 5, what problem takes the most verses; it’s sex. So every verse in chapter 5 deals with
something about sex. And this is how the
father taught his son about sex, and of course he’d be teaching the daughter
too in reverse roles. But in the context
of Proverbs it’s dealing with the son.
Now a few other
things about this, as we go down there are some verses that get pretty specific
and if you can’t take it you stay home until get through chapter 5, and live in
your sexless world, and then when we get back into chapter 6 somebody will
sound an alarm so you can come trotting back, you’ll be safe. But for those of you who want to know what
the Word says we’re going to go through it just as the Hebrew says, which may
be a shock to some of you since you’ve been reading these sweet translations in
the King James. I say this to you
because I know there are people that this is a little new and you may be a
little uncomfortable with it and this is something probably you’ve never heard
before from the pulpit. Well, there’s
always the first time. You’ve heard lots
of things for the first time from this pulpit and this won’t be the first thing
new.
And the other
thing to learn about Proverbs 5 is, and this is very important, all joking
aside, chapter 5 shows you, first of all, the divine viewpoint of sex. And your children aren’t going to get this
any other place. You’re not going to
give your children the divine viewpoint of sex by trotting out some book on
plumbing and dropping it in the kitchen so they can see it as they walk out the
door. And other means that parents use
to introduce sex to their children, usually after their children have already
learned it in the wrong places, and gotten the wrong ideas.
The first thing in
all seriousness I want you to understand about this chapter is that this is
divine viewpoint; this is God’s viewpoint.
Jesus Christ invented sex; Jesus Christ made it and Jesus Christ has
given us instructions on how to use it and how not to use it. So this is divine viewpoint and you might as
well make up your mind that you’re not going to get it any other place except
in God’s Word. God’s Word has lots about
sex. Every once in a while people ask
me, is there anything about sex in God’s Word.
Well, if you’ll just stick with the Word consistently we’ll come across
your problem sooner or later and those of you who stuck out Proverbs, now
you’re getting your answer, yes, we’ve got a whole chapter that deals with
it.
The second thing I
want you to see about this chapter that’s also very important is that this
shows that no matter what the problem is, or what the area is, we have this
idea of everything related to the Word.
So when you’re talking about sex, that is to be related to the
Word. In Deuteronomy 6 it says parents,
no matter what the subject is, I don’t care if it’s sex or anything else, you
are to teach that subject within the divine viewpoint framework. And it’s a shame and a tragedy that in evangelical
circles we have such a scarcity of materials dealing with the biblical doctrine
of sex. There are only two basic… I’ve
looked as a minister who does pre-marital counseling I have searched and
searched and searched for material, and you only have basically two kinds of
material that you can possibly use in counseling, one of which is the usual
Christian material that says there is such a thing as a man and such thing as a
female, and then after about three chapters of that they discuss something
about marriage and that’s the end of the book.
Well, that’s a real help. And
then there’s a second kind of material and that’s just really gross, and into
the plumbing and everything else. And
you hesitate to use that because all that deals with is… you know, the birds do
it and everybody else does it and so people do it and of course that’s in an
evolutionary framework and that just deals with the physical and doesn’t even
deal with the spiritual aspect. So we
have a tremendous need in evangelical Christianity for something that gets down
to the details and also works with these spiritual aspects. Well this chapter will do that so let’s start
in.
The first thing
that we want to learn about this chapter is that the father is teaching the son
about his right woman. And I want to
develop under three topics the doctrine of the right woman, and this would
apply, as we do this it would apply to right man too but I want to phrase this
the same way the chapter is. You girls
will have to turn this around to the right man but there will be material that
will enable you to do it.
The doctrine of
the right woman; the first topic under this has five points to it. I told you, you’d better be ready. And that is divine institution number two in
innocence; now in innocence, obviously before the fall, and this is Genesis
1-2, so there are going to be five points to this. The second divine institution as it
originally was constructed. That’s
important, this is how marriage was originally constructed. Let’s turn to Genesis 2:8. This is important before you can understand
what David tells Solomon. Now David and
Solomon had lots of experience. Solomon
had a thousand women; 2 or 3 every night according to Ecclesiastes. And you can imagine that he obviously didn’t
put into practice too much of what is here in Proverbs 5. Solomon learned the hard way what happens
when you violate the second divine institution.
Now both David and
Solomon had fantastic sex drives; this is something characteristic of the house
of Jesse; these men were tremendously strong and had a tremendous sex drive to
them and it’s just part of the way they were made, and they didn’t handle their
sex drives very well, but David, because he was a soldier, he did a lot of
fighting and so on, he exhausted a lot of his libido in battle and so forth, so
he didn’t have as much trouble as Solomon.
However, when Solomon sat down and retired from wars and so on, he
didn’t lead the active physical life of David, he had much more problem with
it. So David understood that his son
would have problems and so David taught his son this thing because he knew that
this would be passed on to his son.
So let’s go back
in Genesis 2 and figure out the divine institution, the second one, which is
sex and marriage, as it originally was in innocence. First, Genesis 2:8-9, “And the LORD planted a
garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed, [9] And
out of the ground the LORD had made,” pluperfect, this does not refer to a
second account of creation as liberal critics would have you believe; it does
not conflict with Genesis 1. “…out of
the ground the LORD had made,” pluperfect, “every tree that is pleasant to the
sight, and good for food, the tree of life also….” So in verses 8 and 9 the first point about
divine institution number two was that it was in a perfect environment; it was
a perfect environment physically, materially, economically and in all
ways. That’s the first thing about it.
The second point,
Genesis 2:15, “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it. [16]
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou
mayest eat freely, [17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou
shalt not eat of it for in the day that you eat thereof, thou shalt surely
die.” The second point about the
doctrine of marriage in innocency is that not only was it given in a perfect
environment but the man was given a perfect calling. Notice who is given the calling, the man or
the woman? The man is given the calling! Now this is very critical because Adam is
going to use God’s plan for his life and use God’s plan for his life as the
means by which he can spot his right woman.
This is how he finds out his right woman. So the second point of the second divine institution
in innocency is that it was given with a perfect calling to the man first.
The third point,
Genesis 2:18 and following. “And the
LORD God said, It is not good that man should be alone;” “alone” means alone in
this calling. Here’s God’s plan for his
life, and God recognizes the man cannot accomplish God’s plan for his life
without a woman. And so therefore the
third point is that God is going to provide a helper, suited to his calling. Now you get that, a helper, a perfect helper
suited to his calling. Now in the Hebrew
the word for wife here is ‘ezer; I had a friend of mine, they named their Saint
Bernard dog ‘ezer. ‘ezer is the Hebrew word used for the
woman here and it means one who helps.
It is used for God, by the way, in the Old Testament, God is the ‘ezer of Israel, He is the helper of
Israel. So this places the woman in a
fantastic position. Women’s lib has
never even seen this. The woman, it may
sound at first as male chauvinism or something to say that the plan is given to
the man and the woman merely helps the plan, but that’s not what this is
saying. By the use of ‘ezer it means that man can’t accomplish
his plan without the right woman. So
that’s what ‘ezer is, and this is a
justification for the (?) of the woman in marriage, and it’s a biblical
justification for women’s rights, that the woman has a fantastic role because
without the woman the man cannot accomplish the calling that God has called him
to.
Then there’s
another word, you notice what it says here when it says I will make a “help
meet,” see the word “meet,” now that help is not helpmate; now this is what
happens, oftentimes you’ll see this in Christian circles, a helpmate; that’s a
wrong derivation from this. What it
should say is a helper, and now this word looks like this in the Hebrew, kenegedo, and it’s
like this: k with a little e, a quick e then n, e, g, and another quick e,
d, o. And neged means in front of or corresponding to. And this little thing on the end, the o, you
read the Hebrew from right to left, English obviously left to right, and this
ending is the word for him, see that’s a third, this is a third masculine
singular ending. So this is as, “as in
front of him,” or “corresponding to him.”
And this is where we derive the doctrine of the right woman. That Eve is the woman that is made for Adam;
she has been brought by God and made for Adam.
So the third point
is God provides a helper, a perfect helper suited for man in his calling. You see the right woman can’t be separated from
the calling of the man; that’s where all this goes together with God’s will for
your life. Somebody trots in my office
every once in a while; you know, I’m having trouble finding out my right woman
and I say well have you given a moment’s thought to perhaps where God might be
calling you, business, school, military, what your career is, what (?)
direction in your life, have you thought about your spiritual gift or are you
like some people in this congregation, think it’s a disease of young people or
something? What have you done in this
area? Well I don’t know, I haven’t done
anything about that. Well, I suggest you
do because if you get that straight you’d find out about your right woman. So here we have the third point that God
makes it and you’ve heard the expression a woman is well built, it’s a biblical
expression because in verse 22, “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from
man, made He a woman,” and it’s very humorous because the man in the Scripture
is said to be created, but the woman is said to be built, and the word “made”
here is the engineering word which means to be built. But aside from the context of some of you
wolves the word “made” here means made for your calling as unto the Lord, (?)
is obvious from other contexts.
All right, point 4
of the second divine institution in innocence is given in Genesis 3:24,
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto
his wife; and they shall be one flesh.”
So the fourth point is a perfect family is established after the in-law
problem is taken care of. Now I got a
few nods of approval on that. Now this
doesn’t mean to be dishonoring to parents but it means that when the son marries
his wife he is the one who sets the pace of that family and he doesn’t let in-laws
do it. And this may mean, and some of
you younger people have to watch this.
Every once in a while, of course you’re still going to school some of
you and you’re in-laws are giving you money to go through school sometimes, in
some cases. Now you have to play that
kind of a situation by ear because if you get the sensation that by accepting
money from your in-laws that that somehow is going to work to your disadvantage
later when they’re going to say well now we’re giving you this money for school
and I think you ought to do this. If you
detect any kind of stuff like that that’s the end of it right there. That’s the application of Genesis 2:24; you
go out and eat beans when you’re going to college and have your freedom but
don’t get involved in some little thing like that. Now you can be polite and courteous about it
but you’re setting a wrong tone for your marriage by getting financially
indebted to in-laws. So you be careful
of that. Sometimes all is understood and
everything is fine and that’s great; if you have that kind of arrangement,
good. But this is a warning to you that
you have to watch the authority problem.
And finally the
fifth point of marriage in innocency is given in Genesis 2:25, “And they were
both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” This refers to the fact that they have
perfect fellowship, physical and other ways.
All right, that’s
the five points on the divine institution in innocency. Now we come to the second category of
doctrine with regard to the right woman and that is the second divine
institution in the fall. We go to the
innocency, now we come to the fall and what the fall does to the second divine
institution. Genesis 3:6, the first
point under the second divine institution affected by the fall. Genesis 3:6, “When the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be
desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave
also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Now you compare Genesis 3:6 with Genesis
2:17; go back and look at Genesis 2:17 again. What did God tell Adam? “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat if it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
die.”
So the first point
about it is that after the fall when the wife is on negative volition she will
always tend to destroy and oppose the calling of her husband. It’s just an occupational hazard of living in
a fallen world. She’ll resent it, she’ll
nag about it, fuss and so on; it’s just normal men, it started with Eve.
The second thing,
Genesis 3:7, “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they
were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves
aprons.” So the second point of the second
divine institution of the fall means that there is a rupture in the close
fellowship that existed before the fall, both sexually and in other ways. This rupture means personal communication, it
means sexually and it means in other ways, so that the relationship between a
man and a woman in a fallen world will never be perfect. Now some of you must learn this because some
of you have very idealistic concepts of marriage and you’re all wrong, and I
have seen what happens. People go into a
marriage situation and they expect to have everything that I just gave you
under the divine institution in innocency and they don’t get it and they think
they’re ready for a divorce. Well,
that’s wrong, because that’s denying the existence of the fall. No marriage is going to be perfect; it can’t
be this side of the fall. So this is a
failure, a very naïve failure due to the rejection of Bible doctrine concerning
the fall. So the second point then is
that you have a rupture in fellowship.
The third point is
given in Genesis 3:17, “And unto Adam He said, Because thou has hast hearkened
unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded
thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in
sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the says of thy life.” So the third point is that in a fallen world
man experiences resistance to his calling.
Just because you have resistance to your calling doesn’t mean it’s a
closed door. If God has called you to do
something and you experience resistance in it you don’t give up; that’s not a
sign of God closing the door; that’s just an example of verse 17. Adam was called to be a farmer and he was the
first frustrated farmer. Now he didn’t
give up farming because he had a few problems.
He faced as that was part of his resistance to his calling; God said
you’re going to have resistance to your calling, take it as that; that’s the
price you pay for being part of a fallen humanity in a fallen world. So the third point then is that man experiences
resistance and obviously frustration.
So the man in the
second divine institution is going to experience frustration which leads to the
fourth point, and that is that his wife is an imperfect responder. His wife is an imperfect responder. When he’s frustrated with his calling and
then he comes home and she imperfectly responds, that’s more frustration for
him; that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it is in a fallen world. If you want some verses on that which we
don’t have time to cover today, Proverbs 19:13 and Proverbs 21:9, we’ll get to
those some time.
The fifth point
under the second divine institution in the fall is Genesis 3:16, “Unto the
woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children,” and the fifth point then is that children
that are a natural delight to the woman become a source of pain and the whole
problem of childbirth makes the woman have ambivalent feelings toward children,
whereas she was designed to enjoy them, she now has ambivalent feelings because
children cause her pain, in childbirth and in other ways. But that is again the price we have all got
to pay as part of the fallen world.
The sixth point,
also given in the last part of Genesis 3:16, “and thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Now this means that the woman has tremendous ambivalent feelings at one
point in her life. At one point in her
life she loves and wants to respond to her man, her husband, she wants this
very much. “Thy desire shall be to thy
husband,” so she is torn; she wants to respond to the husband but “he shall
rule over you.” And the idea here is
that his exercise of authority is frustrating to the woman. So in one sense she wants her man but in the
other sense she doesn’t want him, that male chauvinist. She wants to respond but on the other hand
she resents his authority and this is again part and parcel of living in a
fallen world. Just in case some of you
have been experiencing these things you see so you’ll know that a few other
people have experienced the same thing.
And you don’t have to go trotting out to the nearest court to get a
divorce because you think your marriage is imperfect.
All right, the
seventh point. God permits divorce but
does not command it. God permits divorce
but does not command it under two conditions, given in Matthew 19:9; 1
Corinthians 7:15. The two conditions,
adultery and in the case of a mixed marriage, a believer and unbeliever, when
the unbeliever deserts, 1 Corinthians 7:15.
So that is a divorce is permitted but not commanded.
Point eight, and
this is the important point of them all as far as today is concerned, because
of the fall we have death, divorce, and wrong choices, therefore right
man/right woman very rarely occurs in its ideal form. Because of death, divorce and wrong choices,
all the price of being in a fallen world, the right man/right woman doctrine
does not apply in its ideal form.
We’ll see now
about this eighth point as we come to the third and final area of the doctrine
of right man/ right woman, and that is the second divine institution we’ve seen
first in innocency, secondly in the fall, now we see it in grace. Remember, grace partially restrains the effects
of the fall. Grace partially restrains
the effect of the fall, so we have four points under this, the second divine
institution under grace.
The first point;
grace restrains the result of the fall, partially.
Second point, in
the area of right man/right woman, now get this so you see the modification
that happens to it. You see originally
there was one right woman, Eve, for Adam, right man. As a result of the fall you have death,
divorce and wrong choices made. So
therefore it’s highly unlikely that the human race is going to function on the
right man/right woman principle.
Therefore the modification that grace provides is that God can provide
for the best helper within the limitations of the fall. So we have the best helper; God has a best
helper for you relative to your situation and station in life and it may be a
good helper. The ideal would be, of
course, a single person following the Lord, he is on maximum positive volition,
and obviously the helper in that case is going to be the right woman in the
sense of the ideal sense. That obviously
(???) in the marriage you have a case of widow, widower, you may have divorce,
you may have absolute stupidity and a few other things and in that situation
obviously God is willing to provide you with the best but the best gets less
and less the more stupid things you pile on the thing. So God is always willing to provide you with
the best, given relative to the situation.
[Tape turns] …
best declines as you are experiencing more results of the fall. In other words, the more divorce, the more
death, the more stupidity, then the best lowers in quality. Do you know why it does? Because if you are operating, particularly
with stupidity you’re so far out of God’s calling for your life and you
couldn’t find the right woman any way.
All right, the
fourth thing to remember is that grace will always provide a sufficient
relationship, not a perfect one but a sufficient one for your needs. “My God shall supply all of your needs” and
therefore we deduce on the basis of that that God will provide you with a
sufficient relationship.
Now let’s look at
Proverbs 5. Proverbs 5 is divided into a
number of sections. Each are instruction
literature which means that we have a command and we have motivation for the command. Proverbs 5:1-6 is one set of verses; Proverbs
5:7-14 is another set, and Proverbs 5:15 through the end of the chapter is a
third set. That’s how this chapter is
divided. You can spot the division
because each division begins with a command and ends with motivation. Today we only have time to deal with the
first six verses, or the first section, the command is verses 1-2; the
justification verses 3-6. Let’s look at
the command. Remember David’s teaching
Solomon; David’s run around with a number of women and he’s had experience and
now he is teaching his son how to deal with this problem. You’ve got to keep Proverbs 4 in mind;
Proverbs 4 was the building up of the son to the point where he can make
responsible decisions. Now the son is a
teenager, he’s nearing college age and now he is going to have to make one of
the most important decisions in his life.
Now look at it
this way. The most important decision in
your life is whether you’re going to go positive or negative toward the Lord’s
will for your life; that begins at the gospel.
You can choose or reject Jesus Christ as your Savior; that is THE most
important decision you will ever make.
Your most important decision is not what college you go to. Your most decision is not what job you take;
how much money you’re going to get on your job.
Your most important decision is what God’s will is for you and that
begins at the cross. God’s will is that
you believe on Jesus Christ that you may be saved. Now that’s where it starts. All right, that’s the first thing.
And the second
thing is your right woman, and so obviously then, because this is such a
fantastically important decision David begins immediately in chapter 5
introducing Solomon to the problem of choosing his right woman and dealing in
this area; he is responsible for this.
So he says in
Proverbs 5:1-2, “My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my
understanding. [2] That you mayest
regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.” All right, let’s look at the command
first. “My son, attend unto my wisdom,
and bow thine ear to my understanding.”
In the Hebrew the nouns “wisdom” and “understanding” are emphasized,
which means that David is struggling to get across to Solomon several
things. The word “wisdom” is the word chokma and that means skill, skill in
living. And he says Solomon, “attend
unto my skill in living,” and in particular he’s talking about the skill in
living God’s plan for his life. Solomon
has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior as revealed under the Old Testament
dispensation. All right, Solomon is
going to live his life unto Solomon dies.
Now David says now
look son, turn that interval of time between the time you accept Christ and the
time you die God has called you to be something. Now if you’re going to accomplish your call,
now since we have reviewed Genesis, what is necessary for Solomon to accomplish
his call? He’s got his right woman. So this is why David says, Solomon pay
attention to my chokma, because if
you want to accomplish God’s will in your life son, you are going to have to
get the right woman and if you get the wrong woman you are going to be fouled
up and Solomon was eventually fouled up right here because he got not one wrong
woman, but he got 999 wrong women. It’s debatable
whether he ever got any right woman.
But he did not
follow this, so this is why it says, “Attend to my skill and bow your ear to my
understanding.” Now the word
“understanding” is a Hebrew word, tebunah,
and the reason this is important is that the center consonants of this word bunah, come from a verb which means to
differ (?) or distinguish and so the word “understanding” means to distinguish
between divine and human viewpoint. So
David says, in this case we’d apply it, “to distinguish the right woman from
the wrong woman.” So he says “bow thine
ear to my discernment,” Solomon, you want to distinguish your right woman, then
you’ve got to have discernment.
Now Proverbs 5:2,
“That you may regard discretion,” this is an infinitive but it continues the
imperatival flavor of verse 1, “That you may regard discretion.” Now that’s not what it really means, it means
to keep, and then there’s a Hebrew word which means plans, keep plans, that you
may keep or guard or operate by plans.
Now what is the plan? What are
the plans? The plans are God’s will for
Solomon’s life. And so what David says,
look son, you attend to my skill, bow your ear to my discernment and guard
God’s will for your life. This is the
instruction to a man; when you think of your right woman or you think of your
wrong woman, one of the criteria is if you will just keep sight (?) on God’s
will for your life, that goes for women too in reverse, you’re talking about a
right man, the girl looks at it this way; she, like Eve, has been especially
built by God. Say the girl is 20 years
old, that means for 20 years God has been building her so that at the end she
is built and that means a lot of things have gone into that, so when she’s 20
years old she’s built for a right man and that means she’s had experiences in
spiritual areas; she’s had experiences in the home, she’s had all sorts of
experiences and these have all been brought into her life to mold her into the
woman that God wants and the woman that can complete some man, so she will be
the best helper under the conditions of the fall for some man.
Now for the man,
this is all from the man’s standpoint in Proverbs 5; in Proverbs 5 when it says
“regard discretion,” David is simply instructing Solomon to hold on to God’s
plan for your life. If you will do jus
that the decision about the right woman will follow. But if you don’t hold on to God’s plan for
your life then you can never make the right decision over here. The decision about the right woman is a
derivative decision of the primary decision which is God’s will for your
life. “Thy lips may keep knowledge,” and
this means that they may obey knowledge, or stick to knowledge. This doesn’t mean tight-lipped.
Now here’s where we get into a little of the
sensuality of this passage. The lips
here, obviously are going to be used on the right woman, and the lips here,
when he’s talking about that “thy lips may keep knowledge,” means that thy
lips… well, let’s look at the word knowledge.
The word knowledge means fellowship with God; that was the same word
that was used in Proverbs 3:5-6.
Remember where it says “Trust the Lord with all thine heart, lean not
unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways know Him,” yada, know Him. So this
refers to fellowship with God. And what
it’s talking about, that thy lips may keep fellowship. So you use your lips within the bounds of
God’s will for your life which includes the best helper. Be careful how you use your lips, he’s
telling his son. Now obviously most of
this refers to communication but in a few verses you’re going to see what is
really meant by some of the background for the lips.
Now we come to the
motivation, Proverbs 5:3. “For the lips
of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than
oil. [4] But her end is bitter as
wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
“But her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. [6] Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of
life, her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them.”
Now first of all,
who is the stranger, the zur or the
strange woman? The zur is a woman who is foreign to the immediate family, and
obviously here refers to anybody but the best helper. Now verses 3 and 4 are talking about having
sex with the wrong woman. If you want
the academic line, sexual intercourse, do you read me? All right, verses 3 and 4 are talking about
that. “The lips of a strange woman drop
honey,” and then the last part… it’s not honeycomb, the reason why it’s
honeycomb in the King James is because this particular word is talking about
honey (?) or honeycomb, it’s virgin honey.
“Lips of a strange woman drop honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil”
except the word for mouth here is chek
and it means the roof of her mouth. I
see some of you are waking up. So now we
have this passage, verse 3 speaks of the initial phase, we’re not just talking
about kissing somebody, verse 3 is talking about the initial phases of
sex. And it’s talking about the intense
kissing that precedes sex.
Now to show you
the context for this, turn to Song of Songs 4:11, I’ve never seen so many
people so quick to turn to a passage of Scripture; people I’ve seen come here
for weeks, I’m surprised they even had a Bible; did somebody slip you a Bible
or something. Okay, Song of Songs 4:11, “Thy
lips, O my spouse, drop honey,” it’s the same expression, “honey and milk are
under thy tongue, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of
Lebanon.” Now mouth and roof of the
mouth are used two ways in Scripture.
They are used for communication or speech and they’re used for
taste. Now the roof of the mouth does
not by itself imply it’s used the second way because it’s used in Proverbs for
speech, but if you compare the context, the Song of Songs 4:11, which I haven’t
got time to go into the context there, I have to give this stuff to you gently,
this is talking about sex and it’s talking about taste.
All right, now
come back to Proverbs 5:3, “the lips of a strange woman drop honey, and her
mouth” or “the roof of her mouth is smoother than oil.” Now David’s talking about having sex with the
wrong woman, he’s talking about promiscuity here. Said another way, he’s talking about what you
might call French kissing. Now if you
don’t understand what that means… hand in the cards….
All right,
Proverbs 5:4, skips over all the details and “the end” of the strange woman,
this is after sex, David is talking to Solomon, remember, this is not some
theoretical literature, David had lots of experience in this area and he is
telling about this is what’s really happening son, and if you want to play
games this is the price you’re going to pay.
This is the price you always pay for violating the second divine
institution. But in order to show you
and wake you up to the fact that this is what it’s talking about, David starts
in to get your attention so verse 3 is talking about the initial phases of
sex. But then it says “her end,” and
this means the word achar, and this
means after chronologically, and so this means after the affair is over, then
how does she taste? “bitter,” the word
“wormwood” is a word for a bitter herb and it’s a very interesting use of
wormwood because wormwood starts off and it has a very nice smell to it, and
you put it in your mouth and it tastes awful.
And here the analogy is the initial phases of this affair smell good,
and it seems to be fantastic, and the end, after you get back, and you digest
it and you’ve had it, it makes you want to vomit. Now that’s wormwood, and that’s the
expression. “Her end is bitter than
wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword,” deliberate contrast of verse 3. When the sex began the roof of her mouth was
smoother than oil, and it winds up sharper than any two-edged sword. And so he says that’s the end of the affair.
Proverbs 5:5, “Her
feet are going down to death; her steps lay hold on Sheol,” now again, life and death in the Scripture
are relative, and in Proverbs there are relative, so there are four degrees of
death in God’s Word here in Proverbs.
The first degree is losing out on God’s best for your life. And this is a warning to his son that her
steps lead to death and the more you mess with the wrong woman the less
likelihood you have of ever finding your right woman, your right mate, your
right woman. You’re not going to be able
to do it, and that’s what death in one degree means.
The second degree
means its out of fellowship. Obviously
he’s going to be out of fellowship in the process and out of fellowship means
carnality and carnality means discipline, so the second thing emphasizes
discipline. That’s important to the next
problem; not only does he miss out on God’s best for his life but he is going
to pick up added discipline in his life and he is going to suffer for it.
The third concept
of death in Scripture that doesn’t apply in this case is minus volition at the
point of the gospel, rejection of the gospel and therefore going to hell for
rejecting Christ and rejecting Christ.
And the fourth point is physical death.
But those two meanings aren’t meant here, the first to actually are
meant. David is talking to Solomon and
what he says, “Her feet descend to hell,” or Sheol, it means that that’s where
she’s taking you son, if you want a ride that’s the quickest way to get there,
messing around with the wrong woman.
Proverbs 5:6,
“Lest thou should ponder the path of life,” now verse 6 is a most difficult
verb and the problem comes from the fact that in the Hebrew the second
masculine singular verb in some cases looks like the third feminine singular,
so it can be “you” in the sense of Solomon, or it can be “her” in the sense of
the wrong woman. It makes more sense,
since this is a motivation clause and this is not part of the command, to take
the verbs in verse 6 as all feminine verbs, so that “lest she should ponder the
path of life, her ways are unstable….”
“Lest she should ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, she
doesn’t even know them.”
In other words,
here’s the ultimate. The woman starts
out being an ‘ezer, and ‘ezer to some man, without whom that man
cannot accomplish God’s plan in his life.
David says look son, if you work with the wrong woman, what you’re
experiencing is the fact that this woman is so dumb and she is so out of it
that she doesn’t even know her own way, how’s she going to help you with
yours. You’ve got to understand the
doctrine of the right man/right woman to understand and appreciate this last
crack in verse 6. It actually goes back
to Genesis; she doesn’t know her way. In
other words son, why bother with her, she’s nothing but trouble, she starts out
tasting like honey, and after you get through with her it’s just wormwood, and
she doesn’t even know her own way and so she’s not going to help you.
All right, next
week we’ll begin at verse 7 with the rest of the lesson, still on the wrong
woman.