Clough Proverbs Lesson 41
The Family Institution – Proverbs 6:20-24
There were two
questions handed in last week and I’d like to address myself to those two
questions. In the bulletin of
Yes, there is
flexibility in the New Testament era; the reason for this is that we do not
live inside the
The kind of
interest bearing loans or commercial loans, but these were also discouraged
because the way the particular nation was set up God gave the major capital
investment which was the land and it would be interesting, of course, had the
industrial revolution occurred in the Old Testament to see what prophetic
additions and modifications would have been made in the Mosaic Law. But under the Mosaic Law the basic capital
investment was given in the book of Leviticus and this could never be sold off
from the family. So each family in the Old
Testament had, by God’s law, a certain capital investment, and whereas this
family under times of extreme economic emergency could sell off part of its
given capital at the year of the jubilee all capital had to be funneled back to
the original designatee under the Mosaic Law.
So capital investment was always protected very strongly and kept within
the family under the Old Testament. All
this sums up the fact that God does not look with pleasure upon believers
getting involved in great masses of debt and He looks with less pleasure upon Christian
organizations who cannot live within their means and that is simply the point
that we’re insistent upon here.
Obviously there’s flexibility on a month to month basis but it is not a
testimony to the Lord to do as some organizations do, step out (quote) “by
faith” (end quote), which is nothing more than leaping in the dark and then
conning believers to give to make up for this step by faith. And this is the thing that we’re trying to
avoid.
The second
question is if labor should be separated from governmental control, then should
present day government controls on industry for the prevention of the pushing
out of the small businessman by large industries be removed, or should it
continue because of the following creations; example of uncontrolled business
during the early 20th century through the application of social
Darwinism? Should the government have
stayed out of the problem or entered it, as it did? This question I prefer to answer as we go and
finish the next section of Proverbs, so if you’ll turn to Proverbs 6 beginning
at verse 20.
Proverbs 6:20;
I’ve decided in order to handle the rest of chapter 6 we’re going to have to
pause on the first four verses and go back to a formulation of Bible doctrine
that was worked out by the Prime Minister of Holland around 1900. And this is one of the most tremendous Bible
believing expositions of a divine institution that has ever been worked out in
church history. It’s an exposition
basically of the spheres of life. To
review, there are these basic spheres of life, the first divine institution,
the second divine institution, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the
church. And every activity of life can
be divided into one of the six spheres or divine institutions. Now the man whom I am going to follow in this
presentation this morning is Abraham Kuyper, those of you who have used some of
the books from the library and I hope you are, will notice we have the great
classic that was written on the work of the Holy Spirit by Dr. Kuyper in our
library; it’s entitled simply The Work of
the Holy Spirit. The man who wrote
that book was the Prime Minister of Holland.
And he was one of the foremost evangelical political figures in the 20th
century. Abraham Kuyper and his
followers set up in
And the ARP, which
was begun by Kuyper, decided that they would have as part of their political
platform the articulation of divine viewpoint in every area. And they would not cease their function in
Under sphere
sovereignty Kuyper taught that human society is divided into segments by virtue
of the creation; that when God created men He created inherent divisions that
cannot be violated; that these divisions are going to hold true for any
society, whether it’s communist or capitalist, east or west, white or black, it
does not matter because men are men who have been created in God’s image,
wherever they congregate, these divisions will appear. Sort of like the Genesis “kinds.” You cannot help but have these divisions in
society. And so therefore Dr. Kuyper
taught that there are two dimensions to each sphere and we’re leading up to answering
the question as well as answering the question of the family and marriage which
has to be considered in Proverbs 6.
Each of these spheres has an external as well as an internal
dimension. Now in terms of my vocabulary
these are the divine institutions. By
internal dimension to a sovereign sphere Dr. Kuyper meant that that sovereign
sphere operates by ordinances given at creation. Illustration: marriage. Marriage operates according to built-in
created needs of the man and the woman, but these internal dimensions to the
second divine institution cannot be legislated; they cannot be given by the
state, they cannot be removed by the state.
They are given by God and can only be removed by God. In other words, each sphere is sovereign, and
each sphere has its own way of working within itself. And so Kuyper would teach, for example, under
the doctrine of marriage that marriage has an internal dimension and an
external dimension; by internal dimension the people in the marriage as unto
the Lord determine that; that involves everything within the marriage
unit. The external relationship would be
where that marriage touches legally upon other people in the society. For example, the problem of divorce and
remarriage enters into other parties outside of the original marriage and so
therefore the state has to say something in the area of the external.
But Dr. Kuyper
distinguished sharply between the legitimate boundary of the state to deal with
the external dimensions of an institution versus dealing with the
internal. The state could only deal with
the external, not with the internal. So
placed in our own vocabulary with the divine institutions we would say this:
that the fourth divine institution is the state; the state deals and has as its
main function the legitimatization of good and the condemnation of evil. The state does not have the right to
interfere inside what we would call the internal affairs of the other
institutions.
Let’s take the
first divine institution that has to do with the question here of industry and
economics and labor and let’s deal with the problem of labor just very briefly
and compare it with the fourth divine institution. We have two divine institutions here. Now because man is apostate and because the
society, the average society is anti scriptural, men always have as their
tendency to elevate one of these spheres above the other. The reason for this is that the only way to
handle it, and let’s just draw it out on a horizontal basis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;
here are, we’ll say the six various separations which we use on this
chart. Those six spheres are only united
in God, and so therefore the one who gives the dimension to each of the
spheres, the one who is above all the spheres is God the Creator. Notice I do not say Jesus Christ the Redeemer
because these are given to both the redeemed and the unredeemed. We’re talking about divine institutions that
apply to believer and unbeliever, it doesn’t make any difference whether a person
is a Christian or a non-Christian, God has ordered a structure into the human
society and this is it.
Now here’s what
the unbelieving man does. Because he’s
on negative volition, what does negative volition always want to do? It wants to violate God’s authority. So a person on negative volition will always
try to get out from under the authority of God and His law for creation. Therefore, in practice what always must
happen is that the human viewpoint unbeliever takes one of these spheres and
puts it like this: he takes, say the first sphere, and puts it 2, 3, 4, 5, and
6, underneath that, and so he makes the first sphere, the one that has
authority over all the other spheres, or he might take the fourth and elevate
it, and this is a signal by which you can recognize human viewpoint.
Now let me show
you and give you some examples of this.
If we take the first sphere which is the doctrine of the individual’s
freedom and we elevate it over all the other spheres we basically to back to
men like Rousseau, and Locke and others, more preferably Locke, not
Rousseau. We go back to men like that
who were Christians; Locke was a Christian, a Bible-believing Christian, but it
just so happens that his philosophy was not very biblical at points. And what he did was take the individual’s
freedom and say that the individual can clobber all the other institutions; the
individual is free to make or break marriage; the individual is free to
exercise his freedom over the power of the state. And so we have the emphasis on individualism,
and in that sense individualism is an expression of human viewpoint because it
recognizes only one of the six institutions and elevates that one so it decides
everything for all the rest of them so that it is not inherently a structure to
marriage; marriage then becomes only the will of two individuals and while
those two individuals are in agreement fine, if the two individuals are not in
agreement dissolve it. So the emphasis
is on the right of the individual.
Now the individual
has rights but when you elevate the individual rights over all the other
institutions you have warped the system and you are now out of line and so
individualism in this sense is anti-biblical.
But that has largely given way, not to individualism but in our day to
what we call collectivism. Under
collectivism we have this kind of arrangement; we have the first, the second,
the third, the fifth and the church and over that we have the fourth. So we’ve taken the fourth institution and
placed it over all the others and this arrangement we call collectivism. And that is the mentality if the entire world
in our day. This is practically every
society runs this way; every major business runs this way. Both American political parties at this time
run this way; there is no major group in
A person who is a
collectivists will tell you that when I, as a pastor, for example, have a
marriage ceremony the only way I can have the marriage ceremony is because I’ve
been authorized by the state to begin the marriage, and they would say that the
marriage is not official until I pronounce this husband and wife in the name of
the state of Texas. Now I have acted, it
just so happens, I wish I wasn’t but this is the way tradition has been, that
the minister is used by an agency of the state to recognize legally a marriage,
that when a couple comes down the aisle and they vow to one another and I
pronounce them man and wife in the name of the state, I have not made that
marriage. That is the external sphere of
the fourth divine institution but that is merely, from a Bible standpoint, the
state recognizing what has just happened.
The pronouncement of the marriage is done by the couple themselves when
they vow to one another, that’s when the marriage has happened, not when I
pronounce it as a marriage. When I
pro-nounce it I am just passing on the authority of the state, the state now
recognizes the validity of this act.
But remember in
every wedding, since this is the time, spring and this is the time when the sap
begins to flow and so on, and a few other things happen, so this is the time
when we ought to review a few things and we are, since we’re in Proverbs 6, but
remember that in a marriage ceremony that is properly conducted there are two
parts. There is the formulation of a
marriage by the decree of the individuals who recognize and at that point
submit to the created ordinance of marriage by means of the vow; that’s what
that vow is doing, the couple is thereby submitting to the second divine
institution; they’re not creating it, they’re submitting to God’s law in that
area. Now the state comes along and says
this is a marriage and here’s your license.
But the license, the blood tests and the pronouncement do not make the
marriage, but yet we have, particularly people of a legal mind today, who argue
that the marriage is not there unless the state recognizes it, and for this
reason, for example, common law marriages have a distaste to them, and yet any
person can get married anytime as long as they make the vow to live together
for life and under God that is a submission to the second divine
institution. Whether the state
recognizes it or not is not the issue; the issue is whether the marriage has
taken place.
Now for the sake
of law and order the state conveniently recognizes the marriage, but don’t ever
make the mistake, the state does not make the marriage, and the divorce court
did not end the marriage. The best the
divorce court can do is recognize what has already happened legally, but they
have not done it. So don’t ever be
confused on any of the institutions; the state does not make or break
marriages; people do that as they submit or rebel against God’s created
ordinance. So you have to distinguish
what the state does and what it doesn’t do.
Now in the area of
collectivism versus individualism we have this problem and this is the question
that someone asked about money. And
should the government butt into the first divine institution which is labor. Here’s how it works; under the first divine
institution you have certain created ordinances, one of which is that labor
produces fruit; that is a law of God.
That is a law that no state set up and no state can take away, no
politician can effect it any way, shape or form. It simply means that production comes only by
labor and that is an ordinance written into creation; that is not something
that the state does, that is something that the individuals working as
creatures made in God’s image do, functioning under the first divine
institution. Now, under this situation
you have people who are more successful in labor versus the people who are less
successful in labor. Now the state can
only biblically the right to interfere when certain criminal acts are done
across boundary lines. For example, you
have person A who is the producer, person B who is a producer; A produces this
much, B produces this much. The state is
not biblically authorized under a form of collectivism to come in and say A
will produce that much, B will produce that much to make everybody produce the
same; that’s communism, that’s welfarism, and that is the state interfering
with the law given by God at the point of creation to the first divine
institution.
In an analogous
way, it would be the state coming in and saying to a married couple you can
have sex that much, and this couple will have sex that much. Now obviously no one would stand for the
state telling a married couple when to have sex and when not to have sex, and
yet isn’t this peculiar, that we stand by and let the state come in and tell us
how much we’re going to produce versus how much we’re not going to
produce. Now isn’t that just the same
kind interference into God’s created law?
Of course it is. And there we
suffer as Americans from a distortion of the power and the balance between the
first and the fourth divine institutions.
The government has no right to step in and tell anyone how much they can
produce or how much they can’t produce.
The government can regulate but giving and taking in certain areas of
the market, but if I want to produce all I want to, I have a right to produce
what I want to when I want to where I want to and the government cannot touch
that without violating an ordinance of God.
So this is where we have the government interfering into this.
An example again
where we have this; some of you come from well-to-do families where your
parents have been wealthy and you have such a thing as an inheritance law; that
is again the government illegitimately interfering because under the third divine
institution the father of the family should be able to pass to his children
what he has produced without the state butting in. If a family over several generations has
built up a tremendous power base it is because that family has worked and has
observed the first divine institution that labor produces fruit, and they have,
therefore, under the New Testament principle that the laborer is worthy of his
hire and he as a right to eat and partake of his fruit without the state
stepping in and trying to stop the family from passing on wealth to their
children is an interference into the third divine institution. And (?) what I’m saying is that all
inheritance laws are anti-biblical, they violate third divine institution and
they violate the first divine institution.
These are merely
areas in our society where the government has become too big and Americans have
passively stood by, not knowing Bible doctrine, and have allowed Congressmen
and their representatives to accumulate power upon power upon power and to
violate in this area. And you can’t buy
the line that inheritance taxes, the government would fold tomorrow if they
gave up inheritance taxes. The percent
of government income that comes from inheritance taxes is infinitesimal. Inheritances were never given to finance
government; inheritance taxes were given traditionally in America by men who
wanted to reduce the power of large families and they have no right to reduce
the power of large families. A large
family can become powerful because they have worked and accumulated their
wealth and therefore they have the right to enjoy it.
So here we have
cases in our own society where these institutions are being destroyed before
our eyes and the ultimate problem under God’s law is that whenever a society
destroys and eats away the divine institutions, finally that society
folds. And you cannot violate the
internal laws of an institution.
Illustration again, family and labor, to cite a very clear example; the
family, the father and the mother have a right to provide for their
children. That is an internal law of the
family that is not subject to state control.
The state has no business; this is not their legitimate domain because
God has made the family. Now the reason
the state has intruded in this area in our own generation is because many
people feel that the family, marriage and so on, just arose after men came
together in sort of a social contrast.
But that’s not true; why do we know that’s not true? When did the fourth divine institution start? Was the fourth divine institution there when
Adam and Eve were there? Which came
first, the third or the fourth? The
third came; for hundreds and hundreds of years you had no state. How did we function then? With the third divine institution. All right, if that’s the case then the family
and the labor have certain internal laws and regulations that the state cannot
tamper with, without ultimately destroying the society. And when you have the state step in and tell
the father you can give your son only so much and then stop it, that is
interfering with the father’s authority and is a violation of the third divine
institution. When you have the state
step in and say to anybody that you can labor only so much and then you will be
penalized, it is a stepping in and crossing over the boundaries of a certain
area, a certain internal mechanism of that institution.
It’s a tremendous
area of doctrine to study and Proverbs actually sets us up for it thought I
haven’t had a chance to deal with these basic things, but this morning as we go
into Proverbs 6:20 we’ll begin with the fourth pitfall of life and we’ll see
how these spheres work together.
Remember chapter 6 deals with various pitfalls to life. We said in Proverbs 6:1-5 was pitfall number
one, which was don’t destroy your calling by becoming legally in bondage to
people. So all of the pitfalls are what
the father tells his son to avoid. And
in the first five verses: avoid legal bondage, getting yourself legally
obligated over your head and destroying your freedom to move.
The second,
Proverbs 6:6-11, the second pitfall was physical deprivation because of
laziness and the failure to understand the workings of the first divine
institution. The third pitfall of life,
Proverbs 6:12-19, was the divine chastening; reducing your freedom by divine
chastening and that was because you became a trouble-maker in a group of
believers, and being a trouble-maker God clobbered and so therefore the person
in verses 12-19 was one who is falling into bondage to divine chastening.
Now beginning in
Proverbs 6:20 and running through the end of chapter 6 we have the fourth
pitfall of life which is a person who runs into extreme jealousy due to
violation of the second divine institution.
Now it’s going to seem as we study verses 20-35 that you say well, I
thought we got all this sex thing in chapter 5.
Why aren’t we through that and moving into something else; why is there
a repeat? Because it’s not a
repeat. In chapter 5 it dealt with a
young man who was looking forward to getting married; in chapter 6 the young
man is fooling around with another woman who is already married. So the argument in Proverbs 6:20 and
following is not going to be the same argument as in chapter 5. Remember the argument in chapter 5 was that
when you have promiscuity before marriage you are depriving someone else’s
right man or someone else’s right woman of an investment. That’s the point. That was the argument there, but that’s not
the argument here. Beginning in verse 20
and following the argument is that you, by crossing the boundaries of the
second divine institution you create a social situation that is going to lead
you into bondage. So therefore we are
once again back to a divine institution.
First let’s look
at a rough outline of the chapter and then we’ll go looking at the
details. Proverbs 20:20-21 is the
command; as always in instruction literature you have a command and you have
motivation. Verses 20-21 is command, and
then verses 22-24 is the motivation for that command. Then next week we’ll begin with Proverbs
6:25, a command, and then verses 26-35 the motivation for that command. Today we will only deal with the first pair;
the first commandment and its motivation, verses 20-24.
Proverbs 6:20, “My
son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother. [21] Bind them continually upon thine heart,
and tie them about thy neck. [22] When you
go, it shall lead you; and when you sleep, it shall keep you; and when you awake
it shall talk with you; [23] For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is
light, and reproofs of instruction are the way of life. [24] To keep thee from the evil woman, from
the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman.”
Now let’s look at
verse 20 in detail. First, “My son,”
emphasizing again the internal functioning of the third divine
institution. Let’s look at how this
institution functions and the particular laws that underlie the structure of a
family and when these laws are interfered with by the state you are going to
have a weakening of that institution.
The first thing about the third divine institution is that in the third
divine institution you have the beginning of the concept of authority. That is, the first place in history where
human beings learn authority is in the home, and if a child never learns what
authority is in the home, and they move out of the third divine institution,
out into society, you have a society of monsters, and finally the state, in
order to maintain authority, has to use violent force, ultimately winding up in
such cases as dictatorships and marshal law.
But that is the only alternative to asserting authority in the home;
either you assert authority in the home or authority must then be imposed by
force of the state. Which do you wish;
which is the most free? Obviously the
freest form is to learn the concept of authority in the home and then the state
will not have to use the force to assert authority. So therefore the maximum freedom comes when
authority is learned in the home, when individuals learn to respond to
authority and not rebel against authority.
Let’s watch what happens when an individual does not learn authority and study
our chart on the institutions. We’re
studying the third institution, parents inculcating authority. Now just suppose that breaks down; let’s
suppose the authority concept breaks down and watch what happens when the
internal structure of the third divine institution collapses. The first thing is that you have people thrust
out into society who (?) their –R learned behavior patterns, which is rebellion
to authority, they begin to rebel against the state; they begin to rebel
against the policeman, anybody that wears a uniform is the subject of a mental
attitude of rebellion. Anytime there’s
authority image in any way, shape or form these people will rebel. Now granted that there are some today in the
anti-military establishment who have sincere motives.
My frank
observation of most of the anti-military sentiment in this country is that
they’re a group of whining pimply faced little brats who have never learned the
concept of authority in the home and the real reason why they’re against the
military has nothing to do with Vietnam; it has to do with the fact that what
greater symbol of authority is there than the military and they do not like the
military for one simple reason: they do not like authority of any kind
whatever, period. Why? They never learned it in the home. So the first manifestation of a breakdown of
authority in the state is an anti-military feeling; ridicule R.O.T.C. like a
lot of faculty members do in certain institutions of higher learning, because
they are brats who have never learned the concept of authority either. So wherever you see someone criticizing
R.O.T.C. or criticizing U.M.T. or criticizing any of the other concepts you
have a person, generally speaking, who is anti-authority of any sort.
Then what
happens? Suppose we have a violation of
authority here; let’s see what happens back in the first divine
institution. If you develop a mental
attitude of rebellion toward authority then you also develop an attitude of
rebellion toward who else’s authority?
God’s, and therefore now the first divine institution begins to crumble
because here what is the key to the first divine institution? Responsibility, that “no testing has taken me
but such as is common to man” and it’s not God’s fault, and it’s not the
environment’s fault, it is my fault; that’s what God’s authoritative Word
says. But if the person has been brought
up in a home where there’s no concept of authority, then God’s authoritative
Word, I don’t care what The Man Upstairs thinks, this kind of language, this
kind of attitude. Now where does that
attitude come up from? Violation of
authority. We don’t like God and His
Word because we don’t stand for His authority, we hate His authority; we hate
God because He’s an authoritative God.
And so the concept of negative attitude authority carries over.
We come to the
second divine institution; you never can get that one straight without the
concept of authority. And people who
have a bad time here are people who still have never understood the concept of
authority and then you come to the church, and the authority of the local
church, and people who have not learned authority in the home cannot stand the
authority of the local church, so they develop these groups outside of the
local church, God called us to form this group and that group and some other
group. We’re not talking about legitimate
raisings up of God; I’m talking about the emphasis, a little group here, a
little group there, and fundamentally it’s only one reason, that they cannot
stand to be under someone else’s authority, whether it’s God’s, man’s or
anybody else’s, they can’t tolerate it.
Why? It all goes down to the fact
that they have never learned authority under the third divine institution.
Now, do you think
that legislation is going to change this?
Do you think that Congress can pass a law tomorrow that is going to
remove all the bad effects of a person who has not learned authority over here
and who is messing up here, who is messing up here, messing up here, and
messing up here, do you think Congress can pass a law that’s going to do that? If you do you’re a (?); you’re arguing that
the state, the fourth divine institution must step in and remove the effects of
this. There’s only one problem, the
state did not set this up, God did, and He did it at the point of creation and
the state, therefore, cannot do this; it can try, it can try to pass all sorts
of laws but the only thing those laws ever accomplish is they further restrict
freedom. That’s the only thing the laws
ever do, is restrict freedom. You say
well I’ll tell you how we’re going to solve it, we’re going to get those kids
in Operation Headstart, and we’re going to take them out of the home at 3 and 4
years and therefore, the state is going to indoctrinate them and they will
learn authority unto the state. Is that
going to solve it? No.
Talk to any school
teacher and she’ll tell you, or he’ll tell you that where there is not an
authority structure in the home it is hopeless in the classroom. And so the Federal government spends
thousands and millions of dollars on all these programs and you can forecast
from the very beginning it’s just money down the drain because they are trying
to do something that they can’t do. You
can no more establish authority by government programs than the government can
legislate that tomorrow there will be no north wind. There’s no way to stop it. This is the way God has made it. So what happens? The real accomplishment of Headstart and
other types of programs like this, what they do is take money out of your
pocket reducing your economic freedom.
So what have the government programs really accomplished? Nothing except the destruction of your
freedom. That’s the only thing they’ve
really accomplished and they have not done what they said they were going to
do. Nice thoughts, sentimental sincere
people, yes, we’re not attacking the motives of the people involved; we’re
simply saying that they’re sincerely wrong because they are violating a
creation ordinance.
Now here we have
in Proverbs 6:20 “My son,” the father is teaching and here is the third divine
institution functioning as it biblically should function, “keep thy father’s
commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother.” Now it’s very interesting that the very words
in verse 20 indicate the internal law of the third divine institution. The word “commandment of the father” looks
like this, matzah, it comes from this
verb, tzavah, and tzavah, this Hebrew verb is the verb to
command with authority. And when you add
this little thing on the right side, which is the front of the Hebrew, Hebrew
reads from right to left, that turns that verb into a noun and that is the act
or the result of the act of asserting authority. So here we have the “command of the father,”
and so the very word that is used for the father’s role is the Hebrew verb that
connotes authority and thereby shows the internal working of the third divine
institution.
Now the second
word used in verse 20 “and forsake not the law of thy mother,” this again shows
how the third divine institution works, for what the mother does is torah, and the word torah means guidance or counsel.
And surely, if you’ve watched any family unit function that is what the
mother really is doing, all day long; she’s guiding and she’s counseling and so
on. It is the mother who actually does
quantity wise most of the guiding and teaching and so on in the third divine
institution. And the Bible recognizes
that and it uses these two nouns to show that, that the mother is actually on a
day by day, hour by hour basis, doing most of the guidance and counseling,
which we can be thankful for in one sense because largely speaking in the
American church the women know far more Bible doctrine than the men do and
thank God that the children are being taught by the mothers and not by the
fathers because if the fathers started to teach them the kids would be
spiritual morons in a generation, speaking of the average home situation where
the father has this idea that Bible doctrine is for ladies or something. And fortunately some of the ladies are coming
along and learning Bible doctrine and therefore their children are
learning.
But let’s go back
to the first word; in order for the woman to function inside the third divine
institution effectively, what does a mother need? What does a woman need? She needs the backup of the man’s
authority. That’s what this verse is
teaching. And a woman who does not have
the authority of her husband is in a very sad situation because one of two
things begins to happen; either that woman just flakes out and just lets the
whole thing go, finally becoming so discouraged that she can’t handle it
because she doesn’t have an authoritative assertion of… [tape turns] …the kids want to go out and do this, let
them go out and do this, I can’t handle it.
That’s one way, and it’s a bad way and that leads to a lot of juvenile
delinquency, when the mother just is overwhelmed and she can’t do anything
more. That’s one way.
Or the way other
women react is that they begin to assume a masculine role and they begin to not
only guide but they begin to be the basis of authority. Then what happens? Now you’ve violated the second divine
institution because where is authority located?
In the man, not the woman. And so
when the woman begins to assume the male role we also have distortions that
creep in. For one thing, her son or her
daughter, either one, begins to get a fallible image of what a woman is to be
like because now, because the woman is not functioning where she should,
underneath the authority of her husband, now the kids are watching a woman lose
her femininity and become masculine. And
so the sons that grow up in these kinds of family where the women are dominate
tend toward homosexuality; that’s prove, time and time and time again. Why?
Because from childhood they were programmed that that is the female,
your mother is the female and look at her, she has lost her femininity because
she has had to have been the one to assert the authority in that home and she
has lost what it means to be a lady, and she can’t be a lady and carry on with
all this authority business without the help of her husband. So these two nouns in verse 20 are very, very
critical to show you certain mechanisms.
I don’t care who you are, whether you’re a Christian, non-Christian,
zombie or somebody else, it doesn’t make any difference, God has made you to
function this way and you don’t break God’s laws, those laws break you, and
that’s the way it is.
Proverbs 6:21, the
command that the father gives, “Bind them continually upon thine heart, tie
them upon thy neck.” This is the
exhortation to take these things and memorize them and make them part of a
divine viewpoint framework. Again,
looking at how Christ in the heart is developed, first you have positive
volition, then you have the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, and then you
have the erection of the divine viewpoint framework and when it says “bind them
upon your heart,” bind what? What’s
“them?” “Them” are the commandments, or
Scripture, or Bible doctrine. How are
they bound into the heart? They are
bound into the heart when they are part and parcel of the mentality of the
soul. In other words, it’s not just
memorizing Scripture, though that’s very good.
What it means is that they become absorbed into your thought processes
and that’s what verse 21 is exhorting.
So keep going and taking in and taking in and taking in and taking in,
over and over and over and over and over until your mentality follows the
Word. And that takes a long time.
Now some of you
are new believers and I know, I’ve talked to some of you, you’re
discouraged. Some of you have become
Christians in the last few months; others have become Christians in the last
year or two. Even this week I’ve had one
person come to me very discouraged because they haven’t been able to grow as
fast as they’d like and they come in here and they see other believers and the
other believers seem to be moving on and they don’t. Look, if the third divine institution
functioned the way it should normally, then you should have trusted the Lord in
childhood, say at age 8, and if you had been constantly indoctrinated with
divine viewpoint from age 8 all the way up to age 18, that’s ten years of
indoctrination. Then you would be a
relatively equipped believer, moving out.
Is it any wonder that if you become a Christian at age 17, at age 18
you’re not going to quite make it? How
can you make up for a backlog of ten years on one; there’s no way to do
it. You can eventually, keep at it, but don’t
become discouraged just because you compare yourself with some other Christian. The other Christian comes out of a different
environment situation, his exposure to the Word of God has been different, so
don’t measure your maturity against somebody else; you just make it as fast as
you can.
Now in Proverbs
6:22, here we begin to have the motivation.
So far we’ve had the command, verse 20-21, within the structure of the
family institution, now in verses 22-24 is the motivation. These are the benefits, these are the results
that will happen when Bible doctrine flows inside the third divine
institution. “When you go, it will lead
you; when you sleep, it will keep you; and when you awake, it will talk of
you.” Now this should raise in your mind
the memory of another famous passage in God’s Word. Doesn’t this verse sound like another verse
that we’ve gone over and over and over again here? Deuteronomy 6:6, turn back there just a
moment. In fact, Proverbs 6:22 is taken
from Deuteronomy 6.
Next fall
hopefully we’ll have a program that will be unique in this country and probably
in the world, I’ve never seen any situation that has quite the kind of program
that we’re going to have in the fall as far as the family training units are
concerned but we will be teaching the parents in the techniques of developing
and cultivating deliberately point by point a divine viewpoint framework. We have had to prepare material, we have
writers now that are writing it, simply because this material is not available
any place we’ve looked. We’ve looked and
looked and looked and looked and we can’t find material, so we’ve had to write
our own. And by September, 1973, this
material will become available. And
parents can use this material to help them.
Now the material is not something magic in itself; it has to be used
with discernment but it will give a tool into the hands of the parents to begin
cultivating this commandment, binding them upon the heart of a child. And it will follow the principle of verse 7.
This is addressed
to the parents of Isabel in Deuteronomy 6:7, “You will teach them diligently
unto thy children, and you will talk,” not “of them” but “you will talk in
terms of them,” see the word “in?” You
don’t see the word “in” if it’s King James, it should be “in,” “you will talk
in them,” or “with them.” What does that
mean? It doesn’t mean telling a Bible
story every time you sit down at the table.
What it means is that whatever issue you may be discussing in the home
you will discuss it in terms of the divine viewpoint framework. You will go back and you will know that
divine viewpoint framework cold and you will know that the foundation, for
example, consists of creation, the fall, the flood and the covenant of
Noah. And knowing all this that sets up
a certain framework for all discussion.
And all discussion will be on the basis of that framework. That’s what it’s talking about here.
“…when you sit in your house, now here’s the
repetition that’s repeated in Proverbs 6, where will this teaching be
done? It will be done “when you sit in
your house,” it will be done “when you walk by the way,” and it will be done
“when you lie down,” and it will be done “when you rise up.” That is a total teaching and I submit to you
that no state program can ever hope to approximate that unless they haul the
kids off into a commune some place. And
that is the program given to Israel, and yet some people gripe when we have a
Sunday School lesson that takes two hours in the course of one week, a lesson
that takes about an hour to do with your children. And I’ve had one or two people go oh, that’s
so long. Well, admittedly you’ll have to
give up one hour of watching Mickey Mouse on the boob tube, and this I
understand is a tremendous sacrifice for many.
And it means that you just won’t to have to sit there and get myopia
looking at the flickering lights for an hour.
Now you can give up boob tube for 60 minutes and watching Mickey Mouse
and Donald Duck and so forth and just come on over for an hour of refreshing
divine viewpoint. It might be actually
exciting for some; try it.
Let’s turn back to
Proverbs 6; that’s where the verse came from, now you understand the background
of verse 22 and can understand the results of this. “When you go, it shall lead you; when you
sleep, it shall keep you, and when you awake, it shall talk with you.” What’s that saying? That’s talking about the fulfillment of
Deuteronomy 6:7. That’s saying that if
you do these things you will meet the condition of Deuteronomy 6:7; it’s
working, it’s functioning. Great!
Proverbs 6:23,
here’s the mechanics, why it can do that.
“For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is light, and the reproofs
of instruction are the way of life.” Now
let’s look at the first part; that should also remind you of another famous
verse, Psalm 119:105; that’s where verse 23 has come from. “The commandment is a lamp, and the law is a
light,” now what does a lamp and a light do?
Does it change any facts? No, it
illuminates you to the facts that are already there, and so here we have one of
the key emphases of the Old Testament Proverbs point of view, and that is they
view the idea of teaching the Word to the children is that the Word would show
the children cause/effect. Notice how
this has been a constant theme over and over and over and over in Proverbs,
cause and effect. And if you do this
son, then this is going to follow; if you do this daughter, this is going to
follow. Why? It’s the way God structured the universe to
operate that way. So what does the Law
do when it acts as a light and a lamp?
It shows the children cause/effect, that’s what it’s doing. See how different that is than most
instruction; you don’t do that, do this, don’t do that, no reasons given. You give reasons why and show them it’s
related to what is there.
And finally the
last part of Proverbs 6:23, a very interesting phrase in the Hebrew and shows
you something about the way they thought.
The word “reproof” is a word for verbal chewing out. That is a verbal scolding, and it says, “the
reproof,” or “the verbal scolding of instruction,” now instruction is the
Hebrew word musar, and musar means physical discipline. And what this is talking about is the close
correlation of verbal counseling with the stick. Now God has made a part of the human body
that is just made for the stick and that’s why our anatomy is built a certain
way. God realized that we had to be
taught in a difficult way and so He provided a place on the body for the
application of the stick and in Proverbs the implication is if you don’t apply
physical punishment or corporeal punishment you’re anti-biblical, and that’s
the thrust of the book of Proverbs. Over
and over again, we haven’t got into that, we start that in chapter 10, but over
and over again lack of corporeal punishment is apostasy and is not training the
child properly; it’s misusing the tools that God has given.
Now that is
repeated over in the New Testament in a verse that you’d never guess. Turn to Ephesians 6, that verse that’s quoted
over and over is saying exactly the same thing, except it’s so worded in the
King James that you’d never guess it.
Now I realize some of you have had education courses, this goes against
the grain. But I’ve never thought I was
too popular with the education department anyway and I don’t intend to change
that image this morning. In Ephesians
6:4 we have a phrase, “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord,” now the word “nurture” is a word which means action in physical
training, and “admonition” is the one that means verbal training, so therefore
this too repeats the same principle: verbal instruction with the stick. And if some of you would like an excellent
detail how to do it manual, in the tract rack we have a tract called Children,
Fun or Frenzy, a most excellent tract, written by a woman who has applied the
principles of Proverbs. She didn’t teach
this in a classroom, she applied it and it’s the best exposition of the content
of Proverbs.
Back to Proverbs 6
and we’ll finish this passage. Again,
the motivation behind the command to teach, verse 22, you’ll have a flowing of
the divine viewpoint framework in the family; verse 23, you’ll have the
enlightening ministry backed up with verbal and physical discipline. And Proverbs 6:24 introduces us to what we’ll
begin with in verse 25 next time. Verse
24 takes the subject and gives a specific result. Now there are many, many results of verses
20-21, but verse 24 gives you one specific result and the verse introduces us,
and will set us up for next week, “To keep thee from the evil woman, from the
flattery of the tongue of a strange woman.”
Now the word “strange” doesn’t mean a queer; the word “strange” here
means a woman that doesn’t belong to you.
It is a woman who is outside the second divine institution, is not the
right woman for this particular son, and it will keep you away from this one,
and “the evil woman” is another synonym for this. It doesn’t mean that she’s naturally… goes
around in gross immorality but it’s talking about watching for the right
woman. And next week we’ll amplify the
doctrine of the right man and right woman and begin with verse 25 on how to
avoid the wrong one.