Clough Proverbs Lesson 67
DI #2: Marriage: Role of the Woman
We have a number
of questions that have accumulated; there are three groups of questions. The first group are just general questions on
various basic doctrines. One, the person
who asked this must not have been around too long but that’s all right, it’s a
good question. Does God help those who
help themselves or does He help the helpless?
I think I’ve given exegesis of that several times and that is obviously
God helps only the helpless; the people that help themselves don’t need His
help. Adam and Eve, if you want a
perfect illustration of this, Adam and Eve, after they fell, were hiding under
bushes; their conscience was offended and they knew they were out of
fellowship, or in this case out of salvation, they knew this, but nevertheless,
they did not of their own come back to God.
Therefore what had to happen? God
went to them. And that’s always the
picture of grace.
The second
question: If baptism is not scripturally
necessary for salvation, what do we do with Scriptures like Acts 2:38 which
seem to imply the contrary? You can do
two things; you can hear the orthodox way of handling it or you can go up the
street where they have two verses, Acts 2:38 and 22:16, but orthodox Christianity
has always held that baptism is an ordinance demanded by God but there is no
way you can make that ordinance the sine
qua non of salvation without going into a salvation by works system. I don’t care how skillful you think you are
with the text, there is no way to make baptism a necessity in the progress of
the Holy Spirit for salvation without denying the Pauline doctrine of salvation
sola gratia by grace alone. And the Acts 2:38 is simply the fact that
yes, they were baptized early in the first century; the reason was that they
knew a lot more than most of us do when we become Christians and so therefore
they could be baptized immediately, no problem with that.
The third
question: In being better able to deal with problem situations, how is it possible
to distinguish among divine discipline, satanic activity, testing, undeserved
suffering or a pure believer’s naiveté.
The problem here is that in most cases you have blends of these various
causes and I would suggest that the rule that you follow in these situations is
to back to what is God’s will for you in that situation, at that point. It may be that confession of sin is required
because it is due to divine discipline.
It may be due to the fact that God is teaching you a lesson. It may be a combination of the two but I
would start, if I were you, to see if I am personally responsible for it by way
of direct discipline. And when you
eliminate that then move on to other possible causes, outlined in the fourth
chapter of the Framework pamphlet, #2 and that is the undeserved suffering
category, such as lessons that God is teaching you, such as various satanic
attacks which can come, but even if they come they only are device under God’s
sovereignty, so Satan really isn’t the issue, the issue is what is God trying
to do with you in this. So start off
presupposing it may be carnality and may be discipline. Deal with that and then move on to other
areas.
The second group
of questions have to do with the first divine institution which was covered in
Proverbs. The first one: Church
bulletin,
Further question,
both of these have to do with the same issue: Under the principle of long
term-debt of Deuteronomy 15, how should a believer face the purchase of a house
in today’s society? The answer is that
he has to go in debt for long term on a house and they wouldn’t have in
The third category
deals with the second divine institution that we began last week: Does the revelation of the right woman come
before or after the revelation to man of his job or purpose? Sometimes it comes simultaneously, other
times it comes after, but the principle is that a man should have some idea of
the general way God is leading him.
Obviously he’s not going to have a blueprint saying in 1983 on October 2
we’re going to be doing such and such.
That’s not the point; the point though is that the woman is going to be
his ‘ezer, she is going to be the
means by which he subdues the earth. She
is going to be one of his key tools, so to speak, in performing his
ministry. And he ought to consider that
before he gets tied to this person for the rest of his life. And he has to make this decision, so it seems
logical the only way to make a good decision is to have some idea of where it
is God is leading you. And this should
help you. We’ll go into it further in
today’s thing on the woman.
The second
question: What does a woman do who is mismanaged by her best man due to his
carnality? Notice the judgment. If his mismanagement and carnality continually
cause the woman to be thwarted on her every attempt to glorify the Lord, and
follow His will, and if the woman sees the analogy between herself and Abigail,
of having a Nabal for a husband, how long does she continue in that number
three reason for suffering. Is Abigail
affected by Nabal’s bad name? It doesn’t
look to me like in the text that Abigail was too much affected by Nabal’s bad
name, she left it in the Lord’s hands and I think the Lord took care of her
good name. And He delivered her from the
situation. Now there are certain
principles here that have to be considered.
Number one, there’s obviously some men are way out of line, I’ve had one
or two but only one or two to put it in perspective, only one or two since I’ve
been pastor here where there was obviously a clear-cut violation of the Word of
God and I just told the woman under that situation she wasn’t under his
authority in any way; I’ve only had to do that once or twice but it’s been
cases where the man involved physical violence against her when she was in the
Word of God, and any man any way that exercises physical violence to a woman is
crazy, really off his rocker somewhere, and I know that at times you feel like
it but the point remains that in Scripture there is no authorization for a man
to bang around a woman. That’s just
ridiculous. And this is just a sign of a
very stupid person. Now in this case,
you have to recommend separation just for physical safety and later on probably
would be legitimate reasons for just terminating that kind of a
relationship. But, usually…usually, as common sense would tell you,
it always takes two to tangle, and so usually
when you find this complaint it comes from the woman’s side, and usually if you’ll hear the other side
you’ll hear some equally gruesome stories.
So I have learned never to judge from one side and if that’s the case, I
couldn’t tell, I’d have to hear the man’s side of the story. It may be that he’s locked out and doesn’t
have anything in the house anyway.
Let’s turn some
verses that have to do with the woman.
Last week we dealt with the role of the man. The first passage that we’re going to study
is Ruth 1; we’re going to follow our plan; last week was to discuss the role of
man, then the role of woman this Sunday, then next Sunday we’ll go into the
book of Proverbs with some of the specific proverbs. We have a major passage in the book actually
today also.
Let’s review a
moment the three principles on the role of the man. The first principle we studied last week was
that the man must learn to submit to God’s authority; before any man can lead
he has to follow, and no man can ever have the respect of a woman if he himself
is not submitting to God’s Word. And
this is one of the key areas where a lot of men fall down; they expect the
woman to submit to them but they don’t show any signs of submission to God’s
authority. And frankly, since the
woman’s human spirit is identical to the man’s human spirit, and since she has
a conscience identical to the man’s conscience, the woman is just really saying
to herself look, this guy doesn’t show me enough whether he’s trustworthy; why
should I submit to him? He’s not
submitting to the Word of God. The thing
that gives the woman confidence and reassurance in her submission to her man is
when she’s confident that he, in turn, is submitting to the Lord. It’s that simple. If she doesn’t see any signs that he’s submitting
and he’s bowing his knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s very, very difficult
for her to bow her knee, so to speak, and to submit. So it’s like a chain reaction here.
So the man bows to
the Word; the Word of God is the absolute authority in his life and must be in
every area. Now it’s obvious, every
person’s a sinner, every person has massive areas where this is not the case,
but you know what I mean, the general positive volition in the life that
respects the authority of the Word of God and by respect I mean carries it out
into practice, at least in some areas.
The second
principle that we studied for the man is that the man, this is the hard one;
the man must work with and through his wife in his calling, not against her or
in spite of her. The two are not
airtight compartments. That’s a fallacy,
which comes first, the job or the wife.
In the Bible the Bible doesn’t know that problem; that is not a problem
in the Bible because what was Eve made for?
Go back in your mind if you want to visualize a picture of it, go back
over and over and over to the Garden; God told Adam what to do, but then
immediately he said you can’t do it without a helper, so I’m giving you the
helper and together you do this. The
calling, then, includes both the man and his wife. It doesn’t just include the man with his wife
just off to the side.
It’s interesting
that after the service last week several men in business came up to me and
pointed out the fact, it’s quite interesting that in your large corporations,
the men who are usually…usually the
Presidents and the Vice Presidents and the Executives, the men who are really
the sound stable leaders, you will find in your gatherings in the company if
you look at their wives, the wives are usually the submissive one, and the
wives are usually the ones to whom they owe a lot in their career, and they’re
not to proud to admit that they owe a lot in their career to their wives. So it works out in practice, even though
these people may not be believers; what are we studying? Divine institutions. Do divine institutions apply only to the
believer or do they apply both to the believer and unbeliever? Principles apply to both believer and
unbeliever by virtue of creation. The
unbeliever, though he doesn’t like it, still is a creature and still must
operate along the lines that God has determined for him.
So the second
principle is that man must learn to work with and through his wife, not against
her. And the third principle that we
studied last week, it was actually a cluster of three, is that man must
initiate, that one principle, that man is the initiator like Christ is the
initiator to the Church, man must initiate.
Man must initiate, and the second one is with knowledge; that’s a
lifetime study as any married man will tell you…lifetime study—how to initiate
with knowledge. You try to initiate
sometimes in giving certain things, saying certain things, doing certain
things, and it blows up in your face; what happened? You punched the wrong button and you didn’t
do it according to knowledge so you have to pick up the pieces and reanalyze
and find out what happened, and go back and try again.
So that’s
initiating with knowledge toward his glory, and that was the other principle
that we learned, that the woman is the glory of the man because she’s his
responder. And glory means that by
looking at the woman you ought to be able to tell something about the man. And this was another interesting feature,
some of the men tell me in their businesses that often this is the case, that
in the high offices in their business the promotions into the very highest of
offices, usually the promotion is partially based on interviews or at least
evaluations of their lives. And again,
why? Simply because men can’t avoid the
empirical fact of the second divine institution’s working out. Businessmen have noticed that where the wife
is working at cross purposes with her husband, it’s going to show, and the
higher up he is and the more responsibility he has in the business it’s going
to show up that much more. And so
obviously they’re very sensitive about what does their wife do, what is she
like?
Now today we come
to the role of the woman. Last week we
had the men pinned down underneath the authority of the Word of God. Now today we have the authority of the woman
pinned down under the authority of the Word of God. Now I’ve preface all my remarks today with a
cautionary emphasis that I did last week, that don’t blame me, I didn’t write
it. If you get hot under the collar,
sorry, take it up with the author but don’t take it up with me; all I’m doing
is telling you what He wrote. I’m trying
to explain it the best I know but I didn’t write it.
Let’s go again to
various principles; we’re going to find the same set of principles, both with
the woman and with the man. And the
first principle is that the woman must submit to God’s authority. It sounds very elementary but watch how hard
it is in practice. The woman must submit
to the Word. Now that’s a decision she
has to make; her husband can’t make that for her. And the woman is going to have to do it. Now problems in marriage are never
horizontal; they always, always involve some problem spiritually. I don’t care what it is, and this is why
marriage actually was given by God for growth.
Now Martin Luther was not being entirely facetious when he is reported
to have said if the Pope had been married he’d have never thought of the
doctrine of papal infallibility. But the
reason is that marriage is a maturing situation and you can get out of fellowship
in many, many areas of your life but if you’re married it shows up right
away. No two people that are having
serious marital problems are being filled with the Spirit. Now that may sound like a harsh judgment but
I can tell you that as a matter of dogmatic fact. If you have a couple with severe marital
problems one or both are out of it, totally, spiritually. I don’t care whether the fight is over
budgeting, over sex, over something else, one or the other or both are
completely out of it and 99 times out of 100 it’s both that are out of it. So martial disharmony and so on is a
reflection of spirituality.
Now don’t buy this
human viewpoint line that you can trot off to family services or trot off to
some marital counselor for a few psychological gimmicks and everything is going
to be fine. That doesn’t work that way
because if the original problem is this, all the marital counseling in the
world is not going to help you until your straighten out your prideful
rebellion against God’s authority. And
until that attitude is straightened out, all the marriage counseling in the
world is a waste, just an absolute waste.
Now I don’t know how couples who don’t accept the authority of Scripture
ever work out a problem. I really don’t;
I do not have the foggiest idea how it works out, because when you have two
people squawking at each other, when you have these kind of situations it’s
always my standards against your standards.
Now how do you ever get harmony and peace in the relationship? The only starting point for resolving this
kind of a problem is say hey, it’s neither his nor her standards, it’s God’s
standards. So it’s God’s, you have to
start looking up first. If you want to
shoot, shoot up but you’ve got to square away the fact that there’s a standard
over both and that is God’s Word. And if
you don’t agree on the same standard there’s no… it can’t go any further. How are you going to solve your problem?
How can you ever
solve a marriage problem without this concept?
Well, I know how it’s solved, one or the other gives up after a while
and surrenders and retreats, oh well, the hell with this, and walks out, that
kind of an attitude. Well, is that
really laying grounds for a good marriage?
No, that’s just destroyed it; you just gave up a whole area. Do you see what happens when you solve your
problems that way? Originally you come
into marriage and you have that much ground to grow in, to grow together. Every time you try human viewpoint solutions
where you say well, we just don’t… like for example, two couples said, we just
don’t talk religious things at our house.
Well, that just takes care of about 45% of the problem. So there’s some ground you can’t communicate
together, you can’t enjoy life together,
you’ve separated yourself and so some other time maybe it’s something over
a car, can’t agree on how to use the car so you buy two cars and say to hell
with it. And so there goes some
more.
Every time you
solve a problem this way don’t you see you’re eating away the compatibility of
the relationship? That’s not the way to
solve the problem. Sure, it gets you
over the fight, for a while it seems to work, but that’s not going to hold
up. You keep on that way do you know
what usually happens? The couple goes
through life like this, all during the time they’re raising kids, and about 55
when all the kids are graduated from college they’ve got that much ground left
together. You know what means; they live
in the same house. And then we see the
tragic case of an older couple, suddenly aware of the fact that kids are gone;
the thing that’s glued them together has gone because it wasn’t the Lord that
was the real glue, it was their children that was real glue. They go, now what’s left. It’s the saddest situation because people 55
or so have got learned behavior patterns you can’t believe; they’ve had 55
years to learn them. And these are
almost impossible apart from the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit to
eradicate and change. It can be done. But the point is that those problems are
there and it’s awful to behold, just awful to behold. The resentment has built up and built up and
built up for so long.
But the principle
that we want to see then first is that you’ve got to agree on the standard of
authority, and Ruth 1:16 is a verse that shows this principle. Now it’s often quoted in marriage ceremonies
but I want you to understand, it wasn’t originally for marriage actually, it
was a personal confession of faith. Now
it can be applied in marriage but its context and original interpretation was
not marriage, it didn’t have anything to do with marriage.
Ruth 1:16, Ruth
says to Naomi, “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after
thee; for where you go I will go; and where you lodge I will lodge; thy people
shall be my people, and thy God, my God.”
Now in verse 16 you have a sequence of affirmations that Ruth
makes. Notice the first one, “where you
go, I go,” but she’s going to give them in the opposite direction, leading to
the key principle. But we list them
we’re going to list them from the bottom up, so let’s say location, that’s the
first thing, “where you go, I will go.”
“Where you lodge, I will lodge” and here you have the home. “Your people shall be my people,” and in the
Old Testament context that wasn’t in-laws, though that was part of it, the
point there was that you have the fellowship of believers, the community of
believers. And then you have, “thy God
will be my God.” And thus you have Ruth,
a Gentile woman, bowing before the God of Israel and Ruth is put in the Bible
to show you a phenomenal thing, to destroy any pride that you might have from
your Jewishness, is that here is a Gentile woman, a Moabitess, who at this
point personally believes in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, who at this point
bows her knee before Him and agrees that he will be her criterion in authority
in every area. And she, lo and behold,
turns out to be one of the great women in the line of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And this is just to remind
self-righteous Jewish believers or unbelievers, throughout the Old Testament
and the New Testament, don’t think your Jewishness is meritorious, because here
is Ruth with no Jewishness, accepted by pure grace, into the line.
Now look, the
principle: Ruth bows before the God who has given the Law; who regulates the
fellowship of the believers? God’s Law
regulates that, doesn’t it; don’t you read in the Old Testament law regulations
that have to do with the nation. How can
she bow before the nation without bowing before the God who is the law-maker of
the nation? How can she run her
home? What is involved in saying “I
lodge where you lodge” unless it be that the God who made the laws of the homes
in Israel is her God. And how can she go
except the God who says where, how, and when.
So this is an allegiance of Ruth to the God of Israel. She agrees to be governed by this God; it’s
not just naming His name, it means governed by His Word.
That’s the first
principle, the woman must submit to God’s authority. That is where all the problem basically is
both on the man’s part and on the woman’s part.
If you can get a squawking couple to agree to this point the rest of the
deal is very easy; ultimately it’s just working out details of how to follow
the Lord’s will. That’s basically the
point. But if this isn’t there, I
frankly don’t know how to work this; I just don’t know. And counseling failures are always inevitably
due to this, that somewhere along the line the couple really does not want a
solution. They want a solution but they
really don’t want one; they want a band-aid but they don’t want surgery; they
want to solve this problem but they don’t want to bow their knee, really,
before God. That’s the kind of language
that we just don’t like, it gets too oochey, that involves too much. And so unless the couple is prepared to pay
this kind of price, a price by the way you only pray in your pride, but unless
you’re prepared to pay that price the problem ultimately can only be covered
up.
So we move now to
the second principle. For this we have
to go to the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 14.
This corresponds to the second principle under the role of the man and
that is that the woman, just as the man, you remember his second principle was
that he had to learn to work with and through his wife, the wife must learn,
just like the man, she must learn how to work under him. Notice I say “work under him,” it’s not
passivity, the woman isn’t crushed to the ground as kind of a slave, a chattel
slave or something, that’s not the point of Scripture, you can see it very
graphically.
But in these
verses, I’m going to take you through a series of references, in these verses
you’re going to notice a certain thing about it, it’s going to seem like it
reduces the woman’s stature. Now just be
patient and listen and watch the text: the point here is that the woman assumes
her position, and I might preface this set of verses by the remark that this is
NOT culturally relative; this is not just for the ancient world before they had
women’s lib or something. Listen, do you
realize where women’s lib got started; it started in Rome, they had women
libbers in Rome and you couldn’t believe.
They had a deal worked out all one night that all the women in the city
of Rome were going to poison their husbands.
They all tried it the same night.
Now Rome withstood it but a lot of men terminated their ministries that
night and that was one of the most vehement women’s lib protests. Now I don’t want to give any hints as to
strategies and so on that could be used, but the early women libbers used that
as a strategy, murdered the husband; after all, he stuck around the kitchen so
she’ll stick him; if she wants him to prepare all his meals she’ll prepare a
real good one for him, it’ll be his last.
And the women of Rome did that; don’t blame me, I’m just narrating
history so if somebody gets poisoned this week I’m not culpable.
1 Corinthians
14:34, not culturally relative, don’t excuse this as just, well that’s Corinth,
or that’s that old bitty Paul, he was a bachelor, he hated women. Verse 34, “Let your women keep silence in the
churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to
be under obedience, as also says the law.
[35] And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at
home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” Now what is this about? “In the church” means during the assembly
worship… during the assembly worship.
The men in a Jewish kind of worship would have various roles and parts,
they’d read the Scriptures, they’re pray and so on. And the point is, a woman did not have a role
or a part in this. She had a role, by
the way, in other areas of worship. For
example, during Passover the woman’s role in the Passover is she starts
it. The woman does have a place in
Jewish worship, in Old Testament worship, but it’s just that in the assembly
worship she was not to speak and she was not even to ask questions, notice
verse 35. And the reason was that she
was to be under authority, “Let them ask their husbands at home.” Now why is that put in there? Because, and obviously women ask questions in
church, it’s not always a violation of this principle, the point in verse 35 is
that if the woman has a husband he’s supposed to be the one that leads her
spiritually.
Now that places
the burden actually on the man, not on the woman. If she wants to find out something she is to
ask her husband. Now the reason why some
questions have to be asked is because the husbands don’t know anything. You can see that, just come to family
training framework literature and look around, how many husbands are
there? You can tell who’s doing the
teaching. So the women are supposed to
be going home to their husbands to find out, and this is an opportunity for
them to build their relationship; what better conversation, content in
conversation could you have than talk about the Word together. Now this is actually a hint on how to build
and strengthen the marriage relationship.
But I want you to
look at the word “law” in verse 34. What
law? “…they are commanded to be under
obedience, as says the law.” Now where
in the law does it say something like that?
The word “law” was used for the entire Old Testament in the epistle to
the Corinthians. But usually the word
law is Torah, by the way, if you’ve noticed TV, the reports on Israeli
soldiers, several times they’ve pointed out the fact they’ll be walking along
with bazookas and shells and everything else and you’ll see two soldiers
carrying the Torah, wherever they go, in Sinai, the Golan Heights, they’re
carrying the sacred Torah with them because it’s the Torah that gives them the
claims; by what covenant? The Abrahamic
Covenant. And they are claiming that for
their military conquest, in that land.
So it’s interesting to watch a modern army… of course the Americans
probably get chewed out for carrying the Bible with them but in the Jewish army you’re allowed to
carry the Torah, and actually each unit has its own chaplain, priest and so on
and they read the Torah together.
Now the Torah here
refers to Genesis and if you’ll turn to Genesis 3:16, here is where the law
says that woman is to be submissive. I’m
sure it’s going to be very extra painful for those of you who like to
allegorize Genesis because this is another friendly reminder that Paul
interpreted Genesis literally, and if you’re not going to interpret literally
then just forget this principle also, but Paul assumed a literally historically
scientifically valid Genesis. Genesis 3:16,
when he says, God “said to the woman, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Now the last part of verse 16, notice comes about
because of the fall. Genesis 3:16 points
out that the woman is going to have an ambiguous set of feelings in her, and
you men notice this because it will help you understand why they think the way
they do sometimes. The first set is
given in the first clause, where it says, “thy desire shall be to thy husband,”
and that is one line of thought that goes in the woman’s head, where she wants
to be submissive to her husband. That’s
one line of thought, she wants that, she wants to be submissive and she wants
to serve her role and she feels unhappy when she really isn’t, even though she
may yell and scream, she’s still not really happy until she’s in that
particular role functioning that way.
Now this is a fact about all women and this is the way their soul is
made and I don’t have to know any woman to know it because that’s the way God’s
Word says. God’s Word says this is the
way woman thinks.
Now the second
problem is that in every woman she has another line of reasoning, and that is
the last one, because notice the context of verse 16 is all sorrow, sorrow,
sorrow. “…he shall rule over thee,” and
the Hebrew would indicate kind of a but here, “but he shall rule over
thee.” In other words, she wants to be
his wife but at the same time there’s kind of a resentment against his
authority. So the woman in her soul has
these two things. Now why does she have
them? Doesn’t this inner conflict mean
that she’s not somehow back of this point perfect? Why?
Because what’s happened between here and Genesis 2? The fall.
And notice also in verse 16, see where it says “will multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception,” this has to do with changes physiologically in the woman’s
body brought about by the fall. Here
where you have menstruation and all the accompanying problems mentally are all
packed into verse 16. The woman has been
injured permanently by the fall, both in her body and partly in her soul, but
she has these two conflicting desires; she wants to have it like it was before
the fall, she wants to be the ‘ezer
of her husband, but yet on the other hand she really doesn’t like his rule
either. And this ambiguity that goes on
inside the woman is one of the keys to understanding why women do what they do
at certain times. They’re just going
from one side to the other in this thing, but it’s tied in with the fall.
Now that’s the
verse that Paul’s building on so let’s turn back to 1 Corinthians 14; you won’t
learn this in sex education courses, you learn all about the plumbing but you
won’t learn anything about the principle.
1 Corinthians 14:34, that’s why the women are to keep silent in the
churches, because Paul wants to build the relationship, it’s actually a
positive thing, not a negative thing here.
He wants to build their relationship.
Now if you’ll turn
to 1 Timothy 2:11, just to show you this principle extends through Scripture,
notice in verse 11, and Paul, just to show you that he has Genesis 3:16 on his
mind notice the immediate context. “Let
the woman learn in silence with all subjection.” The word “subjection” is a military term
which means to assume her rank, to get into her position. “Let her learn in silence with
subjection.” Do you know what that
means? Women don’t learn unless they are
in a position of submission. You men
understand that. Have you ever heard
that saying that a woman convinced against her will is of the same opinion
still? Well, that’s the principle,
that’s the other side of the principle.
Unless she assumes willingly her position she’s not going to learn;
she’ll hear your words but she’s not going to learn. So “let the woman learn in silence,” [12] “I
do not allow a woman to teach, or to usurp authority over the man, but be in
silence.” Now that doesn’t mean she’s a
mute, it just means the principle, she’s not to teach. There it clearly shows you what’s on Paul’s
mind. She is not to teach or usurp
authority over a man. “…for,” now he
gives the reason, see, he relates it back to the fall, [13] “For Adam was first
formed, then Eve.” That’s one principle, creation. And then second principle, verse 14, “And
Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, was in the
transgression.” The point goes back to
how they fell, the order they fell. Paul
believed in a literal Genesis. As
Professor S. Lewis Johnson at Dallas Seminary was fond of saying, that if is
this particular verse where used in the charismatic circles along with 1
Corinthians 14 we would solve 98% of the problem.
Now let’s turn to
1 Peter 3, just so you don’t say well, it was Paul. We still have people in this congregation
that don’t buy this…, just some man thought that up. 1 Peter 3:1-6, Peter was married, he speaks
from experience. “Likewise, ye wives, be
in subjection to your own husband that,” and this is talking about a believing
wife and an unbelieving husband, worst of all possible situations here, “if any
obey not the word, they may also without the word be won by the behavior of the
wives,” now that verse, and notice verse 2, 3 and 4, particularly verse 3,
talks about the power of the woman’s influence on the man. Now again, if you will just stop attributing
all sorts of sinister motives to the apostles, they’re out to get the ladies or
something, and just relax, they actually are giving the women powerful tools,
because what Peter goes on to say in these next verses is basically one of the
most powerful tools that can ever be brought to bear on a man. Men can be run by women, but the smart women
never let them know it. And this is how
they do it. These are one of the most
powerful tools a woman has in her arsenal, so to speak, is that here beauty and
how it works, and Peter gives the mechanics which we don’t have time for this
morning, in verses 3-4, but that’s Peter’s dissertation.
Now we come back
to one more, Ephesians 5:22, just so you don’t accuse me of taking verses out
of context. Ephesians 5:22, after it
talks about the filling of the Holy Spirit, and after he begins to list the
signs of the filling of the Holy Spirit, how you can tell whether someone is
filled with the Spirit, is verse 22, “Wives, submit yourselves unto you own
husbands, as unto the Lord. [23] For the
husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the
church.” Again, a sign of the filling of
the Holy Spirit.
So the summary of
the second principle we’ve studied this morning is that the woman must submit,
must actually learn how to work under her husband’s authority. You say I haven’t seen anything about work
yet, right. Now we’re coming to the
third principle. The woman has to learn
how and in what areas….
[Tape turns] … the
woman responds. I want you to notice
something. People get hold of words and
do dangerous things with them. And
certain men have gotten hold of this word “I initiate and she responds” and
think that this has something to do entirely with the bed. Hun-un, that’s part of it but that’s not all
of it and I want you to see where the other response patterns are.
Proverbs 31:10,
two principles to apply as we interpret this passage, warnings. The first warning is that this is a noble
woman pictured in Proverbs 31, not a normal every day wife. She has more assets at her disposal than the
average woman. So therefore the first
thing you want to beware of is that this woman is going to be doing things that
a normal, everyday woman can’t do because she doesn’t have the assets to do
them. This is a well-to-do upper class
woman. But, the second principle is that
you can still see an outline of how she responds, whether she’s wealthy or
not. This woman is doing certain things
and to a lesser degree any woman can do them.
It’s hard to find any kind of an order to this passage because in the
Hebrew it’s written as an acrostic. That
means the first verse begins with a Hebrew letter, Aleph for “A” and the next
one Bet, and then the next one, they don’t have a “C” they have kind of a
Gimel, and then a “D” or Dalet. So this
is the Hebrew alphabet and this is how it goes.
And it’s written this way.
Now that tells us
something about this passage. Why do you
suppose they’d write it that way? Why do
you suppose they’d make it alphabetically acrostic? To memorize; passages of Scripture that were
important were memorized and it was easy to remember because these verses would
start with a Hebrew letter. Psalm 119 is
an acrostic Psalm, it’s written the same way.
All right, in this passage we know immediately, before we start, it was
written describing an upper class woman, probably therefore written for the
noble Hebrew ruler, to pick out his queen, to pick out the woman that would
rule with him.
But, the second
thing was, since it’s written as an acrostic it meant that many, many Jewish
men would memorize this. How could they
recognize the right woman? She would
have these characteristics. Now just so
that some of you ladies don’t think that the Bible is turning you into a
doormat, look at all the things this woman is doing; it’s amazing. Let’s go through the list.
Proverbs 31:10,
“Who can find a virtuous woman? For her
price is far above rubies,” now immediately we have to dispense with the word
“virtue,” it’s a wrong translation;
chayil is used for soldiers, of all things, in the Old Testament. It’s a word for strength. To give you a flavor of how this word is
used, I’ll give you some references.
Exodus 18:21, 25; Ruth 3:11; 4:11, and you ought to go back to those
verses.
[Exodus 18:21,
“”Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God,
men of truth, hating
covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers
of hundreds, rulers of
fifties, and rulers of tens.
Exodus 18:25, “And
Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people,
rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers
of tens.
Ruth 3:11, “And
now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requires; for all
the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.”
Ruth 4:11, “And
all the people who were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are
witnesses. The LORD make the woman
who is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the
house of Israel, and do thou worthily in Ephrathah, and be
famous in Bethlehem.”]
There you’ll see chayil used and when it is used in those
contexts it refers to someone who can manage a sphere underneath someone else’s
authority; it’s used to manage, an ability to manage. Now does that sound like the woman has turned
into something passive? Huh-un, she is a
manager under someone’s authority.
Obviously verse 10 is teaching that you’ll find few.
Proverbs 31:11,
“The heart of her husband does safely trust in her, so that he shall have no
need of spoil,” the word “spoil” here means business gain, and the idea is that
she can be trusted with the household and he won’t have to earn money to take
care of this thing and make up for her mistakes. Principle: she is a competent manager of the
household.
Proverbs 31:12,
“She will do him good, and not evil, all the days of life.” And the word “do” means to bring to full
harvest, so to speak, she won’t start something and then faze out, she’ll bring
it to completion, she will accomplish, a better word, “she will accomplish good
for him and not evil all the days of her life.”
Proverbs 31:13,
remember, this is the model of a submissive Jewish upper class woman, and this
should correct some of your images of what the word “submit” means. “She seeks wool, and flax, and she works
willingly with her hands.” Now the word
“work willingly” means to work in or with delight. And it shows a certain mental attitude in her
work, a certain mental attitude is here.
It is something that is worth something to her and she does it
happily. If some of you ladies like to
give some illustrations, kind of a very easy book to read and has lots of
interesting ideas, read Edith Schaeffer’s book, Hidden Art, it’s written for housewives, and she attacks the
concept of the housewife has to be a drudge, can’t be creative, but can have a
unique ministry and in the book she illustrates point after point after point
after point after point from practical life for women.
Proverbs 31:14,
“She is like the merchant’s ships; she brings her food from afar.” That means she is a wise buyer; she has
economic moxy. She goes to the store and
she buys the bargains and the good ones.
That’s what that verse is talking about.
Does that sound like she’s reduced to some sort of a … kind of
thing? No, the woman here has a sphere
of authority, she’s given power by her husband to do things in various areas,
and here she’s trusted with buying.
Proverbs 31:15,
“She rises also while it is yet night,” and this is a picture in the ancient
world, they didn’t have refrigerators and so they had to rise early in the
morning to go down to the market place to buy the food while it was still fresh
before the sun came up and it was hot.
And so this talks about the woman getting out there when the food first
comes to market and buying the best. She
“gives food to her household, and a portion to her maidens.” Now the last part, “a portion to her maidens”
may be kind of applied here, the maidens that she had under her were those
people who did the household duties.
Today it would be equivalent to the fact that the woman ought to know
who to call when her washing machine breaks, that’s her modern maid. And women have a lot of machine age to them
but still they break and they always break when your husband is never around
and when he’s out of town on a business trip then everything falls apart, you
know how it is. So when that happens,
you ought to know what to do about it.
No ooh, what do I do now, kind of thing, you ought to have some
procedures worked out so you know what to do.
In this case this woman knew how to take care of her maidens, she cared
for her maidens, she knew about their physical needs and their other needs.
Proverbs 31:16,
“She considers a field and she buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants
a vineyard.” Now the first part of verse
16 is obviously economic investment; the last part of verse 16 sounds like she is
doing the planting; not so. The phrase
“fruit of her hands” means the returns on her business investment. For example, if you’ll drop down to verse 31
you’ll see how that phrase is used, “Give her of the fruit of her hands, and
let her own works praise her,” so the fruit of her hands are not her hands,
they’re the result of her hands, the result of her work. So in verse 16 that means profits that she
has made from investments. So you see,
far from being rendered passive, this woman is very progressive; she’s granted
power to buy and to sell in the market place, she cares for her home, she
actually makes investments with funds that are entrusted to her.
Proverbs 31:17,
“She girds her loins with strength, and strengthens her arms.” A cross reference would be Nahum 2:1 where
this same phraseology is used in preparation for battle. It’s most interesting because that verse
tells us something about the mental attitude of this woman. She had to have a proper mental attitude
toward her daily chores in the home. She
had to be ready for them, just like a soldier would be ready for battle, that’s
what that verse is talking about; that’s the imagery behind it. And you can study it for yourself in Nahum
2:1, that will show you the flavor of the context of the remark. So when it says that “she girds her loins
with strength,” it means she prepares herself mentally. [He that dashes in pieces is come up before
thy face; keep the fortress, watch the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy
power mightily.”] Now watch what
happens; this is a malady, just like men can get in trouble, housewives have
this one. And the carnality has various
permutations and combinations but usually here’s what happens. First you go on negative volition, get out of
fellowship, hostility toward God, results in hostility toward husband, results
in hostility toward children, results in hostility toward home, and results in
hostility toward chores, which results in depression, which results for some
panacea, and you’re in trouble right
about that point. Now that’s the cycle,
and usually it’s oh, I’m so depressed, I can’t get my housework done because
I’m so depressed. Huh-un, that’s not the
right way of saying it: you’re depressed because you haven’t done what you’re
supposed to do, that’s why, barring obviously physical problems. But here’s the carnality circle, and that’s
the way it goes. It starts out with a
bad attitude and winds up not doing chores, winds up in depression, winds up
utter despair. My wife asked me to make
sure that you all understood, I wasn’t just parroting her remarks, this comes
out of four or five years counseling also.
Verse 17,
continuing, she “strengthens her arms,” means that besides her mental attitude
that she takes care of her body physically.
How about that one? She takes
care of herself physically because she knows that if she doesn’t there’s going
to be trouble. The husband can’t boil
water, how are the kids going to eat?
She’s got to be at least strong enough to work in the kitchen.
Proverbs 31:18,
more on buying, “She perceives that her merchandise is good; her candle [lamp]
goes not out by night,” talking about her work.
Then Proverbs
31:20, “She stretches out her hand to the poor; she reaches forth her hands to
the needy.” That also shows you
something else; this Hebrew woman here was given a tremendous responsibility of
dispersing funds. You see when it says
“the heart of her husband safely trusts in her,” this is what it meant. He trusted her in her judgment. In other words, she had good judgment and
men, here’s one of the things, those of you who are single, when you are
looking at the ladies, watch some of them, they may look beautiful on the
outside, but boy, inside they don’t know how to come in out of the rain as far
as judgment is concerned. Just watch how
they respond to certain things at school, how do they do their
assignments? Are they always
behind? How do they get along with their
roommates? Do they have judgment? You watch out for a woman that doesn’t have
judgment because you’re not going to be able to trust her.
Proverbs 3:21,
“She is not afraid of the snow for her household,” that means she’s prepared
them, [“for all her household are clothed with scarlet,”] actually clothed with
scarlet, the Hebrew word may be clothed in double; it’s a word that can mean
both, it means she’s got adequate clothing.
Proverbs 31:22,
“She makes herself coverings of tapestry,” she’s a seamstress, she has skill in
this area, “her clothing is silk and purple.”
That means the best kind of clothing, and she does most of it herself.
Proverbs 31:23,
“Her husband is known in the gates,” now here’s the results of all this. What is the virtuous woman? The woman who manages well. What is the result? “Her husband is known in
the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land.” It shows you, by the way, this is an upper
class woman, not the normal Jewish woman.
But the point is, that what is it that we learned before? She is his glory; she reflects him. Look at her and you can see him. Now here’s the reciprocal of that. The reciprocal of that, that the husband is
helped, obviously, and I put obviously because it’s going to show up by his ‘ezer.
He’s going to be obviously helped by his ‘ezer, and other men are going to see it. That’s what it means. Who else is in the gates? Do you know what the gates are? The gates are the places where the elders
met; there are no women in the gates. So
to whom is the husband known in verse 23?
He’s known to other men. Do the
other men necessarily see his wife physically?
No. Then what is this? It means that by looking at this man, how
he’s dressed, how he performs, how he’s free from worries about his family, how
the fact that he trusts in his wife, how the fact that he’s assured of how his
children are being brought up, “he is known in the gates.” Why?
Because he has a virtuous woman.
Proverbs 31:24, to
make sure the point is that it’s the woman and not the man in the text of verse
24 slips right back and continues the description of the woman. “She makes fine linen, and sells it, and
delivers girdles unto the merchant.” By
the way, the husband of verse 23, you see, would never have thought of his wife
or his job, you see that, the two are not bifurcated; they’re not split apart,
they come together here. “She makes fine
linen…and delivers girdles unto the merchant,” there’s her business. She’s involved in business.
Proverbs 31:25,
“Strength and honor are her clothing, [and she shall rejoice in time to come].”
and that also shows you something else, there’s nothing unbiblical about a
woman being in business, this shows you that apparently it’s S.O.P for most
noble women to be in business in Israel.
Proverbs 31:26,
“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of
kindness.” Now the “law of kindness” is
a very interesting word. The word “law”
here is torah, and torah in the book of Proverbs means
instruction. It’s used, remember in the
beginning, son, pay attention to the commands of your father and the torah of your mother, here it is again,
“the torah of kindness,” except it’s
our old friend chesed. Now look at that… look at that; what does
that mean? In her mouth, out of her lips
comes instruction in chesed, that
means loyalty, first of all, loyalty to God’s Word, and then loyalty to that
which the Word says, family, marriage, and so on; “the torah of chesed,” the
instruction in loyalty.
Now hold the
place, I want to take you to a place in the New Testament that points this out
and continues the thought because this is not divorced from the New
Testament. Turn to Titus 2, we’re going
to see instruction in loyalty. Titus
2:3, instead of doing all sorts of things that are often done in various
Christian groups, in Titus 2;3 we have stated the role that the older women are
to have toward the younger women; notice it doesn’t say the women toward the
men, we saw that that isn’t allowed, but the older women are to have a role and
here at Lubbock Bible Church we’re trying to establish this, to make this
function along Scriptural lines, where the older women who have tremendous
wisdom, wisdom that they’ve had to accumulate over many, many years, wisdom on
how to do everyday mundane things that are herein listed in Proverbs 31 that
we’re studying, women who have learned this over many years, can share this
with the college students and the younger married women because in this
situation they can benefit from the years of wisdom, so they can learn this
without the hard way, without going through the same thing.
So it says, “The
aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, not false
accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things,” and now notice
verse 4, here’s your torah of chesed, your instruction in loyalty, [4]
That they may teach the young women to be sober [sober-minded], to love their
husbands, to love their children.”
There’s the torah of chesed.
There is the instruction in loyalty.
Now why do you
suppose, turning back to Proverbs 31, why do you suppose the women are given
that particular role by Paul? I don’t
know exactly why but I’m willing to hazard a guess and that is because the
young women wouldn’t take this kind of instruction from the men. A young woman could only respect an older
woman, who has lived through it. A young
woman would only buy this stuff from a woman who’s had 30 or 40 years of
lifetime, who’s had 10 or 15 years raising children, who has been through it
and she can take it from them because the woman is living testimony it can be
done. She’s not going to buy this kind
of instruction from any man; the woman is only going to appreciate this kind of
instruction from another woman.
Let’s finish
Proverbs 31, continuing, after the torah
of kindness in verse 26, Proverbs 31:27, “She looks well to the ways of her
household, she eats not the bread of idleness.
[28] “Her children rise up,” now verse 28, her rewards, here are things
that she gains by way of reward. This is
the woman’s right, and if you want to, men, see that you give her a little
impetus to be what you’d like her to be, then notice what the Word of God does
here in verse 28. See God made women,
and He knows how they’re built and how they function, and here He’s telling us
something.
Proverbs 31:28,
“Her children rise up, and call her blessed; her husband praises her.” Now an interesting thing is, if you go into
homes watch the attitude of the children toward the mother. It tells thousands and thousands of details
about that home. Do the children, it
doesn’t mean that they gush all over her but do they have a basic respect for
that woman? Do they? Do they really show… do the sons of the house
show their mother respect? Do the girls
badmouth their mother or do they basically say I don’t agree with everything
but I respect my mother. That’s what
this is talking about. And “her husband
praises her,” and says to her, verse 29, “May daughters have done virtuously,”
it’s the same word as at the beginning, they have managed well, “but you excel
them all.” And verse 28 and 29 means
that the woman needs encouragement. So
you come in and you feel gross at
Proverbs 31:30,
“Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears the LORD, she
shall be praised. [31] Give her of the
fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.” All right, in summary verse 30 teaches the
idea of inner beauty, it’s the same principle as 1 Peter 3:1-6, and the idea in
“favor” means physical beauty and the next word also means physical beauty. And both of them are rendered by words that
mean human viewpoint, “deceitful” and “vain” the words that we used in
Ecclesiastes. And it’s talking about
physical beauty. Why is physical beauty
rendered as vanity in the Bible? There
are several reasons for it. The first
reason is that physical beauty falls under the curse; it’s going to be wiped
out by the curse. Physical beauty is
part of the physical creation and the physical creation is a damned creation by
virtue of Genesis 3. So immediately
physical beauty is not a long enduring issue.
It doesn’t mean be a slob, but the point remains, that the physical
beauty isn’t where you hang everything, simply because it’s tenuous, so you
look sharp now, what are you going to look like 20 years from now, especially
if you live in this climate.
So there’s
physical beauty and it deteriorates, so that’s the first reason why it’s
vain. Another reason why it’s vain is
because the kind of beauty that is personal and enduring can only be brought
about the Holy Spirit through the human spirit operating in the soul. That’s why the second part, “she that fears
the Lord.” What’s “fear of the Lord”
mean? We’ve had it 55 times in the
Proverbs series. “Fear the Lord” means
respect God’s authority and what was the first principle we learned this
morning? The woman must respect God’s
authority, that’s where it all begins, and that basically is what makes a woman
beautiful, in the enduring sense of the word; she respects and she submits to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
“She shall be
praised,” she is going to get praised, and she’s going to get it, she’s going
to earn it, and she’s going to get it, her husband may not give it to her and
the kids may not give it to her, the Lord will give it to her. She has that praise coming.
Verse 31, “Give
her of the fruit of her hands, and let her won works praise her in the
gates.” Now the last phrase is a good
one to stop at today, besides being the last one it’s a good one to stop at for
another reasons. Who can do that? “…let her own works praise her in the
gates.” First of all, what are “her own
works?” Hers might be her reputation,
but more concretely it’s what her husband is wearing there, in this
context. Remember what he wears, what
she has made for him. And what does it
say, “let her own works praise her in the gates.” This can’t be addressed to the woman because
she isn’t there at the gate. So who is
this addressed to? This is addressed to
her husband. Do you know what this
means? That when that man walked down to
the gate and the other guys looked around, hey, where’d you get that? Oh, I bought it down the street; oh, it’s
just something I had around the house.
No! Your wife made it for you,
and that’s what it means, “let her works praise her in the gates,” that you
kind of testify to what your ‘ezer
has done in the business world. That is
part of your Christian marital testimony, to not be embarrassed or ashamed to
testify; my wife has done this for me, and to let, in the case that arises, in
business associates, to pass this on, because you see, if the woman is
sentencing herself to be her ‘ezer,
how can she reach the world? How can her
testimony in the home reach the world, apart from the children? Only through what the man does, the man gives
testimony to what she’s done, and that’s the story and the role of the woman.
Next week we’ll
deal with the specific verses in Proverbs.