Clough Proverbs Lesson 68
DI #2: Proverbs on Women
We want to go back
and recall once again what the divine institutions are and their
structure. The reason is that whenever
man mixes these institutions, tries to take from one and put into the other, he
winds up in difficulty and suffering.
Things that properly belong to the first one, such as labor, money,
things of economic principles, cannot be run as part of the state because God
hasn’t designed the universe to run that way.
Interventionism is taking divine institution number four and making it
the lord over all the others, and that is the tendency today, that
Bible-believing and biblically informed Christians can’t agree here. We have to say no, this is wrong, and as
Christian citizens we vote against it; we oppose this movement, to take the
fourth divine institution and let it dictate to all the others. The fourth divine institution has a
legitimate domain but it has to be respected.
I noticed one of
the white cards that was handed in: What biblical principles apply in
Watergate? I’m not going to say much on
that except for the point there is one principle that very, very few
commentators have pointed out, and I think I’ll point it out just because
there’s a parallel with the office of pastor, and that is that the office of
President demands certain confidentiality.
And barring the problem of wrong doing, I’m setting that aside for a
moment, the point is that the President should not have to tell people what’s
on tapes, he should not have to be subpoenaed and his conversations are not
public property any more than mine are.
To function as a pastor I have to counsel; I know of crimes that have
been conducted inside the city limits of Lubbock and I know who did them and I
know when they were done, but no court in the land is ever going to find out
from me because that is part of the confidentiality of my office, which I will
defend against any court, anywhere. No
court, because they operate in the fourth divine institution can come over and
violate the laws of the Church; the Church is another institutions that
operates by its own laws. Therefore, as
pastor I have the right to confidentiality and it’s just the sine quo non of being a pastor. I couldn’t be a pastor without
confidentiality. And the President of
the
The second divine
institution that we’re studying today we have the third part of the biblical
position of the structure of this and to review that for a moment let’s go back
and look at the role of the man and the role of the woman in this
institution. And then beginning this
morning we’ll apply these principles as we seek to read the Proverbs verse by
verse and do certain passages that have to do with this.
The first
principle that has to do with man is that the man must begin by submitting to
God’s Word. So the man starts actually
by submission, the principle of submission to God’s authority, that the man
must submit to God’s authority in this sphere.
He has no choice, and he cannot become a respectable male functioning
properly in the second divine institution apart from submission to the Word of
God. There are no options. Either he does or he doesn’t, but there are
no neutral grounds. Every man in
marriage must submit to God’s Word or he must resolve totally against it. There’s no parcel, there’s no half way point,
there are no neutral areas; it is either an emphatic submission or deliberate
rebellion, one or the other, no in between.
So the man is involved in submission.
The second part of
a man’s role, we learned, was that he must learn to fulfill his calling with
his wife, not in spite of her. Going
back to the principle that the wife is the ‘ezer,
e-z-e-r, the ‘ezer principle or the
helper principle. She is a helper to him
because of his calling. God gave Adam
the calling, then after that made Eve as his ‘ezer. Now Eve can’t
function if Adam had another calling than the one God gave him. How did Adam know that Eve was his ‘ezer?
It was not only because she was a person, apart and distinguished from
the animals in the creation story, it was also because this particular woman
was the perfect ‘ezer in his
calling. So the second role of the man
is that he has to learn how to work through his ‘ezer to his calling and not set up an either/or. This is a case where the woman is the means,
not to be used in the bad sense of the word, but the woman is the ‘ezer and without her the Bible says man
can’t fill his calling. The one (?)
exception to this is the spiritual gift of celibacy which is rare indeed, and
is only used in widespread areas in times of extreme physical emergency in the
Church, but apart from those time it is the normal operating procedure that
every man has somewhere his ‘ezer and
she’s either functioning or not functioning but he cannot fulfill his calling
the way he should apart from his right woman.
The third point on
the role of the man is that he has to learn to love her with knowledge. That’s 1 Peter 3, you must learn to “dwell
with them according to knowledge.”
Notice it is a learning process, it involves time, it involves mistakes,
it involves years of learning to dwell according to knowledge. And it’s something that has to be worked at,
it does not come automatically. Effort
is required, under God’s grace, yes, but effort nevertheless, to learn and to
dwell according to knowledge. All right,
those are the three principles we studied two weeks ago, to dwell with
knowledge.
Now we come to the
principles of the woman that we discussed last week. Her first principle is identical to the
man’s, submit to God’s Word. She cannot
function as she should function unless she submits to God’s Word. As another illustration of this turn to
Genesis 3 for a moment and watch how Eve does not submit to God’s Word. Genesis 3:1, the pitch that the serpent makes
is an attack upon God’s Word and Eve falls for it. And the way Eve goes is the way many, many
today go. Notice the attack first, the
last part of verse 1, Satan “said unto the woman, Yea, has God said, You shall
not eat of every tree of the garden?”
The implication is in the question maybe God didn’t really mean what He
said. Maybe God’s Word doesn’t really
mean what it says. Maybe God’s Word has
some sinister motivation in mind. You
don’t have to take it seriously, you can put it off until tomorrow Eve, why not
just disobey it today and worry about the consequences tomorrow; God’s Word
doesn’t have the (?) to be obeyed.
And then in verse
2, “the woman said [unto the serpent], We may eat of the fruit of the trees of
the garden, [3] But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
garden, God said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye
die.” Eve is misquoting, God never said
that. In Genesis
Don’t misconstrue
this, however, Satan is not going to come to you with drums beating, with
sinister music playing in the background, in a red jumpsuit. Satan is going to come to you camouflaged and
the only way you can recognize his attack is to know what the Word says before
the attack comes. So if that’s the case,
then how do you recognize a satanic attack?
By thought and impulses that come to you that are totally and completely
antithetical to God’s Word. And how are
you going to recognize them? You can’t,
unless you know God’s Word. And this is
why Christians are vulnerable and we are going to see this in the passages
before us, how highly vulnerable we are, and I hope by the time we finish this
morning you’re going to have a deeper appreciation for the fact that right this
morning, right at this hour, the only reason that all of us are not deluded by
Satan is because of a certain type of ministry of Jesus Christ.
So the first
principle of the woman is submission, not to her husband here, this is
submission to God’s Word, that God’s Word becomes the ultimate authority. Couples who have problems in marriage
ultimately have problems because principle number one is not being
fulfilled. All other problems of the
second and third principles can be learned and can be dealt with, but most
problems, I’ll say this, all serious problems in marriage stem from the first
principle, not the second and third. The
second and third can be worked out if you agree on the first. Can the filling of the Holy Spirit in the man
fight against the filling of the Holy Spirit in the woman? Can Christ fight against Christ? Nonsense!
Therefore, if there is a serious problem it is because of the first
principle. We might as well name marital
problems for what they are; they are nothing more than duo carnality. And that’s exactly what they are; they are
rebellion against God’s Word from start to finish. And until the rebellion is dealt with by the
filling of the Holy Spirit, nothing can happen.
As a counselor I’m
helpless, I can only point to the principle that if you’re not going to submit
to the authority, the Word of God, there’s nothing… nothing that can be
done. The thing that overarches both
parties is the absolute authoritative Word and those of you who are having
trouble in your marriage, go back to the Word.
Don’t stand there and argue with one another, well he said, she said, I
say and all the rest of it. Who cares
what you and I say; the issue is what does the Word of God say? The next time, let me suggest a little
procedure, the next time you go at it hot and heavy have some sort of a
prearranged signal where you can kind of cool it for two to three minutes, call
a truce, wave a white handkerchief or something, somebody do something to cool
it, and then go and open the Word of God and sit down at a table with the Word
of God between you, and then continue the discussion in that environment and
see if it makes a difference.
So we have the
first principle of the woman, submission.
The second principle corresponds to the man’s second principle and as
the man has to learn how to work out his calling for his ‘ezer, so the woman has to learn to submit to the husband’s
management. And that has to be learned;
she has got to learn how to submit to her husband’s management. And his management is not going to be
infallible. But we showed last week
there’s a text and since we’re here let’s review, Genesis 3:16, “unto the woman
God said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children;” and this refers to physiological changes in the
woman’s body, all the way from menstrual cycles on down to childbirth. That’s all involved as a result of the
fall. That’s what this is talking about
if you take a literal Genesis. If you
don’t take a literal Genesis then just don’t bother to listen at all. But we believe in a literal Genesis and
therefore there are biochemical changes in the human body and this sets off all
sorts of moods and everything else.
So the woman has
this affliction, but her chief affliction is not physical, it’s psychological
and that’s indicated in the last part of verse 16 where it says, “and thy
desire shall be to your husband, but he shall rule over you,” there should be a
“but” in there, there’s a conflict. In
other words, she wants her husband very much but there’s something in her that
rebels, really, against his authority.
So women have an ambiguity in their soul that has been brought about by
the fall, and it’s something you have to learn to work with. On the one hand they want their husbands, but
on the other hand they don’t want his authority. Democracy went out in marriage at the fall;
at the fall God ordained that the man has the final say and therefore, chafing
as this may be, that’s the way God wants it done. So the second thing that the woman has to do
is she has to learn how to submit to the man’s managing authority, and it’s a
learning process, she isn’t going to learn overnight, men.
The third
principle corresponds to the third principle for the man. As the man has to learn to live with
knowledge, the woman has to learn the details of her submission. We gave you Proverbs 31 to indicate certain
areas, to show you indeed that the Old Testament woman was not some sort of a
doormat, she had tremendous responsibility, tremendous responsibility! But it was always underneath the authority of
her husband.
Now today we’re
going to deal with some proverbs. Turn
first to Proverbs 11:16; with the background of these six principles lets see
what the book of Proverbs teaches. All
through the proverbs today deal basically with the woman. But all three reflect principles for the
man. Now that’s going to be the way it
is throughout Proverbs. Proverbs does
not pick on the women, so let me head off at the pass anyone who comes up with
that. Proverbs is written to men,
therefore it primarily talks to men about women. But the principles taught about the women
have a reflection back on the man, so we’ll try to be fair to both sides.
Proverbs 11:16, “A
gracious woman retains honor, and strong men retain riches.” Now by itself it doesn’t seem to teach much
but let’s look at it. In the Hebrew it
is “the woman has grace,” or graciousness would be the best way, “the woman of
graciousness.” Now we have a problem
immediately with the word “graciousness” because fundamentally that word means
outward appearance. But if you’ll hold
the place here and turn to Proverbs 31:30 you’ll see a problem with the word
“graciousness.” We concluded last time
on this and here’s that word so we’ve got a problem because the word seems to
be good in the passage we have before us but in Proverbs 31:30 the word seems
to be bad and it’s the same Hebrew word.
If you look at Proverbs 31:30 it says, “Favor is deceitful, and beauty
is vain, a woman that fears the LORD, she’s the one that’s going to be
praised.” Now “favor is deceitful, and
beauty is vain,” the word “beauty” is “graciousness.” Now here Proverbs claims that graciousness is
just vanity, and yet on the other hand the passage before us says no,
graciousness is really something. Do we
have a contradiction in God’s Word? No,
the word primarily means outward appearance.
Grace is that which pleases and so the word graciousness means a woman
of pleasing appearance. So fundamentally
it does carry an outward physical connotation and that physical connotation is what
verse 30 means here.
But now what are
we going to do with Proverbs 11:16, “a woman of pleasing appearance,” it’s
going to have to mean, obviously, not the pleasing outward appearance but her
inner life. And so the first part of
verse 16 is “the woman of graciousness,” referring to her inner life, the woman
with that pleasing character, she does not… it doesn’t say “retain,” it means
attain, it means to grab hold of, it means to win, it means even to merit, she
merits honor, she gains honor, she grasps honor, and the word “honor” means
testimony, reputation. So this says that
there’s a certain character or quality about women and where this quality is
true of a woman she attains this honor.
Now Peter
amplifies it, turn to 1 Peter 3:1, the woman is to use this as her device or
tool, this is one of the most formidable, this is according to God’s Word, the most formidable weapon and tool in
the female arsenal. And yet very few
women use it; yet God’s Word inevitably goes back to this, every passage from
Genesis all the way over into the pastoral epistles, this thing occurs over and
over and over and over again. This is
not just isolated passages I’m showing you, in other words. “Likewise ye wives, be in subjection to your
own husbands that, if any obey not the word,” that is they’re non-Christians,
this is a believing wife and an unbelieving husband, “they may without the word
be won by the behavior of the wives.”
Now it’s interesting and you’ll see it again and again in Proverbs. Every time something bad is emphasized about
a woman the word “mouth” occurs in the verse.
And every time something good is emphasized about the woman, usually the
word “hands” or behavior is emphasized.
You check that some time when you’re reading God’s Word. And here you have something bad said, what
immediately comes? The mouth, the word,
“that they may without the mouth be won with a behavior pattern.”
1 Peter 3:2,
“While they behold,” “they” are the unbelieving husbands, “while they behold,”
the word means to study, to look at carefully, “your chaste” not conversations
in the King James, but “behavior patterns coupled with fear.” Now the fear isn’t a fear of humans, that
fear, and that’s one of the big points in verse 2, is the fear mentioned there
is respect for the authority of the Word of God. So the thing that the man sees in the woman’s
soul is the fact that she is submitting to God’s absolute Word. That is where the woman gets her
strength. She’s not as strong as the man
but she becomes stronger than the man by submitting to God’s Word.
1 Peter 3:3,
“Whose adorning, let it not be the outward adorning of braiding of the hair,
and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel.” Now some old New England fundies got hold of
verse 3 one time and they said therefore no woman, if she is really spiritual,
ought to wear makeup; no woman if she really is spiritual ought to approve her
appearance. And so Christian women in
New England for years and years, in fact in some fundamental circles they’re
still that way, look like the worst things that God ever carted out; besides
looking as though they combed their hair with a fan it looks like they are
doing their worst to put on an appearance that will embarrass the Lord Jesus
Christ. They go out of their way socializing
in it in the name of this verse. Now
there’s one very simple rule of interpretation that teaches you this can’t be
the interpretation of verse 2, because if they are not to put on the adorning
of the hair and the wearing of gold they ought not to wear clothes either
because the last phrase says “putting on or apparel.” And I haven’t yet seen the New England
fundamentalist woman follow that verse quite so literally. Obviously then it means that the woman is not
to put the emphasis there and we’ll see that again and again.
But, 1 Peter 3:4,
“let it be the hidden man of the heart,” all this sounds like oh yeah, that’s
what the Bible says but it doesn’t work in practice. Let me tell you something; the only places
where men are being won to Christ in homes is where this is being put to
practice and I have never seen a man led to Christ apart from this in a
marriage. So don’t come up with this in
a rejecting (?), it most certainly does, it’s the only thing you’ve got to
work. “…the hidden man of the heart in
that which is not corruptible, the meek and quiet spirit,” notice the word
“meek,” that’s another one of these key words that links up with the word
“fear” in verse 2. What is a meek
person? One who assumes their place on
the chain of command, one who assumes their place, neither higher nor lower,
neither inferior nor superior, “meekness” means just take your place in God’s
plan. “…meek and quiet, which in the
sight of God is of great price. [5] After this manner also in old time holy women
trusted in God,” see there’s the word again, like fear, “adorned themselves,
being in subjection unto their own husbands.”
So there is the powerful tool, and the point is that her testimony
reveals her fear of the Lord.
Now that basically
is the simple very day test that can be applied: can somebody look at your life
and see that if they look long enough and watch over a consistent time period
they’re going to see the fact that the Word of God is the ultimate authority in
your life, and that’s the test. Is that
happening or isn’t it? If it is fine, if
it isn’t you’ve got some changes to make.
Let’s go back to
Proverbs 11:16. That is the (?) thinking
woman, “the woman of pleasing appearance grabs honor.” To show how potent a tool this is, this is an
antithetical proverb which means the first part of the proverb contrasts with
the second part of the proverb and the second part of the proverb says, “strong
man” but the word in the Hebrew for strong means terrifyingly strong, it is a
word that isolates the strongest kind of man, “the strongest man grabs,” it’s
the same verb as the first part of verse 16, “grabs riches,” and the point is a
contest. Here is a, we’ll put (weak) in
parenthesis woman; to the outward appearances she seems weak. Here’s the strong, this is the absolute
strong man; here is the contrast, it’s antithetical parallelism. Now what is it that the strong man gets? Riches.
Riches are external; riches don’t involve changing the souls of people,
so your strongest man gets things, yes, he gets riches, but he can’t reach
inside the soul and change them. But the
women, the woman with this, she gets honor and you can’t get honor unless you
change people’s attitudes toward you. So
the woman, though she appears very, very weak, particularly in this proverb,
wins when it comes to doing battle with the strong man. The strong man can’t get hold of what she
gets hold of when she functions biblically, 1 Peter 3. So the woman then comes out on top, she has
the most powerful tool. And very, very few
Christian women in these situations know how to use it or even know of it. So Proverbs 11:16 is one Old Testament
version of 1 Peter 3.
All right, we come
to another principle, Proverbs 11:22. We
should have a little drawing that we had here one Wednesday night, some of the
girls gave one of the fellows a birthday party and drew a picture of a pig and
put a ring through its nose. But in
verse 22 we have a very sarcastic rendition of the woman’s beauty. “As a jewel of gold in a pig’s nose, so is a
fair woman who is without discretion.”
Now let’s go through this a moment, it’s an “as,” although it’s
understood it’s not directly stated, this means it’s comparative, this is not
an antithetic proverb like the previous verse.
This is a comparative proverb which means therefore the same principle
operates at the beginning that operates at the second part. “The jewel of gold” means the most valuable
thing. They picked out, to illustrate
the principle and to make it clear, “the jewel of gold” is expensive. This is the most expensive form of
jewelry.
So they took
something that is very, very expensive and very much sought after, “The jewel
of gold in a pig’s nose,” now the pig throughout Scripture is always a picture
of unbelief. It’s always a picture of
unbelief. The Jews, for example, in the
Old Testament they didn’t eat ham, that’s not by accident. True, in that day you had the problem of
trichinosis and an omniscient God was giving them medical help, but there’s a
deeper reason why they didn’t have ham.
The ham was set aside; the pig was set aside in history as a type of the
unbeliever. And so the point that he’s
making is take the animal that would be lowest down on the Hebrew totem pole,
the pig, and put in his nose the thing that would be the most sought after as
far as attractiveness. So that creates
the tension between an expensive piece of jewelry and the greatest thing versus
the worst thing.
Now let’s see how
the principle comes over in the man and the woman here. “A fair woman” the word “fair” is the Hebrew
word for beautiful, it means physically beautiful at this point. It’s not talking about inner beauty, it’s
talking about outer beauty, “A physically attractive woman which is without
discretion,” now that has to be adjusted to let’s adjust it. It doesn’t mean “without discretion,” as
though she’s never learned it. This word
comes from a Hebrew word to turn away from.
Now that changes the whole thing.
The woman pictured here is a believer who has rebelled against God’s
Word. It is a believer who has rejected,
whose gone on negative volition, who has turned away from which we’ll call
“discretion” or “conscience,” she has turned away from her conscience, some
other criterion is her life, her life follows, something other than her
conscience.
Now to appreciate
what’s happening we have to go back to the soul for a moment, let’s look at it,
how it’s built up and why this is happening.
Here’s the body, God breathes in a spirit and the result is the soul. Now the soul has the mind and the mind and
the conscience must operate. The
conscience is where all the standards of God’s Word are kept. This is where every time the Holy Spirit
opens your eyes to see something from the Word of God, whether you apply it
then or not, you have that lodged away in your conscience. Now look what happens, a very interesting
principle, you can come to church, you can come to Bible class, you can hear
the Word of God on tape and say to yourself well, that’s good and someday I
might apply it, or golly, that’s a pretty interesting principle, I might get
around to doing that someday.
Now look what’s
happened; five minutes before you heard that and understood that, it wouldn’t
have been a sin for you, but now it is.
Hearing the Word of God is a damning procedure. Now the Reformers always pointed that out,
Luther and Calvin, they always pointed that out, hearing the Word of God can be
a very damning thing to your soul if you don’t intend to submit to it because
you can’t hear and be neutral; volition is never neutral, it’s one way or the
other and you cannot decide, well tomorrow I’ll do it. Huh-un, we do it now or we rebel. And so this woman has taken in the Word of
God; her conscience is loaded with the standards from the Word of God. Her mind has submitted to those
standards. Over and over when she was
thinking something she’d now is this right or is this wrong? And all she had was the Word of God
circulating in her conscience to go by, that was her frame of reference, that
was her standard. Now her mind always
looked and always submitted to this.
As a result, her
emotions followed her mind. Now it’s a
fundamental principle, not just of God’s Word, but it’s a fundamental principle
about the way all of you are made. Do you
realize that the nearest, that part of your nervous system that has to do with
your emotions is on the involuntary side; you can’t change your emotions, you
can’t sit there and say I’m going to feel different, I’m going to feel
different, I’m going to feel different, there’s no way you can do that because
your emotions are plugged into the wrong circuit. The circuit that controls your emotions is
involuntary, not voluntary. So your
feelings and your emotions can’t directly be changed by you at all.
Now here is where
a lot of believers have failed completely.
You are led by your emotions. You
sit and you wait until you feel something; well you’ll be waiting a long time
until you feel something because feelings follow action, not precede it. You see, the involuntary side of your nervous
system, let’s illustrate it for a moment.
One of the involuntary sides of your nervous system controls your
breathing. Now you can sit here and try
to artificially increase your breathing; do you know what’s going to happen
after about three minutes? You’re going
to hyperventilate and you’ll be touching your toes. You can’t do that. How can you, though, increase your rate of
breathing? Run up and down the aisle,
don’t do it now but you can run up and down the aisle and that will improve the
rate of respiration. Now why is it, did
you change your respiration by willing to change it? No, you changed your respiration by doing
something to change it.
Now take the same
principle over into the area of spirituality; in the Word of God you know what
the Word says; you know what you ought to do.
Your conscience bears witness that this is what you ought to do. So you come to a situation in life, for example,
it may be that you come to a situation in life and you see that in your marriage
you’ve got a mess and you know from Matthew 5 and Matthew 18 that you ought to
initiate the process of reconciliation, you ought
to, that’s what conscience says, that’s what the Word of God says. The Word of God says whoever remembers the
falling out first has the moral obligation to initiate the reconciliation. But you know what always happens? Sure you do; well, I’ll wait till they come
crawling to me. Don’t be so poker
faced. That’s what happens. Pride, and so you get this haughty feeling, well
I’m not going to do it, I don’t feel led of the Lord. And we use pious words, doesn’t that sound so
nice, “I don’t feel led of the Lord.”
Now isn’t that sweet. What that
means is that you’ve looked in your heart and you don’t find emotions that really
quite send you in that direction. Your
wife or your husband may be in the other room and your emotions don’t want to
go out there right now. Now here’s where
you can apply something. Your emotions
aren’t ever going to want you out there; the only way your emotions line up is
if you say now look, I don’t care what my emotions say, the Word says this and
therefore, right left, right left, right left through the door. And you’ll find when that happens that the emotions
do gradually come into line, after you make that a habit pattern. The emotions are there. But what had to happen? The emotions had to be trained by you obeying
the Word of God.
Now it’s as simple
as that. Don’t sit around waiting for
the emotions to lead you because you feel led of the Lord. Listen, many is the day when I walk into my
office and have about 5 or 6 hours of translation before I can even start
exegesis, and I don’t feel like looking about a thousand Hebrew words, and I
don’t feel like checking the syntax out, and I don’t feel like checking in the
systematic theologies to see whether this lines up with Old Testament theology
or not. I don’t feel like it but I know
what God’s word tells me I have to do as pastor so I do it. Now with young people, that’s a lesson you’d better
learn and you’d better learn it quick, and some of you I can tell right now you
haven’t learned it because of your attitude toward you studies. You come to a situation on the campus, you
come to a situation in your life that you don’t feel like it and you get your
own way. You can hide this from your
parents, oh yeah, I studied today. Yeah,
sure you did. And you’re just thinking
you’re pulling the wool over your parent’s eyes; you’re not pulling the wool
over your parent’s eyes; you may be for a while but you are cheating yourself
out of learning one of the greatest lessons you can learn and that is to train
your emotions into line with your conscience.
Now this woman
described here is one who has not done this; she has deliberately not done this;
this is a woman who has turned away in verse 22, she has turned away from this
as a method of her life so now when her conscience says something her mind says
I don’t feel like doing it. And so her
mind says no, I don’t feel like it. Now
look what happens; which becomes authoritative, mind or conscience now? Mind becomes authoritative, there’s only one
problem, God didn’t intend your soul to function that way and when your mind
has authority over your conscience your mind is a very weak leader and as a
result, here is your emotions, and your emotions know that your mind is a very
weak leader, and so the first thing you know your mind revolts against you
conscience and you emotions revolt against your mind and you’re one big mess. And you have depression and you have
exultation and you have everything else.
And the first thing you know
you’ll be on the drugs or something else to make up for it, blaming your
mother, blaming your father, blaming your home, blaming something else, always
something but it couldn’t possibly ever, ever, ever be you.
And that is the role of the woman who has turned away, as a process in
her life she’s turned this way.
Now let’s see what
happens to her character. The beautiful
woman, she still has physical beauty on the outside, she is very, very
attractive physically, but she has left discretion, she has left it. She knew it once and she’s turned away from
it and now she has nothing on the inside.
Now let’s line up the two halves of the verse and see the parallel
principle. Here’s the jewelry, so you’ve
got the jewelry, [tape turns] … the make up is on to lose your attention to
something in back of the makeup. That’s
the point. Now the body, according to
the Jewish Old Testament belief is only there to lead your attention into the
soul. And this gives you right in a
nutshell, very quickly the whole Hebrew concept of beauty. The whole Old Testament time, the New
Testament for that matter, looks upon the body as the means for getting beyond
it to the soul. And that’s why love in
the Scriptures, in the second divine institution, doesn’t stop with the body,
it would be abnormal, considered from the Old Testament point of view it’s
abnormal, any more than you would stop with the jewelry on somebody. You see someone that’s very attractive and
forever and ever you just stop right with the jewelry, right with the makeup,
you don’t get to know them any more than that.
Now isn’t that abnormal?
All right, same
thing here, it’s abnormal to stop with the body, you go on from the body to the
soul, that’s the point. And that’s why
it’s such a ridiculous analogy that’s pointed out here. They say look at the pig, can you imagine a
pig going around with jewelry saying look it, look at me, look at me, look at
me. What, there’s nothing there to look
at. Why put a sign pointing to something
when there’s nothing there at the end of the arrow? All right, then why have a most beautiful
woman, a fantastic body, and it points to nothing, one big mess
underneath. That is just as bad as a pig
going around wearing the most expensive jewelry. In other words, you would say, wouldn’t you,
looking at this, that the jewelry is wasted on the pig? All right, then, the Old Testament person
would say the figurative beauty of that woman is wasted on her, she’s got
nothing behind it and it’s one big waste.
So single girls, that’s the Scriptural viewpoint.
Let’s look at
another verse, Proverbs 22:14, now we don’t prove the Word of God by this but I
think we can confirm it. Older men and
women, you know your partner for many, many years, think back to how you saw
them when you first saw them. Now when
you first saw your partner, when you first
saw them you could remember what they looked like physically; that occupied
your attention. But if you really stop
and think of it, right now, apart from looking at them, their physical form is
not uppermost in your mind. And the
reason is that you’re built the way the Bible says you’re built. And these function; whether you want to or
not you’re functioning this way because your soul is built to know another soul
and if you think of your partner right now you basically are thinking of their
soul, not of how they look.
Proverbs 22:14,
this brings in one further dimension in the equation. This is devoted to the stability of the
second divine institution, “The mouth of the strange woman,” see the word
“mouth” again; every time something’s wrong with the woman the noun “mouth”
appears, “The mouth of the strange woman is a deep pit, and he that is abhorred
by the LORD is going to fall in it.” Now
there’s humor involved in this but let’s go through the details. First, who is “the strange woman?” “Strange” is zarah, zarah usually in the Bible means a non-Israelite or a
Gentile woman; racially it means a Gentile woman. So what is this talking about; is this
prejudice of the Jews against the Gentiles?
Is that what this verse teaches, racial prejudice? No, Proverbs is a wisdom book and the word zarah used to mean racial, racially
different, but by the time we begin to have the wisdom literature, which is
1000 BC, there had been further developments in this word. And the word has now come to mean a character
difference.
I’ll prove it to
you; turn to Psalm 54:3; zarah does
not mean racial difference. Those of you
in the 1 Samuel series you recognize the heading, you remember it was the
Ziphites came, this was in the desert, but the Ziphites were Jews, they were
part of the tribe of Judah, they weren’t Gentiles, they were Jews. But what does it say in verse 3, “strangers
are risen up against me,” that’s zarah,
now see how David is using zarah,
he’s not using zarah for Gentiles
racially different; he’s using it for Jews that act like Gentiles. So the word zarah then means a character difference, just like we’d say so and
so doesn’t act like a Christian, whether they’re born again or not, and here,
whether they’re born Jews or not born Jews, the point is they don’t act like
Jews ought to. Now turn back to Proverbs
and let’s look at this woman.
The woman, obviously
then, is one that is not living by the law, she is not one that manifests her
character of spirituality in the Old Testament dispensation. She could therefore be what? She could be an unbeliever or she could be a
deeply carnal believer, one or the other; those are the two possibilities for
the zarah, the strange woman, “and by
her mouth,” we commented on that, now we move to the pit. What does the word “pit” mean, “The mouth of
a strange woman is a pit.” Now this word
is a very puzzling word because sometimes, and most of the time it means a
literal pit; it’s the picture is somebody is falling into a pit. Or you could take a very light view of the
verse and say yeah, I can understand the word “pit” that way, what happens is
she gives him a line and he falls for it, so he’s falling into a pit.
That could be, but
there’s a deeper meaning for this word “pit” and it’s found in Lamentations
3:20, this is unfortunately not well translated in the King James at verse
20. In the book of Lamentations which is
a book written when the nation Israel collapsed, when they went into the fifth
step of discipline in 586 BC Jeremiah stood outside and watched his nation go
into captivity under Nebuchadnezzar.
Lamentations is written and to this day in Israel the Jewish people
chant this book before the Wailing Wall.
It’s the book of lamentations, because they weep and they wail, and they
put themselves back into the time of Jeremiah and the prophets, the temple has
been destroyed, the temple has been destroyed, the temple has been destroyed, I
weep for my people. And so it’s a book
of depression. And in verse 20, “My soul
has them still in remembrance,” literally it means “they think down on my
soul,” it’s just a way of saying depressed, I am depressed. Now if that’s the verb which means they
depressed me, then what do you suppose the noun means taken from the verb? It means depression.
Now having found
that let’s come back and interpret the word “pit” of Proverbs 22:14, “The mouth
of the strange woman,” the carnal believer or unbeliever, “is a deep
depression.” It means not only does the
man get hurt, in the sense that he does certain things that lead to unfortunate
results, but it’s more than that, it’s the fact that in his soul he suffers
from mental depression. That’s what
happens; he falls into depression, he falls into tremendous mental agony and
depression, besides the physical things.
So there’s more to it than just the physical.
Now the key to
verse 14 is found in the last clause and with that we have a very, very
startling concept of spirituality. When
we finish Proverbs we’re going to spend some time on reviewing basic doctrines
for a little bit and we’ll bring this principle up which I haven’t taught
before. “He that is abhorred of the LORD
shall fall therein.” Now I’m glad that’s
in the Bible because I’ve ran across this in experience. And it’s interesting to watch what happens. The idea is this; here you have a believer
going on, they get out of fellowship.
They are on negative volition, they’re out of fellowship. They stay out of fellowship, compound
carnality sets in, they spend some more time out of fellowship, as a result
there’s a darkening of their soul so they can’t perceive certain things. Their soul is filled with human viewpoint
which means they can’t believe any more, they can’t even believe the things
they once believed any more, so there’s doubt.
Now as a result of this compound carnality, these people now become
victims of new sins, sins that they are helpless to face.
Let’s look at the
word “abhor.” “He that is abhorred of
the LORD,” that is a participle, it means his basic character, it means that he
has been in compound carnality for some time.
He has rejected God’s mercy, He has rejected God’s grace, He has put
away the Word of God, in practice though probably not in theory, in practice he
has, and therefore he is under the wrath of God. God is angry; the word “abhor” is simply the
word that means that God is angry; God has turned away from him. We’ll see that very graphically in Saul. “He that is abhorred,” he who has offended
God, God is angry with him, it’s that one who’s going to fall into the
pit. Now what does that imply about the
man with whom God is not angry? Doesn’t
the verse imply that there’s a certain protection in a tight relationship with
the Lord. This verse seems to indicate
by contrast that if a man were walking with the Lord, were walking in
fellowship, were mature, that he would not fall into many traps which he would
if he were not in fellowship.
Now that’s exactly
the teaching of this verse and I want to conclude today by taking you to two
startling passages in the New Testament.
One is in Matthew 6:13 of all places, the Lord’s prayer. The principle is: does a believer that’s way
out of it become liable and a victim of a whole new set of besetting sins that
he never had any problem with before?
Matthew 6:13, a request that is made in the Lord’s prayer that you’ve
prayed over and over and over and over, “Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil,” why is that necessary?
Why is that necessary to pray that?
Doesn’t God automatically deliver us from evil? And the word “evil” is singular, it means the
evil one; it means Satan, Satan’s in view in the Lord’s prayer. “Lead us not into temptation, but Lord, keep
us from the evil one.”
Now “the evil one”
always wants to attack Christians. And
when Christians are in compound carnality they give Satan a legal base for
doing so and God, in His sovereignty just kinds of backs off and backs off and
backs off and lets Satan attack where Satan would not normally attack the
person. This is one of the tragedies of
compound carnality, where the believer opens himself up to that assault; assaults
that he can’t understand. Why, I can’t
even use seemingly any of the passages any more against these things, it
doesn’t work, the Word of God doesn’t work any more. Why does that happen? It’s because he’s been abhorred of God and
God said all right, you didn’t listen to My Word, you’ve rebelled over in this
area, so now you’re going to suffer here, here, here and here, I’m just going
to back off and I’m going to stop My stop my insurance policy, I’m going to
terminate the insurance policy, so to speak, over a little area of your life. So now you’re going to become liable to this
kind of a thing.
Let’s see a more
graphic illustration in Luke 22:31, this gives you the mechanics in a real life
situation, how it all works. This is
repeated thousands and thousands and millions and millions of time in our
lives. Peter has a tendency and a very
bad weakness in his soul to assert his authority over God’s authority. Remember what his reaction was when Christ
said I’m going on the cross? No you’re
not, I say you’re not. Now think of the
audacity of Peter saying this. For all
eternity God has decreed His Son would die on the cross; we come down to the
eleventh hour, after God has worked century after century after century, after
God has manipulated, so to speak, history to bring about the Roman Empire so
the conditions are just right, Caiaphas is the high priest, the condition is
just right there, the processes have all been fulfilled, conditions are just
right there, everything’s just right, every bit of God’s sovereign omnipotence
working down through history, and we come to the eleventh hour and Peter says I
veto it God. Now that, in perspective,
is Peter’s sin. It is a rebellion
against God’s sovereign plan. That’s why
it’s so serious. Jesus recognizes its
serious and he makes the very interesting words, says He to Peter.
“And the Lord
said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you
as wheat. [32] But I have prayed for
you, that thy faith fail not. And when
you art converted, strengthen the brethren.”
Well, what does that mean? We
don’t know all the details but the Lord Jesus Christ as God and man knew
something, He knew that Peter, the man whom He really loved in the flesh, had a
severe weakness in his soul, in fact, Peter had a trait of rebelliousness in
his soul that had to be wiped out, and the Lord saw that. In some way the Lord Jesus perceived this
about Peter, and in His omniscience apparently the Lord Jesus Christ actually
heard Satan come to the Father and say Father, I’ve got grounds in that man,
let me have him. Now look, this is a
believer… this is a believer at this point, and Satan says Father, I’ve got
grounds, let me have him. And the Lord
Jesus Christ witnessed this whole thing go on and He said, “But I have prayed,”
the word, I have made intercession for you Peter, “and I have prayed,” notice,
He hasn’t prayed that Satan not get Peter, notice that. Satan is going to get Peter, but “I have
prayed that your faith fail not” while he’s getting you. While you suffer his attack, Satan is going
to assault you Peter, but I’ve foreseen it, and I’ve prayed that as he comes
and as he assaults you, your faith will not fail, that God the Father will
provide sufficient mercy and grace to get you through the trial. I’ve prayed for you.
“And when you are
converted,” that doesn’t mean he becomes a Christian, that means he confesses
and he gets back in fellowship, “when you are converted,” then Peter, you can
“strengthen the brethren.” The idea
being that right now Peter can’t strengthen anybody, he’s not prepared to do
it, only after he’s converted, after he’s been through this shocking
experience, only then will he be capable of strengthening the brethren.
Now that has a
very interesting truth of application for us.
Let’s turn to Romans 8, a verse that you should all be familiar with but
turn there in case you aren’t. I want to
leave you with this principle that we’ve discovered in Proverbs, in a totally
different area, but it’s a principle that applies all over the board, that “he
that is abhorred is going to fall into the pit,” and he who is on the outs with
God is going to open himself up for satanic attacks that you can’t
believe. But, how is it then that our
eternal security is kept. Did you notice
one of those things? Did you notice one
of the phrases that Jesus said, He said “Peter, I pray for you, that your faith
fail not.” What would happen if Peter’s
faith “failed not”? He couldn’t
appropriate any grace, could he? Could
he ever use 1 John 1:9 if he didn’t believe it?
Therefore Jesus had to pray Peter, “I pray that your faith,” it’ll be
hurt, you’re going to doubt, you’re going to get angry, you’re going to curse
God for ever letting this happen in your life, but Peter, “I pray” and your
faith is going to go down but it’s always going to be there so you have a
minimum amount available so you can come back and appropriate grace.
Now that is the
result of something maybe you’re unconscious of as a believer; maybe you’ve
been taught eternal security, you’ve never thought how are you kept eternally
secure? Don’t you realize that it’s not
an automatic thing, it’s true justification is a once and for all thing, but
eternal security is administered moment by moment in your life by a doctrine
called the intercession of Jesus Christ.
That’s what Romans 8:34 is all about.
“It is Christ that died,” aorist tense, once and for all, it is Christ
that died, yea, it is Christ that rose again, once and for all, that present
tense “who is even at the right hand of the Father, and who is making,” now,
present tense, over and over and over and over and over and over “intercession
for us.” What kind of prayers is Jesus
making for you? The same kind of prayers
He made for Peter. Satan has desired to
have us, to sift us, to attack us in our weak points, and Christ is not praying
that we be absolved from the trial, He’s just praying that our faith fail us
not in the middle of it.