Clough Proverbs Lesson 69

DI #2: Proverbs on Marriage

We continue our study in Proverbs, it has to do with the second divine institution. As we have indicated, God has divided into spheres all of life, and as believers in Jesus Christ we ought to be skillful in understanding the roles, or regulations, or design of each one of these spheres. Suffering is caused whenever we take rules or items that properly belong to one sphere and move them over into another sphere, as for example, state intervention-isms, when the state is made the Messianic savior of society, the state saves, because the state controls the first, second and third divine institutions. All of that is a violation of the way God ordered the thing from the beginning.

We are studying the second divine institution, marriage, and in this we have devised a summation of the principles of God’s Word, for both the man and the woman. There are many principles but I think we can summarize them by at least these three. The first one for the man is that he submits to the authority of God’s Word. It’s very hard for some men to do because they’re used to thinking that this is for women or something, but to submit to the authority of God’s Word. A man cannot be respectable until he is respectable and the only way a man can be respectable is by submitting to God’s authority. He can’t expect people to submit to his authority if he doesn’t submit to God’s authority.

The second thing or second principle that summarizes the biblical teaching about men is he must learn how his woman fits his calling. And this is the classic problem of the wife versus the job. The Bible doesn’t know this tension because the Bible says that the woman is the man’s ‘ezer, she’s his helper, that God has provided to help him in his calling, and it’s artificial and something very unbiblical if there’s a tension between the wife and the job. And this is something that takes time to see how it all fits together but nevertheless, this is a sound biblical principle.

A third principle for a man is that he has to learn, and this is something, he has to learn how to love her with knowledge. It takes a lot of knowledge, and that’s what 1 Peter speaks of, “dwell with them according to knowledge.” And this is knowledge that can only be accumulated with time and experience, but it is a necessary point if the man is to function properly.

The three principles for the woman, she starts out the same way the man does; submits to the authority of the Word of God. Now once again you see the importance of the Word and once again you see that the first divine institution precedes the second divine institution. You see, these institutions are all built on top of one another and if you let the first one go, human responsibility before God, you have to let the second, third and fourth institutions go. So the second institution, marriage, is built on the first one and that’s where it shows right up in both the man and the woman, their personal responsibility to God and His Word. And please notice that this is responsibility to the Word independently of what the woman is doing. Now all too frequently happens in marriage that if one partner is out of it spiritually the other one is dragged down. And that isn’t the way marriage was originally designed. If one partner gets out of it the other one is to stay with it and stop allowing anger, bitterness, and resentment to come in and destroy the relationship. The Word of God is primary.

And then the second principle for the women is to learn the necessity of submission to her husband’s management and his calling, in other words, just as she has to see how she fits with the calling she has to see how submission is involved, how actually she fits to the calling, basically the same lesson except from the woman’s point of view. The third principle that we studied from Proverbs 31 was that the woman learned how to submit in the details of life, what areas and how to.

This morning we’ll continue our study from specific proverbs and we’re going to watch how these three principles appear time and time again. Turn to Proverbs 12:4 we’ll have our first. Hopefully before we’re through this morning you will learn some very valuable lessons about how you wound up with some of the partners some of you wound up with, because the Bible also gives you principles for that, so you might find some good excuses.

Proverbs 12:4, “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that makes ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.” Now the first word, “virtuous woman,” looks like this in the Hebrew, chayil, and chayil is the word used in Proverbs 31, and “virtuous woman” sounds like some sort of a prude or something, that’s actually not what the word means. Now I didn’t do this when we went to Proverbs 31 but we have more time this morning so I want to take you to another place in the Bible where chayil is used and it gives you a very clear indication of what this characteristic is.

Turn to Exodus 18:21, in Exodus 18:21 we have the passage used for men, but the principle holds. That’s something you want to watch, in case you think this is some prudish woman, it’s applied to the man here. “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, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of ten.” Now “able men” are “chayil men.” Notice in the context what chayil is talking about; it’s not talking about somebody being a prude, chayil means managing ability. And it should forever end the myth that the Bible, by speaking of submission on the part of the woman renders her kind of an automated doormat. The woman is never cast in Scripture in that position. Proverbs 31, the woman, the virtuous woman, the chayil woman is one who manages, just like the men in this passage manage. She is given authority over certain areas and she’s responsible and carries out those things in those areas.

Also in Exodus 18:25, same passage, same word, same context, “And Moss chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads,” in other words, chayil refers to ability to assume responsibility inside a structure. God has a structure, Moses has a job that he needs done and he needs chayil people to do it. The woman, then, when she is described as a chayil type of woman means she is a mature woman and a responsible woman; she is not inactive, she is not totally passive, but she is submissive. Now how is she submissive and yet still active? The reason she can be submissive and still active is like these men. Weren’t these men active, they sure were; they were commanders over small and larger units? They certainly were active officers. But how come we can describe them as submissive officers? Because they were submitting to higher authority. But the higher authority and the submission to it didn’t make them inactive statues; it didn’t make them doormats. It made them functioning inside of an authority structure.

So turning back to Proverbs 12:4, we understand certain things then about the virtuous woman. She is a woman that has exercised all three of those principles we’ve studied. First of all, she’s positive to the Word; she can submit to her husband’s calling because she has already first submitted to the Word of God. And when she has submitted to the Word of God she has gone on record, as it were, in trusting God to work out the rough edges on her husband and on the calling. She can submit knowing that she’s not going to be threatened. God is going to protect her and honor her because she first has trusted in the Word. And because she has trusted in the Word she can claim God’s protection in all other areas of life. She, in other words, is safe, and she is confident because she has first placed her complete trust in God’s Word, and God is bound to honor His Word when we trust Him.

Second point about the chayil woman is that she has finally learned where she fits. She is the ‘ezer, she has come out of the side, so to speak, she fits; she fits into the area to which her husband has been called. And some have asked questions about job changes and so on. When we talk about calling we’re not talking about specific jobs; when we talk about calling we’re talking a man’s whole life, from beginning, from the time he accepts Christ until the time he dies, the whole life and what it stands for so that when that man leaves this world he can look back and say I accomplished something, something that’s worth while for eternity. That’s what we mean by calling, the overall thing, regardless of the individual shift from job to job thing, but it’s the overall picture.

And the third thing that the chayil woman is that she has learned to submit in the details, down in the practical area, so here’s the chayil woman, the virtuous woman and what is the result of her being a chayil woman? She “is a crown to her husband.” Now the crown is a symbol often used in Scripture for completion. It means authority but it also means completion. The crowns at the end in the book of Revelation; the completed sanctifying work of Jesus Christ in the lives of believers. So the “crown of her husband” means that she has fulfilled him in his calling, she has helped him do what God has called him to do. Therefore, she is his crown. In other words, his work is producing an impact for Jesus Christ; his work counts eternally, it’s not just wasted motion, it’s not just marking time but it’s moving forward, its worthwhile, and it has made some sort of a testimony on his associates and so forth. So here is a man who has a tremendous crown and it indicates that her husband, here, is a man who deeply enjoys life. He enjoys life like no man can unless his woman is this kind of a woman. “The virtuous woman is the crown of her husband.”

Now this passage, with the addition of the crown here, shows the same principle that’s taught back in 1 Peter 3:1-6, where it teaches that the woman who submits to God has a powerful effect on her husband. Most women are unaware of the power of the arsenal they possess. But they have an awesome arsenal. And God has designed the woman to have a very powerful effect on her husband. But most women think that the arsenal that they have is their mouth, and that is not part of the tool. Now that can be used at times but 1 Peter 3:1-6 mentions specifically that this arsenal is the behavior pattern of the woman, not her mouth. And as we have indicated, it’s ironic but true, that in the book of Proverbs wherever you have female carnality pointed out the word “mouth” always seems to be stuck in the verse. And where you have female spirituality pointed out, always the word “wife” or “hand” seems to be in the passage. Now that should automatically show you the thrust that the Holy Spirit is trying to make in His Scripture.

All right, what’s the opposite, “she that makes ashamed,” in the Hebrew this is a participle, it means continual character, this is her abiding characteristic, that she “makes ashamed.” Now the word “ashamed” is a word used in the Old Testament for false prophets; it has the idea that the false prophet makes some sort of a prediction and when that prediction doesn’t come true, he is said to be “ashamed.” That’s why God often says to His prophets, I will shame the false prophets, the same word, it means the same thing. What does it mean? It means that something that the man has counted on, something that he has, so to speak, put his money on, invested his time in, doesn’t produce; it just doesn’t come to pass. So the woman who makes ashamed in the context and comparing it with the opposite in the first part of the verse is a woman who is totally frustrating her husband in his calling. She frustrates him personally, and as a result she frustrates him on his calling. So this is just the total word for frustrated husband.

“She who continually makes ashamed,” now why does this woman continually make ashamed? All right, go back to the three principles again, let’s review; we’ll repeat these 4 or 5 times so maybe you’ll learn one before we’re through. The first principle is she rejects the authority of God’s Word; that’s how all this starts out. This is a woman who cannot stand the Word of God; the only time she can stand it is when it applies to somebody else and then she’s real good at that, but as far as applying it in her own life she can’t, she rebels. Now I don’t say that she goes around saying I disbelieve the Bible; I’m not saying that she would go around saying that God doesn’t exist. That’s not the way most people rebel against the Word of God. Let’s be honest. Most people rebel against the Word of God by simply saying something like this: well, I know that’s what the Bible says but you know, I’m human, and you’ve got to be practical, or other ways of rebelling; I know that’s what God wants me to do but we’ll do that tomorrow. Or, I don’t have time right now to do that. Or I don’t really understand it, when in matter of fact you do; you just don’t want to understand it. Now those are ways more popular than just strict atheism of rebelling against the Word of God and the authority. So there are very nice sweet ways of doing it, we’ll just say “sweet.” That “sweet” rejection of the Word of God, whatever she does she does it sweetly but it’s still rebellion against God’s Word.

And this leads to the second thing; having rebelled against God’s Word she’s never going to see where she fits and so she creates some sort of a thing like this, a little tug or war between the husband and his job and this kind of thing starts going on. This is the woman who constantly makes ashamed. Now we’re not saying every time this is so it’s always due to the wife, it can be due to the husband too, but in this case the woman who constantly makes ashamed, she’s doing it. And then obviously she’s a failure in the details of life. The house looks like a tornado hit it all the time; and when her husbands steps through the door after a hard day wham, he can’t even get his foot through before he gets a massive confrontation. And he doesn’t even have time to put his hat down before she’s at him. Now that’s the kind of thing where a woman is very unwise and stupid according to Scripture.

So, “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, and she makes ashamed,” constantly, and therefore “she who makes ashamed constantly is as rottenness in his bones.” Now the “rottenness in his bones” is a word that means psychosomatic illness. I want to take you to a passage where this comes out. Turn to Proverbs 14:30, here’s where it occurs again. “A sound heart is the life of the flesh, but envy, the rottenness of the bones.” Now you see in verse 30 there’s antithetic parallelism here? You have the flesh contrasted with the bones. Now that’s just a way of using synonyms for body. The heart says, in verse 30, “the sound heart,” that’s one where the conscience is not violated, where there is an obedient attitude to what is known of the will of God, that’s a sound heart, and it results in health. Now this is not teaching that you’re going to be healthy always and perfectly because you’re spiritual. This is simply saying, though, realistically, that spirituality does have a powerful effect on your body. And the converse is also true, envy, or anger, or resentment, is “rottenness of the bone,” it’s going to have a very telling effect on your physical health. So the phrase, “rottenness of the bone” is a phrase that refers to psychosomatic illness.

And doctors, if you’re ever around them, will tell you often that most patients that walk into a doctor’s office today suffer from psychosomatic illness: most! And the ones that do have bona fide illnesses, it’s aggravated also by psychosomatic effects. And many doctors are pressured to give you a pill or this and that because you don’t think they’re doing their job unless they give you a pill, and as a matter of fact, they should give you a sermon. I know one doctor in Houston, when he spots this kind of a thing he just goes on and he has a whole bunch of material and he just goes in and shows them how to relax with the Word of God. And that’s his prescription and unless they’re willing to do that, just forget it and go to some other doctor. He doesn’t do that obviously with every patient but he’s caught the point that a lot of this stuff is just a waste of time, a waster of doctor’s time, waste of the drugs, a waste of your money when all of this is unnecessary. It basically comes out because of resentment, hostility, jealousy, anger, hatred and so forth.

Well, going back to Proverbs 12, this is what’s happening to the husband here. “She that makes ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.” In other words, she has the effect on him that envy would have in his own heart. She has a powerful effect on his physical health. Now if you don’t think this verse right here in particular is teaching how fantastically strong the wife’s influence is over her man I don’t know what kind of a verse I can take you to in Scripture. Now for those of you who are saddled with unbelieving husbands, and you fuss and so on and gripe, you jus think a moment. If the mechanics of Proverbs 12:4 are true and you literally can cause bad health in your husband, you have a very powerful effect, and the Word of God testifies to you that the woman is in a position of tremendous influence. All she has to do is begin to use some of the assets God has given her and she has fantastic, fantastic influence. This is the root, probably, of the old saying that she manages him and he doesn’t know it. Well, in a way that’s true, as degrading as it may sound to the man; it isn’t degrading, it just means she’s functioning as she should.

Now in Proverbs 18:22 we have another proverb. Again we’ll look at this proverb, see what principles we can find, obeyed or disobeyed. Now this verse teaches a very remarkable truth and it will answer some of your questions; how did I get saddled with the person I got stuck with. All right, now please let me preface my remarks with the fact I didn’t write this, God did, and this is not an excuse to trot out of here and get a divorce, but this does tell you something how you might have wound up with the person you wound up with. Let’s look at it: “Whoso finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the LORD.” Now all the verbs in verse 22 are past tense, “whoso has found a wife has found a good thing, and has obtained favor from the LORD.” It really doesn’t matter whether you take it as past or present the principle is the same. Now finding a good thing, the word tob or good, “whoso finds a wife” tob, finds a good thing,” the way this good is used it refers to the position she holds in God’s plan for that man’s life. In other words, that man has a plan given to him by God; God has decreed his will for that man and she is good in the same way Eve was good for Adam. Do you remember after God created Adam, he created him bisexually, and Adam was said to be in a “not good,” or a “low tob” position, a no good condition without a woman. And God proceeded to give him, so this word actually gets its picture from the Adam and Eve story where Eve is made to fulfill Adam.

“Whoso finds a wife has found a good thing,” now it’s the next clause that tells us something very interesting. “And has obtained a favor of the LORD.” Now the word “favor” isn’t just the word “favor; this is a special word, a technical word, used in the Old Testament, over and over to refer to a very important blessing. It doesn’t refer to any blessing; this was a very important blessing, a highest favor.

Seeing how this is used in Proverbs turn to Proverbs 8:35. Here’s the same term, you can see for yourself how it’s used. This is talking about not a wife but wisdom or chokmah. “Whoso finds me, finds life,” chokmah says, “and shall obtain favor of the LORD,” same clause, it means the same thing. Do you see how important this particular favor is; this is not just favoring you with nice weather for a picnic. This favor is a very, very fundamental important favor; chokmah, the sine quo non of Christian maturity. Now what about the mechanics of obtaining a favor. Now here’s where Proverbs teaches a most interesting thing.

Turn to Proverbs 12:2, same clause, look what happened. “A good man obtains favor of the LORD, but a man of wicked devices will He condemn.” Now, upon whom does God give the good? He gives the good to a man who is open to grace. That’s the man that obtains the favor and there are some men that are not going to obtain the favor according to these verses. How do we know he’s closed to grace; how do we know that’s really what is meant here? Because what are his wicked devices? His wicked devices are substitutes for grace; always some gimmick, always some human good, always something that has to replace what God is going to do. I’m going to do it with my designs, I don’t consult God, I work out my plans for my business, this business about relying on God is for those weaklings, I don’t believe it and so on. And so here’s the man of wicked devices and God condemns him. Now who receive the condemnation?

Now then, if a wife is the favor of the Lord and if she’s the good, what our verse is talking about in Proverbs 18:22 is that the man who has received the wife, who has found the wife, who has found a good thing, that man is a man who has been given his wife by grace. In other words, the reason he wound up with her was because God, so to speak, responded to his openness. That man was open to God’s grace and God graced him with a good woman. Now the converse is that a man who’s trying to go with it on his own, who’s totally out of it, God is going to let him wind up with a shrew.

Turn to Ecclesiastes 7:26, the Jewish people have a joke about this verse, Proverbs 18:22 and Ecclesiastes 7:26, it was a joke that went on for several centuries in the time of Jesus Christ, about His time. It was made up of a verb that they took out of Proverbs 18:22 and they took another verb out of Ecclesiastes 7:26 and I’ll show you this verse and then we’ll show you the joke. What you see in verse 26 unfortunately is not the joke; this isn’t a joke at all. This is Solomon when he was out of it, “And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, her hands as bands; whoso pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be taken by her.” In other words, Solomon is saying if I as a man am open to God’s grace, He’s going to deliver me from this kind of a woman. If I am in rebellion against His plan for my life He’s going to stick me with one.

So some of you men that are griping about what you got stuck with, on the basis of Scripture you ought to go back and say what was your spiritual condition when it all happened. The woman that you apparently can’t stand is nothing more than a monument to your own carnality. God gave her to you and she fit the way you were at that time. You were not deserving of a better woman. Now this is not an excuse for divorce because God gives in grace means for coping with the situation. But instead of blaming God for this, please notice, huh-un, God can’t be blamed for this because it was you who rebelled against his grace; you were the one who was rebelling, and this is just a note of warning for you who are single, please don’t flirt around when you’re out of it. I don’t know how many times in a marriage counseling situation the question comes up, here these two are totally incompatible from the human point of view, just at each other’s throats; the obvious question is what did you see in each other to start with; how did it all begin? I don’t know, I must have been wearing blinders. That’s right. You sure were, and the blinding started with rebellion against God’s Word. That’s where it started. So you can’t turn around and blame God, why did God let this happen to me? It’s always God’s fault. It’s not God’s fault at all, it’s your fault, you’re the one out of it and so He just brought one that fit you; that’s the way you are and that’s the one you belong with.

So in Ecclesiastes 7:26 the word “find,” that’s the same Hebrew verb except it’s written different in the Hebrew. It’s written like this (?) and in this situation it is a participle. And that means “I am finding,” Solomon is saying. In other words, I go on in my carnality and I find over and over and over again; I look at this nice doll and she always turns out to be a clod; now how is it that I always wind up this way? And it’s a process of (?), see, Solomon had a thousand illustrations, so it took him a little time to find this out, it took a process of time so he uses a participle, “I am finding,” now here is what would be repeated to a newlywed when the man would go back to his job in Palestine after he had married, the other men on the job would ask him, [says Hebrew words], they would say (?) this is the participle, taken from Ecclesiastes, or they would say (?) meaning you have found. They would say are you finding or have you found, and the slogan was built off these two verses. In other words, what did you get stuck with now? And it would be a reference to both of these passages of Scripture; see the verb is taken from verse 26, that’s the participle, “I am finding,” and then turning back to Proverbs 18, “I have found.” I have found the wife that God has for me.

So I hope at least I have settled some arguments, probably created new ones but at least we’ll settle some. How did you get wound up the way you were? Because you were both out of it. And the answer is not to undo things, the answer is to get with it and see what God can do with it.

Now, let’s go back to the principles on the man’s side of the ledger now. We’ve dealt with the woman in the previous verse, now this is the man’s fault here. What’s the matter with him? Negative volition toward God’s Word, he hasn’t been submitting to the authority of Scripture. God has called him to do a certain thing in his life, he’s been around the Word, he’s heard the Word, and he refuses to apply the Word. He knows he ought to be taking in the Word but he’s too busy, he’s got too many other competing things that are more important than God’s Word and so for various reasons he has a sour rejection. See, the woman is sweet, and he’s sour in his rejection toward God’s Word. As a result, he can never figure out the connection between his calling and his wife. This is always a problem in his life; never can get the two together. Reason: because he’s been in first rebellion against God’s Word. And as a result he does not know how to manager her because he does not know how to love her… he just does not know at all, he doesn’t know the first thing about getting along with this woman. He doesn’t know how to handle her at all in this situation, due to negative volition toward God’s Word.

Let’s look at another proverb; this one goes back to the woman. We’ve dealt with the woman, then the man, now Proverbs 19:13, this is good Hebrew sarcasm. The last part of verse 13, the first part of verse 14, the last part of verse 13 deals with a woman; verse 14 deals with a man. “A foolish son is the calamity of his father,” we’ll let that go for now, “and the contentions of a wife are a continual drip.” Now the word “contentions” means quarrelsome. This woman is always yakking about something. If there’s peace in the house you can’t stand it, you’ve got to have a fight going, you’ve got to have a disagreement, we’ve got to have a tug of power going on, and this is the continually quarrelsome person. That’s the way this is used over and over in Proverbs, it’s a standard phrase, “contentions of a wife are a continual drip.”

Now the picture that’s meant here, if you’ll turn to Proverbs 27:15, here’s where the full picture is given, in another proverb, but we want to visualize what’s on the man’s mind. “A continual dripping in a rainy day and a contentious woman are the same thing.” Now what’s wrong with a continual drip? You can’t turn it off; you can’t stop it from raining; that’s the point. No way you can stop this thing from raining. You just sit here, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, and in the ancient homes they didn’t have storm windows like we do, where you can put them down and shut off the noise. Not in ancient Israel, in ancient Israel they had these homes wit the windows wide open, it had a grid over it but that was all. So on a rainy day there was no way to get away from this drip, drip, drip, and usually the roofs leaked and so not only was it dripping over the eaves outside your window, it was usually dripping inside the house. So while this is going on, the point of this whole thing is there’s no way to get around the thing, it’s just there and you have to grin and bear it, and that’s just the way it is with a woman that’s always picking a fight. You can’t turn her off, you just sit here and use ear plugs, and no matter what happens you can’t get away from it. All right, that’s the picture.

Now come back to Proverbs 19 and you understand what the continual drip is. See, I’m giving you men an idea, sometimes when your wife is in one of these states, you know what you ought to do? Draw a picture of the rain and just stick it up there some place that she can see it. And put Proverbs 27:15 underneath and just go off and see if anything happens. This is the contentions of a woman now.

Proverbs 19:14 comes to the other side, see, that’s the woman and what she causes; see, she has a fantastic effect for good or evil on her husband. Here she’s driving him nuts. In verse 14 this goes to the man again and rehearses the same principle we picked up in 18:22, that the man gets a woman by God’s intervention in history. “House and riches are the inheritance of fathers, but a prudent wife is from the LORD.” Now “hose and riches are the inheritance of the fathers” means that that was what we will say a normal cause and effect. It was guaranteed by the law; a son could be assured that he was going to have the riches under the Mosaic Law. The law guaranteed this… it guaranteed this! Therefore, if it guaranteed this the son could always be assured of it. But the contrast in the verse is between the assurance of the first part of verse 14 and the lack of assurance of the last part of verse 14. See the contrast? “House and riches come from the father,” I can count on it, “but a prudent wife is comes from the Lord.”

Now we have to spend a little time on the word “prudent.” The word “prudent” comes from a verb, s-k-l, sakal, and sakal means skill, skill in practical things. In the Old Testament the skill is not talking a philosophical wisdom all the time, it’s talking about practical things. The tailors who worked on the tabernacle had skill; the carpenters who helped build the wood part had skill. The ideal image of skill is Abigail, and we’re going to turn there for a moment, some of you have not been in the 1 Samuel, I want to turn to give you a picture of a skillful woman.

Turn back to 1 Samuel 25 for a moment; Abigail is the model woman in Scripture for maschil, when you convert the verb into a noun you add “m” and you get maschil. Now Abigail, granted, this is not the kind of a name that you’d always like to have on your wife or daughter, but nevertheless, Abigail, 1 Samuel 25:3, this is a picture of the maschil wife. “The name of the man was Nabal,” that means idiot. And we don’t know whether this word was Nabal was picked up because all the men in the village called him an idiot or not, but that’s what the word means, idiot. “And the name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance,” as we pointed out in the evening series, this woman had a very, very unusual combination. She was extremely beautiful physically and she was extremely beautiful in her soul. And this combination was a winner any way you count it. And so she was married to this clod called Nabal. “But the man was churlish,” that’s the King James way of saying he was a cheater, “and evil in his doings,” he was the gyp artist of the city. [4] “And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep.” Now David comes up here and Nabal is going to shear the sheep to pay off David. [Tape turns]

…but these Amalekites were the tribe that always used to raid, they’d come in like this, raid, raid, raid, raid, and so the sheep ranchers had to have some sort of a protection, and David and his men were functioning as barriers against the raids of the Amalekites, but David was going to be paid, see, you get paid at harvest time, you get paid at shearing time, and so it was shearing time and David expected to be paid. And so verse 7 he sends his shearers and to make a long story short, Nabal doesn’t know who David is, you know, who’s David? And he’s just trying to gyp David like he’s gypped most of the men. And so verse 13, David decides that this is one idiot that’s not going to live. You don’t gyp David. So David is going to “gird on every man his sword,” that’s his answer to Nabal and he’s going to conduct a raid on Nabal. And he is going to get his pay.

Now here’s where enters the beautiful woman. One of the young men told Abigail; she’s the woman that’s chayil, she’s the woman maschil, she’s very, very skillful and so she goes and she gifts David in the wilderness, she meets him. And when she meets him, verse 23, she begins to exercise fantastic influence on a man here who has already made several command decisions to annihilate a whole area. Now you watch this because how Abigail works, she never loses her femininity. At no point is she being at all nagging, yet she completely reverses David and actually saves David because if David went along and killed Nabal he would have blood on his hands in a way which is described in 1 Samuel. We can’t go into that except to say that Abigail is literally saving David from a very, very bad situation indeed. But she does it and has this powerful influence over this man with her skill and her wisdom.

So watch how she acts; verse 23, she hasten, she fell down before David on her face, she bows herself to the ground. Now that’s not being obsequies, she’s just recognizing his authority as king. So the first thing you notice about this woman is she recognizes the man’s authority; she’s not trying to undermine David’s authority whatsoever. And she says [24] “Upon me, my lord, let this iniquity be, and let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thy hearing, and hear the words of thine handmaid.” So the next tactic she uses, very clever, David’s mad. In back of him he’s got 200 men that are going down this road with their weapons, they’re going to kill. So they’re all worked up. Now Abigail knows this, so how can she pull the fuse out and just defuse the situation enough to talk; you can’t conduct negotiations in an atmosphere where they’re ready to kill somebody. So Abigail hits on a very brilliant scheme of diffusing the whole thing. She says all right, I know you guys want to kill me, here I am, I am Nabal’s wife. Now the first one plunge your sword in to me; now she knows they’re not going to do it, partirualrly because she’s a very attractive woman and they’re all ahhh at this point, but it’s a very clever tactic that she has because it forces them to stop their emotions. Their emotions are to kill at this point, and so she deals with that emotion, the emotion that’s anger and hatred toward killing. And that’s the first thing she deals with here. Again, does she deal by nagging? Huh-un, she does it with a very clever tactic.

Then in verse 25, she begins to deal with the situation, after she’s diffused it, then she begins to take the bomb apart piece by piece. “Let not my lord, I pray thee, regard this man of Belial, this Nabal; for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name and folly is with it,” that means my husband is called an idiot and he is one. Now she’s not maligning him in this case because Nabal has a reputation and she’s saying this is it and this is how my husband is, he’s just is a cheater from the word go. So she established communication. Notice the third thing that the woman has done; what has she done to establish communication? She said something she knows David is going to agree to; David could say that’s right woman, but at least she very cleverly has established communication here. This woman is smart; she’s thought these things out very, very carefully, and pulls them off with great finesse.

Verse 26, “Now, therefore, my lord, as the LORD lives, and as thy soul live,” now look what she does, after diffusing the situation, calming David down, after reestablishing communication with him, what do you suppose is the next thing this woman does. She knows that David is a man of God under the authority of the Word so her next step, move over to the Word and start working there. And so she says, “seeing the LORD has withheld thee from coming to shed blood, and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, now let thine enemies, and they that seek evil against my lord, be as Nabal.” And then she goes on, verse 28, “for the LORD will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord fights the battles of Jehovah,” and she goes on in verse 30, “And it shall come to pass, when the LORD shall have done for my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning thee,” so what does she go back to? The word. She knows David’s calling. So not only does this woman diffuse the situation, reestablish communication, but then she comes over and she starts to deal with the Word, not just any part of the Word, the exact part of the Word of God that has to do with David’s calling. Now that is a woman with much skill. Now let’s come back and look at that Proverbs again.

Proverbs 19:14, “A prudent wife,” a wife with maschil, “is from the LORD.” That means that God has graced you with that kind of a woman, and every time you see a woman like this you ought to give thanks to God. Proverbs is apparently teaching that in the second divine institution the mate that you get is a result of all sorts of spiritual interactions that you have never even thought of. Even though horizontally you had your social life and so on, however you met, married and so on, that’s not really the point. The point Proverbs makes is in back of all of that there were spiritual forces going on. God knew ahead of time exactly what you needed, exactly the situation, and He worked these things out. That’s what Proverbs is saying. Even when you were carnal, where God said okay, I’ll give you one that fits you, see how you like it.

Now one more proverb, Proverbs 21:9 then we’ll deal with one more. Proverbs 21:9, again, humorous but nevertheless testifying to the powerful effect a woman can have on a man. “It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.” Now the word “wide” means a shared house, it means a house common to both. The housetop looked like this; they had flat roofs in the ancient east and they used to have a little place up here where they stored things. In fact, that’s the place, you remember, in Joshua where the spies went, and they’d store things, kind of like an attic that they had up there, it wasn’t very comfortable, they’d store junk and if you had too many guests some time, you didn’t enough place to bed them down you kind of threw the junk out on the roof and bedded them down in there. Well that’s the place; we would say today it’s better to live in the dog house than to live in the house with a brawling woman, because that’s where the guy, the only place he could go was go up into his attic, pull out the junk, throw it out on the roof and shut the door and hide himself in there. That’s what it means to live on the corner of the housetop. That picture explains itself.

The last proverb, Proverbs 27:15, this does require some explanation, the first part we’ve see already, it’s very clear, but the second part is difficult. This is just a reminder to the men that no human viewpoint solution to the problem; if you’ve got this problem it’s not going to be solved by any human viewpoint gimmick; God’s grace alone is capable. “Whosoever hides her,” now who’s the her? The “drip” of verse 15, verse 15 of Proverbs 27 is a continual drip. Now that’s the woman that’s described in verse 16, “Whosoever hides her hides the wind,” now what does that mean? It’s facetious; it’s a participle, whoever is continually trying to hide her, now why would a Hebrew man try to hide this kind of a woman? Well, think back. When the angel of the Lord came to visit Abraham who was in the tent? Sarah; remember, she was laughing back there, ha-ha, that God cause them to have a child and so on, you know, she knows more than God. And so the angels, remember how they rebuked her, okay woman, you laughed at us, your first child is going to be laughter, call him Yitsaak, and it’s the Hebrew word to laugh, you just named your own son. Now the woman in the tent, the woman was always kept in the tent kind of because… to this day in Arabia the women are treated this way, in nomadic areas the women are always hidden. But the point here is you can’t hide this kind of a woman. The continual drip you can’t hide. Hiding her is like hiding the wind; try to hide the wind, it’s manifest to all people. And the point is this man will come out to negotiate business through his front door, and he had this woman in the back and he tried to hide her; yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, all the while in the back and that’s the point of the proverb. You can’t hide it, now way you can hide this kind of a woman; try to do it.

Verse 16 doesn’t speak of something accomplished, it’s something that’s attempted to accomplish. “Whosoever hides her” or tries to hide here,” is like trying to hide the wind,” and then it says another strange thing, “the ointment of his right hand betrays itself,” literally it means the oil meets his right hand; the oil meets his right hand. Now what does this mean? The oil, you can’t hold it in your hand, it goes through your fingers. It’s another analogy to the wind.

All right, all of these proverbs today basically have shown a violation of those three principles for the man or the three principles of the woman. All are examples, facetious, some of them humorous, but all are very sad examples.

Now obviously knowing that there are innumerable problems in every Christian home, may I suggest at this point the book that’s described in your bulletin by Jay Adams, called Christian Living in the Home. It’s the kind of book that I would suggest you get, paperback, it’s simple, doesn’t take long to read, but it’s very, very practical. It has solutions to the problems of a man’s relationship, the woman’s relationship, and the relationship with their children and its soundly biblical. I might, just to whet your appetite a little bit, show you his definition of the Christian home. You read these idyllic Christian devotionals where they talk about the Christian home as being some place that’s a vestibule to heaven and the angels just kind of trip through every day and everything’s peaceful and calm, no problems; listen to this.

“You should begin to ask the question, what does a truly Christian home look like? Is it an idyllic place where peace and quiet, tranquility and joy continually reign? Definitely not. The first and most important fact to remember about a truly Christian home is that sinners live there. The notion that the Christian home is a perfect or near perfect place is decidedly not biblical. The parents in the home fail, often they fail miserably; they fail one another, they fail their children and they certainly fail God. The children fail too; they bring home report cards with D’s and F’s, throw tantrums in the shopping mall, try to eat peas off their knives when the preacher has been invited to dinner. Husbands and wives quarrel,” I’ve never seen this, “husbands and wives quarrel, they get irritated with one another, and sometimes have serious misunderstandings. Of course, there are accomplishments too but the point that I want to make is that conditions frequently are far from ideal. And that is a realistic picture of a truly Christian home. But how, you may ask, does that description get from the description of the unsaved family next door. That question can be answered. Briefly it’s this, a truly Christian home is a place where sinners live but it is also a place where the members of that home admit the fact, understand the problems, know what to do about it and as a result grow by grace.”

Now that’s what I mean, it’s a very realistic book and if some of you are having difficulties in this area I would highly recommend it, it basically is what you would get in any counseling situation. You wouldn’t get anything more than this, and there’s some work sheets in there, you can test yourself, you can test yourselves together. You can test how you’re disciplining the children, there’s a whole chart on how to discipline children biblically and it answers a lot of questions and you can find the content and stuff in the bulletin.

Next week we’ll deal with the problems of marriage, the problem of divorce and so on as the Word teaches it.