Clough Proverbs Lesson 78
DI #3: Principles of Divine Institution Number Two;
Love and Marriage
…the book of
Proverbs that actually fall under the third divine institution but
nevertheless, areas which must be taught to children. We have developed six of these areas and
today is the last time we’ll be on the third divine institution. Next time we’ll move on to the fourth, the
role of government. The area of family
training that we’ve been studying is the area of the divine institutions
themselves. In other words, the children
should be taught to respect these two institutions at least. That means that parents must know these
divine institutions and must know now to communicate their content to their
children. They must know how to explain
them to their children; they must know how to take advantage of various
situations that come up during the week to illustrate it to their
children. And the family training framework
literature is designed to do this and those of you who have stayed with it will
find increasing opportunities to accomplish this task.
You recall that we
dealt with the first divine institution and impressing it upon
children—responsibility. This is
something that the schools will not impress them with and no one else will
impress them with except you. Your job
as a Christian parent is to get across at least fundamental point to all
children. Nothing else can be taught
them spiritually until the concept of responsibility is taught. Nothing else, because responsibility is the
basis for all other truth.
Responsibility and their awareness of volition, that God has given them
the ability to choose right and wrong, that God does not coerce them, and the
choice is up to them. And this means
that you have to watch early in a child’s life the tendency to make excuses for
bad behavior, blaming it on the environment, blaming it on certain things. It’s because we have had a generation of
families across this nation who have not taught this first divine institution
to their children; that reason is behind why in business and in the military
there are some very sad situations; sad because people are being hurt through
the lack of responsibility of various workers in certain industries.
People are being
hurt and will be hurt in the military because men are not schooled and drilled
to carry out their responsibilities. We
have a man who is a company commander who is related to one of our people in
our congregation and they were visiting in this home and he was saying that in
this particular company, an army in Germany, that because of the volunteer
concept we are getting a large low class element in the service which means
very minimal discipline and when he took over as C.O. of this company he found
that there were extortions going on in the barracks, if certain people didn’t
pay off they were beat up and so forth.
So he quickly instituted a sound divine viewpoint plan of discipline for
that company which involved two simple things; that those who get with it will
get promotions and move on and those that fool around are going to get
discipline. So in his first
accomplishment in the 8 months or so that he’s been there he’s sent six men to
Leavenworth and this is quite an accomplishment for a company commander and so
some of our girls here have decided that they’d give him an appropriate bumper
sticker and they took red, white and blue and made this bumper sticker which
only people from LBC could possibly conceive of, it said: “I am a complete
bastard, what is your excuse.” And he
can’t wait to get to
But the object of
his program in all sincerity and all seriousness is that he is finding that
this kind of a program works; it’s just that these kids, 17-18 years old have
never heard of the first divine institution, responsibility. They’ve never heard that they are to be held
responsible when they are told to do something and that’s completely a
revolutionary new concept. But under
Captain (?)’s fine teaching they are learning their lessons very rapidly.
We have dealt with
the second divine institution that should be communicated to the children, and
last week we dealt with sex and we dealt with many of the passages of Scripture
that have to do it. I’d like to summarize
those three principles that we learned last time that ought to be taught to
children. One of them, which cuts
directly across everything that you learn in our own age, and that is that sex
is nothing in itself. In other words,
throughout the ancient world, over in many, man different cultures, whether you
go to
And the biblical
concept as we saw at many points in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Bible
deliberately cuts across this by saying that sex in itself is nothing. Whatever happiness is enjoyed is given to sex
by something else. That is proper mental
attitude and love. And the sex itself
has nothing in itself that’s productive.
Then we said in connection also with that point that sex in the Bible is
downplayed only in the sense that it is the area where the results of the fall
most quickly show up… the area where the results of the fall most quickly show
up.
Then we learned a
second principle, that things that heterosexual abuses, fornication and so
forth, are always in the Bible associated with compound carnality, that is,
they are the result, the end result of a long chain of attitudes, and that has
to be seen very clearly on the adult exam, and I think on the university exam,
we gave you a list of different sins and we asked you what was particularly
unique, why aren’t these sins of primary significance I think the question was,
and most of you got the idea in some degree, and that is that all of the things
at this point, fornication, stealing and so on, are overt activities. They are sins that are socially identifiable
and people like to point them out. But
the Bible doesn’t put the emphasis there; the Bible puts the emphasis on the
negative volition that eventually yields in the overt act. So the overt act is the result of a long
chain of cause and effect. Scripturally
the Bible always goes back to the autonomous attitude, not the fruit. Now the Bible doesn’t condone these things;
that’s not my intent; my intent is only to show you that the things that are
overt are secondary; from the divine viewpoint the primary sins are the sins of
an autonomous mental attitude.
Them a third
principle, besides the fact that sex is nothing, that heterosexual abuses in
the Bible are associated with compound carnality, we dealt with three kinds of
perversions in Scripture that are also associated with compound carnality:
transvestitism, homosexuality, and bestiality.
All of these are condemned in the Mosaic Law and are associated with
abominations which are again the end of a long chain of cause and effect. Now having prepared you with some of the
biblical viewpoint on sex, today we come to the last area where children should
be taught, as they grow older, at appropriate times and places, that sex, love
and marriage are all different.
So today we are
going to deal with love and marriage together.
And when we work with this we are going to go through various portions
and passages of Scripture to give background and many of these will not be
found in the book of Proverbs. They are
implied in the book of Proverbs; Proverbs was written, parts of it, about 900
BC. Genesis was in its final form
probably around the time of Moses, 1400 BC.
So you see, for five centuries these people had known the stories of
Genesis, and they’re implied behind the text of Proverbs. So that is why we go back to these other
passages of the Old Testament and more or less produce a topical study in this
rather than a verse by verse approach.
So today we have
to deal with love and marriage and here immediately we set it over against
human viewpoint, in a very interesting way and one which has infiltrated
Christian circles, that is the concept of love/marriage, the idea that people
fall in love and get married, or if the love dies out then that is the basis
for divorce. Now that is something that
came out of romanticism, not the Scripture.
Now we hate to shatter the dreams and visions of numerous young
people. But it’s better that you get
your visions corrected by the Word of God now before you get disappointed in
practice.
The Word of God
does not subscribe to the necessity of love and marriage. It’s very interesting. I’m going to show this to you from various
passages of Scripture. Love is not the
base of marriage and this is where the divine viewpoint and human viewpoint is
in total collision. Human viewpoint
falls to the love concept, but first you have love, then you have marriage. Divine viewpoint actually the best way is
first you have marriage, then you have love.
It’s completely reversed. So
let’s go and look at some of the passages in Scripture that show this.
First of all let’s
look at some passages where in the Bible men did not have love marriages, where
they definitely married on another basis than love for the other person. Now this, obviously, is completely out of
line with what you are normally used to but because it’s so radically different
and may appear at first glance to some of you here this morning as very
distasteful, if you just stick with it and watch the point that God is trying
to get across you’ll learn something.
Let’s go first to
Genesis 24; here is a case where there was not a love marriage at all. One of the reasons why there was not a love
marriage in the Bible was that in the ancient world couples married at a very
young age. King Jehoiakim was married at
16; Amon and Josiah were married at 14.
The rabbis later on had a minimum marriage age for girls at 12 and a
minimal age for boys at 13. Now when
children are that young they do not have the proper framework to judge
character, therefore, the marriages were marriages arranged by parents. Now that may strike you as totally out of
line and yet some of the most successful marriages in Scripture were marriages
that were arranged by parents. The
reason again, from the cultural in the times in which these passages were
written marriage occurred at an early age.
Not always; in this case we’re not sure how old he was but Isaac
definitely wasn’t very, very young.
But in Genesis
24:1, “Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed
Abraham in all things. [2] And Abraham
said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had,
Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh;” which is a form of oath taking in
the ancient east. [3] “And I will make
thee swear by the LORD, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that you
will not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom
I dwell. [4] But you shall go unto my
country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. [5] And the servant said unto him, Suppose
that the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs
bring thy son again unto the land from which thou came? [6] Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that
thou bring not my son there again.”
Now the point here
is that the servant of Abraham is going to pick a girl for Isaac; Isaac doesn’t
know the girl, therefore Isaac can’t love the girl. This is not a love marriage; it is a marriage
arranged by the parents. And it is
arranged on a very interesting basis.
For example, notice in verse 3 it says “you will not take a wife …from
the daughters of the Canaanites,” in other words, the father stipulated the
quality or character of the girl his son would marry. The reason that he eliminated the Canaanites
wasn’t some sort of racial prejudice, it was religious prejudice; religious
prejudice against the degenerate character of these Canaanite girls. They weren’t worth having his son, he didn’t
want his son playing around with them.
And this is a judgment, a judgment of character upon the partners to the
marriage, in this case the judgment being by Abraham, delegated to his servant.
Now the servant goes up to the land of Ur and up to northern Mesopotamia and he
comes and he meets Rebekah, the girl.
And in verse 29 you see how the bargaining occurred, and again please
notice how Rebekah is left out of it. “And
Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban: and Laban ran out unto the man,
unto the well.” This is after the
servant meets Rebekah. [30] “And it came
to pass, when he saw the ring, and the bracelets upon his sister’s wrists, and
when he heard the words of Rebekah, his sister, saying, Thus spoke the man unto
me; that he came unto the man; and behold, he stood by the camels at the
well. [31] And he said, Come in, thou
blessed of the LORD; wherefore stand thou outside? For I have prepared the house, and room for
the camels. [32] And the man came into
the house: and he ungirded his camels, and gave straw and fodder for the
camels, and water to wash his feet….
[33] And there was set food before him to eat: but he said, I will not
eat until I have told mine errand. And
he said, Speak on. [34] And he said, I
am Abraham’s servant. [35] And the LORD
has blessed my master greatly; and he is become great” and so on. Verse 36, “And Sarah, my master’s wife, bore
a son … and unto him has he given all that he has. [37] And my master made me swear, saying,
Thou shalt not take a wife to my son of the daughters of the Canaanites…. [38] But thou shalt go unto my father’s
house, and to my kindred…. [39] And I
said unto my master, Suppose the woman will not follow me. [40] And he said unto me, The LORD, before
whom I walk, will send his angel with thee” and he will help you pick it
out.
Verse 42, “And so
I came this day unto the well, and said, O LORD God of my master Abraham, if
now thou do prosper my which I go, [43]
Behold, I stand by the well of water,” and he made a prayer that he would meet
the right girl. And he did, to make a
long story short and he tells this to Laban.
Well, the interesting thing about the whole text is that Rebekah isn’t
consulted at all until verse 57, after the negotiations between Laban and
Abraham’s servant are finished. Then in
verse 57 it says, “And they said, We will call the damsel, and inquire at her
mouth. [58] And they called Rebekah, and
said unto here, Will you go with this man?
And she said, I will go.” Now
Rebekah wasn’t responding to love. She
couldn’t, she didn’t know who Isaac was.
Rebekah was responding to the clan loyalty of the family. That’s all.
So this marriage
was not a love marriage, and yet this is one of the most crucial marriages in
the Old Testament. This is one of the
marriages from whom will come Yitsrael.
Now here, such a crucial marriage, is not a love marriage. Isn’t that interesting. But this is not the only time this
occurs. Turn to Genesis 28, another
marriage in the same line. Remember we
have Abraham, the first Jew, then you have Isaac, and then you have Jacob,
three generations, three regenerate sons.
Now in Genesis
28:1-2 we have the same thing occur with Isaac and Jacob. “And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and
charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of
Canaan.” Again, we don’t want low class
women in this family. So the parents
made a value judgment, a character judgment.
You can call it prejudice, you can call it what you want to, but the
parents are making a judgment of character as to who their son will marry and
who he will not marry. And so Isaac,
verse 5, “And Isaac sent away Jacob,” to the same place where he got his wife,
Rebekah.
Then in Genesis
29:17 Jacob works and he meets two girls, one Leah was tender-eyed, one who had
beautiful eyes and that’s all, and Rachel who was beautiful all over. And obviously Jacob liked Rachel. Verse 18, “Jacob loved Rachel,” he did not
love Leah. And yet the father, Laban
pawned off Leah to him and verse 21, “And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my
wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. [22] And Laban gathered together all the men
of the place, and hade a feast. [23] And
it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah, his daughter, and brought
her to him; and he went into her. [24]
And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah, Zilpah, his maid, for an handmaid. [25] And it came to pas that, in the morning,
behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this that you have done to
me? Did not I serve thee for
Rachel? Why have you beguiled me?” Now obviously he’s upset with the wrong girl,
from his point of view.
But the
interesting point of this text is there is no divorce; just because there was
no love did not precipitate a divorce.
The marriage was preserved. So
again you have a situation where there is a marriage and there is no love at
all when that marriage starts.
Now to contrast
with this let’s look at some places in the Bible where there were love
marriages. And ironically every time we
see a love marriage in the Bible it doesn’t work. Turn to Genesis 26:24; this is Esau, Isaac
has two sons, Jacob and Esau. These two
sons, one is regenerate and one is unregenerate. The unregenerate son is Esau; the regenerate
son is Jacob. Jacob is accepted, Esau is
rejected. Now Esau, verse 34, “was forty
years old when he took as his wife Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite,”
in other words, there’s no indication that secured parental permission,
cooperation at all, he just simply went out and picked a girl. And the result in verse 35, “Who were a grief
of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah.”
Why? Because this family was a
regenerate family, a unity shared with unregenerates, they tried to present the
gospel over and over and over and over to their son, he rejected, rejected,
rejected and rejected and then to add insult to injury he went out and married
a Canaanite. She was from one of the
tribes in the land. And so that secured
a very poor apostate base for his family.
Now let’s look at
another love marriage. Turn to Judges
14:1, this is where the son decides who he is going to marry. “And Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a
woman in Timnah, of the daughters of the Philistines.” She is not Hebrew. [2] “And he came up, and told his father and
his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnah, of the daughters of the
Philistines; now, therefore, get her for me as my wife.” In other words, the parents still did it but
he was the dictator; he had feelings toward this girl and he wanted her. And so he told his parents, you get her for
me. Verse 3, “And then his father and
his mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of your
brethren, or among all my people, that thou go to take a wife of the
uncircumcised Philistine? And Samson
said unto his father, Ger for me; for she pleases me well.” In other words, he made the decision solely
on the basis of his (quote) “love” (end quote).
So again we have a love marriage and you don’t have to be a very good
student of the Bible to understand what happened in the case of Samson.
Now a third case where there was a love marriage; 1 Samuel 18:20. This is Michal, Saul’s daughter, and she
falls in love with David, “and they told Saul and the thing pleased him.” And David finally married Michal and in the
evening series we’ve been studying 1 & 2 Samuel, that marriage never really
panned out; in fact, in 2 Samuel 6 it just completely goes out.
Now what’s the
trouble? Why is it that the Bible seems
to deliberately go out of its way and smash the concept of love marriage? And some of you are thinking well wait a
minute, I thought that marriage was the model of the relationship between
Christ and His Church. Why isn’t there
love in here? Why isn’t there love,
there’s love commanded in marriage but why is this that the Bible seems so
unsentimental and so hostile almost.
Every time you have a love marriage it doesn’t work and all the great
marriages of the Bible seem to be prearranged marriages. Why is this?
The answer goes
back again, divine and human viewpoint.
The picture is under the third divine institution the patriarchs were
communicating divine viewpoint to their children. Part of the divine viewpoint they
communicated to their children was to evaluate or judge character on the basis
of the Word of God. That was the standard,
and the parents were very skilled at applying the Word of God; very sensitive. They were sensitive to something that is not
well understood in evangelical circles.
In fact, for many years after I got out of seminary I didn’t understand
it either but my personal experience has taught me this and that is there is no
substitute for a long-term development of solid Christian character except in
the Christian home.
Now you can take
two young people, say both are 25 years old, one raised a Christian in a solid
Christian home where the parents taught the Word of God; they had their fights
and their problems and their disagreements and so on, but all during this
process there was something of a character that was being built, over many,
many, many years. Now along comes (?),
say the age of 25, this person who has had a backlog of two decades of living
in a Christian type of environment has a character that you can’t argue with;
it shows up in stability, in determination and so on. Take this person who’s 25, maybe at age 22 he
became a Christian. So for three years
this person has been solidly in the Word of God. He’s been studying; he’s been going on very
fine, no problem. But he only has three
years. At the end of those three years
compared to, say 20 years here, this person may know more doctrine than the
first person, he may be able to answer more of the intellectual questions of
Christianity, probably because they came out of a situation where three years
ago those were big pressing questions and that’s very good. But I’ve noticed a very interesting thing;
when it comes to the real nitty gritty trials of life, you know who I’ll put my
odds on? That person, not the other
person. The reason is that Christian
character is the result of musar over
year after year after year after year after year. Now it’s not true that you can’t develop
Christian character quickly; I’m not denying that. I’m just saying though that it’s God’s norm,
it’s God’s preference to develop Christian character in a Christian home, and
if the Christian home isn’t operating the character is not going to be developed. But even if the Christian home is even
half-way operating there is a character that is built there and it comes out
under the pressures and trials of life.
Now it’s that kind
of thing that these patriarchs are very sensitive; suppose for example one of
those Canaanite girls becomes a Christian, becomes a believer, believes in the
Lord Jesus Christ as revealed under the Old Testament. They still would not qualify to be married to
one of these patriarchs at this point because those patriarchs were concerned
with girls that had character. Why? Because who is going to teach the next
generation. It goes back to the fact
that those girls that Abraham wanted for his son and Isaac wanted for his son
were going to be the mothers of their sons, and it was very important that the
woman who was going to be mother of his sons had the character that will
communicate into the next generation.
This is the Hebrew respect for long-term sanctification and the
transmission of spirituality from one generation to another. To do this it requires a tremendous
character. So all of the emphasis, then,
is on the character of the girl, not actually whether the boy and the girl love
one another.
And the cases of
the lover marriages which we have seen are cases where the guys operated on
their emotions and what they called love wasn’t love at all. It was just infatuation; it was just a fly in
the ointment, that’s all. Nothing!
Now let’s go back
and understand why does the Bible have this?
If it’s true that the parents are always interested in character and
it’s true that they arranged the marriages, some seemingly almost indifferent
to whether the partners loved one another, let’s turn to Malachi 2:14 for an
important passage on marriage. In
Malachi 2:14 a statement is made about marriage in one word that is one of the
central passages in all of God’s Word that reveals to us why it is that
marriage has an almost unsentimental attitude to it in the Bible. Now this is not to say that these men didn’t
love their wives and the wives didn’t love their husbands, but it’s just to say
that love wasn’t the basis of their marriage.
Love was a product of their marriage, not its base. Now that is an important, very important
concept. If you are screwed up here it’s
going to carry over into many, many different areas. But love was not the basis of the marriage;
it was the fruit of the marriage.
Malachi 2:14, here
is the basis of the marriage in the Bible.
“The LORD has been witness between you and the wife of thy youth,” now
this is in the context when the prophet is lamenting divorce, “against whom you
have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion, and she is the wife of
your covenant.” Now the word “covenant” barith, is the word used for the Mosaic
Law Code; barith is used for the
Abrahamic Covenant; barith is used
for the Davidic Covenant; barith is a
Hebrew word that means a legal contract and that is the basis of marriage in
God’s Word, the barith. It is a legal form instituted by God. Now when I say “legal” be careful, I don’t
mean legal in the sense of what the state says is legal or lawful because there
was no state government before the flood and they had marriage before the
flood. So when we say “legal” we simply
mean legal in the eyes of God, a barith.
Now this should
tell you something; when is a marriage consummated? It is consummated at the point of sex or is
it consummated at the point of oath? The
Bible’s answer: marriage begins with the oath; it is the oath before God in the
eyes of witnesses that establishes the barith. Now we don’t have a little paper here, it’s
true when we have a wedding ceremony I have to go in a back room a little later
on and sign it and it needs to have witnesses and in Texas it’s so loose now
you don’t have to have witnesses to do it, but you go in and you sign a paper
and that is a registration kept in the courthouse that A and B are
married. But that paper that you get,
your marriage license, that isn’t the basis for your marriage. That license is just a record in the
courthouse that a marriage has occurred but the barith we’re speaking of here isn’t the piece of paper in the
courthouse. The barith is something that if the courthouse were bombed and the
records were destroyed, the barith
was indestructible. The barith was established at a point in
time when the couple vowed before God.
That is the establishment of the barith.
Now associated
with the barith in the Bible there is
the concept of a sacrifice. Whenever God
enters a barith with man He always
seals it with a sacrifice. There’s
always a sign of it. Now the sign of the
marriage barith is not the ring. You can be married and not even have rings,
it doesn’t mean anything. Every once in
a while we have somebody for some reason wants to be married without a
ring. That’s fine, it’s no problem. But every once in a while people get upset
and parents get all upset that so and so is not wearing a ring. Well, of course as the saying goes it doesn’t
make any difference whether you have a ring on or not, you have what they have
in mind. Your ring is not the seal of
marriage. The sign of marriage given in
Scripture is the oath itself. The oath
has been taken. This is why in the great
denominations you go back in their manuals, whether you go to the Church of
England and the Book of Common Prayer, you go into the Lutheran Church, you go
into the Presbyterian Church, they’ll always have witnesses in the
ceremony. And that’s because the barith was something public, something
social that was formed. So the barith starts, not with sex, the barith starts with the oath.
Now this has
become confused with the biblical expression called “one flesh” in the
Bible. In Genesis 2 it says, “Therefore
shall a young man leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and they
shall become one flesh.” And that is
sexual as well as other ways. But please
notice the fine print, there’s a verb in there; what does it say? They shall “become” one flesh. Which precedes? Which verb is first in that? They leave the parents, then they become one
flesh. So the marriage is when they
leave the parents, when the barith is
established. The becoming of one flesh
is after that. The becoming of one flesh
is used in Genesis 2 to refer to sex, yes; but that’s not what makes the
marriage, that is an activity in the marriage.
And to show you
that the concept of “one flesh” has nothing really basically to do with
marriage turn to 1 Corinthians 6:16.
Don’t confuse barith and the
concept “one flesh.” Every once in a
while I’ll get into a debate as to when marriage has occurred. It should be very clear now when marriage
occurred. 1 Corinthians 6:16, here’s a
case where Genesis 2 is quoted and has nothing to do with marriage. “What?
Know ye not that he who is joined to a whore is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh.” So the concept of “one flesh” is the word,
it’s a euphemism in Scripture for sexual intercourse; that’s what it is and it
is not necessarily related to marriage.
However, one footnote,
for those of you who are interested in pursuing this, this is one of those
areas where God’s Word, I am sure, is ahead of 20th century science
and 20th century medicine. To
show you what I mean, back in the Old Testament when God ordained certain hygienic
practices, like we studied last time, God said, for example to wash your hands
before you eat, make your latrine outside of the camp, spread your dirty
clothes in the sun after they’re washed.
Now in Moses’ day nobody knew of germs; nobody knew of ultraviolet
reaction. Nobody knew of those
things. Only God the Creator knew and He
told them how to live. Now He told them
things that in that day must have seemed very, very foolish. Many armies in the ancient world, in fact,
all the way up into the Middle Ages were wiped out through various diseases
because the latrines were kept in the camp, not outside the camp. It’s ironic that a lot of the black plagues
and a lot of the horrible, horrible disease of the Middle Ages that raged
through (?) could have been stopped if somebody had just taken the time to
hygienic codes of Moses. That’s how
simple it was; sanitary procedures could have been set up for cities all across
Europe and needless numbers of people died because men neglected what God had
told them to do. Now it’s true,
Christians aren’t under the Law; yes.
But the Law is a revelation of God’s wisdom of how to get on with it in
His world.
Now when it says
“one flesh” I think here we are up against something else. To my knowledge no medical research has been
able to substantiate yet what is fully involved here, but the Bible seems to
hint that whenever sex occurs there is an actual transfer from one body to the
other of something and isn’t just the things involved with the sex itself. There’s an actual bodily union involved and
it’s for whatever these implications are, we don’t know what they are, all we
can say is the Bible hints at it in the same way it hinted at the sanitation
thing. Louis Pasteur comes along, he
tells us about germs, now we understand, oh, that’s what God meant with
Moses. Now some day medical research
might show just what is it that the Bible keeps hammering at here. Somewhere the Bible says or in some way it’s
hinting that the “one flesh” involved involves a lot more of sex than just the
act itself. There’s a tremendous
profundity to this whole thing. And this
is why God sets up His boundaries around it, to guard it, to protect it because
of all these ramifications which we don’t know yet.
Now to get back to
the point, “one flesh” then does not refer to the barith; it is not the founding of the marriage. So let’s go on and make some other
conclusions from the fact that marriage begins with the oath, that marriage is
the barith. Turn to our favorite passage, 1 Corinthians
10:13 and I don’t apologize for going to this passage again because many of you
need it; you have to have this repeated and repeated and repeated and
repeated. I have to. I have to repeat it to myself, over and over
and over and over again. 1 Corinthians
10:13 is the basis of operating marriage as the barith. The barith has been give by virtue of the
oath. Now you may be in a situation
where there’s no love or the love isn’t what you’d like to see it be. Now the Bible doesn’t tell you run out and
get a divorce because you’re having a few problems. The “love ‘em and leave ‘em” type never
mature in Scripture. Never! The reason is that who is it that erects the
framework of the second divine institution?
God does.
Why do you suppose
God has the second divine institution?
Has it ever struck you that as we said last time that if sex is the
place where the results of the fall show up most quickly, isn’t it interesting
that the second divine institution that has much to do with sex is the one
that’s the hardest, because marriage itself is where the results of the fall
show up in the most complete way. When
you have two sin natures dwelling side by side in the same house you are going
to have trouble. All people are going to
have trouble. Now this comes out with
some interesting conclusions because what 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, you may
have a problem at some level in your marriage; you may have a certain progress
in your marriage. Marriage should be a
spiritually maturing thing. But it
doesn’t start with love; it results in love (?) for a framework to be
established within which love can occur.
Let’s go for a
minute away from marriage to see it again and go over to the Jews in
history. What is it that gives the Jewish
nation stability, through all the persecutions, all the pressures, the millions
of Jews that have been killed in anti-Semitic campaigns and genocides, what is
it that has always given the Jews stability?
The covenant, they’ve always got a covenant. No matter how bad the going gets the covenant
is still there, the barith is
unchanged. It’s always there; he always
can go back to the barith. He may hate the day God made that barith with him, he may wish that he
could get away with things that the Gentiles can get away with, but he can’t,
he’s a Jew and he’s trapped by the barith. God demands of those whom He gives more, more
in return. And so he may wish daily to
get out from under the barith but he
can’t.
Now within this
framework of the barith, with a
nation locked into God in this relationship, then faith develops. And this is the basis for love; this is the
trilogy, the Pauline trilogy, faith, love and hope shows up in marriage too. Here’s how it works. You can’t have love somebody unless you have
faith in them; you can’t love somebody if you can’t trust them. Now let’s make an analogy between Israel and
a marriage; see how it works.
How did Israel
develop a national faith? How did Israel
come to be a nation of faith when no other Gentile nation ever had this? No nation had faith. No nation ever studied history. All right, faith developed because inside the
framework of the barith God could
teach the Word and then later on He could verity it in experience. If they didn’t have their barith there would be no way of testing
whether God’s Word came true, because you really wouldn’t be sure what God’s
words were. So God can manifest His
character more clearly under conditions of a barith, or a covenant.
Now the same thing
applies in marriage. Trust of the other
partner can’t occur if there’s not an oath to act as a measuring point. You’ve got to have a anchor point where
you’re going to start and so the marriage can be measured against that anchor,
against that standard, against that ruler.
The oath of marriage, the barith,
is the standard. And therefore all
subsequent behavior in the marriage can be measured against that. So you have a criterion as to whether that
marriage is healthy or it is unhealthy.
Now if that’s the
case and faith begins to develop inside the framework of the barith, then you can have a love
response; the love can get going, like it did in Israel. All this follows if you have the barith framework. Now it’s true that today people say they fall
in love and get married but actually, those of you who have been married a
number of years can easily look back and say that what you called love before
you were married was nothing; it was nothing, you’ve grown and grown and you’ve
seen what love is known. What you called
love is just a feeling, basically; what is a real strong love, that develops
after. And that’s the way God designed
marriage to work. So we have an instant
conclusion out of this marriage as a barith
concept. And that is the difference
between a couple that is with it and a couple that is out of it isn’t whether
one has problems and the other doesn’t; all couples have problems, not one of
you married couples here this morning, if you’re honest, would admit you have
problems. The difference isn’t some of
us have problems and some of us don’t or some of us have more problems and
others don’t, the issue is what are we doing with the problems that we’ve
got. Are we going back to the barith, and figuring it from here, using
that as the basis, that God ordained this institution and we’ve made an oath,
it’s our institution, not man’s in the sense that we didn’t design it, God
designed it. We have personal
responsibility before God to maintain it and what are we doing with it. There’s the biblical solution.
So the issue,
then, is not whether you have problems.
Don’t ever be ashamed or embarrassed because you may have problems in
your marriage. Don’t ever feel ashamed
of that; that’s nothing to be ashamed of, that’s just admitting that you are a
fallen creature and you know it, that’s all.
So relax; you don’t have to put on the phony front to the grace oriented
believer. That’s just a lot of façade
and the only people that respect that kind of façade are spiritual clods who
don’t know anything about the doctrine of the fall. Now anybody that knows anything about
Scripture in the area of total depravity, the fall, the sin nature and so on
knows that every marriage is going to be plagued with problems. That isn’t the issue. The issue is whether the barith is used as the platform on which we can grow. That’s the issue.
All right, after
clarifying to children in the family the difference between sex and love and
marriage, one final area of training for every young person should be the
doctrine of the best man and best woman, but always after what we’ve
clarified. We’ve had take this doctrine
all sorts of stupid conclusions, so let’s just be careful and let me go through
it once again.
The first area of
the doctrine of best man/best woman is found in innocence. This is before the fall. There are five factors in the original
marriage that you will never recover; I will never recover, none of you will
ever recover this. These five things
have been marred, damaged beyond repair by the fall. The first thing the first marriage had was a
perfect environment… perfect environment.
So every time you look upon your bad home, I don’t like this home, it
looks like a junk heap, or this kind of thing, and you fuss about this environment
or that environment, Adam and Eve were the only ones that ever had a perfect
environment.
The second thing
that is true of the first marriage besides the perfect environment was Adam had
a perfect calling; it was ideally suited to him personally. Adam knew very clearly what his calling was;
it was perfect, it was unhindered, Adam could subdue the ground, plants and so
forth without weeds, and in the agrarian imagery of Genesis Adam could
accomplish his calling without this resistance that we experience. So he had a perfect calling. This meant an unfrustrated husband, a perfect
calling.
A third thing, he
had a perfect ‘ezer, a perfect
helper. Eve was specially made just for
Adam; she is made as the perfect fit for Adam.
God perfectly designed her just for that one man. So he had a perfect helper. Adam, had he had sons before the fall would
have had, and we’ll put this in parenthesis, (a perfect family). So there would have been a minimum amount of
stress on the marriage; he would have had a perfect family. Finally, the fifth thing, both he and his
wife had perfect bodies. All five of
these things were true of the first marriage and they have all been damaged by
the fall.
So let’s see how
they’ve been damaged by the fall. You
see, by handling the doctrine this way you’re going to get rid of idealism and
a lot of the romanticism that is the disease of young people thinking they’re
going to get THE right person in an Adam and Eve sense of the word, they marry
somebody and find out golly, you know, they’ve got a sin nature just like I do,
bad news. And then we’re in
trouble. Let’s look at the fall and see
what’s happened to each of these five factors.
Perfect
environment, there is a constant pulling down into chaos, from order to
chaos. The marriage relationship is
always fighting the environment; you just get one thing and then something else
goes. Had that feeling? That’s the fallen creature feeling. That’s the result of the curse.
The second thing
is the calling is injured; this is why all men are frustrated to greater or
less degrees. We have the environment
corrupt, you have the calling bad. Every
man who is going his job as unto the Lord is going to have a certain pressure
on him. And a lot of women have never
understood their man because they have never understood that the man was made
to subdue the earth and he’s not happy unless he’s doing it right. A man is not happy just because he has his ‘ezer with him. The woman is not that which is the final key
in a man’s happiness. And a lot of women
never understand this. A man isn’t
happy, even though you may be the best woman for him today, under God’s plan
for that man’s life, you are not really the prime target of happiness. A man is truly happy when he’s successfully
subduing the earth. That is his calling
and that’s what God put in his heart and every man is not really fulfilled
until he’s doing that successfully, with his ‘ezer, yes, but his woman is not the means for his happiness, it’s
his calling. A man is always occupied
with his calling and it affects him in a very deep way. This is why oftentimes when the man is
frustrated with his calling, his wife always feels jealous and she feels like
there’s something come between them.
There’s sinful activities that work their way out but the reason is that
he is trying to subdue a rebellious ground; he’s trying to subdue a rebellious
environment. Visualize the simple story
of Adam and Eve; Adam had to go out and farm and weed, day after day, fight the
results of the fall. It was frustrating.
All right, the
fall damages his ‘ezer. How does it damage his ‘ezer? As we have seen in
the book of Proverbs when we study the second divine institution, the woman
turns into a man. We have an exchange of
roles; the female begins to start pecking.
The fastest way the sin nature shows up in a woman is when she starts
picking away, picking away, picking away, picking away, pick, pick, pick, pick,
pick, pick, what’d you do this for, what are you doing that for, that kind of
thing. And woman have a problem that
when they’re out of fellowship a man can be a monster and grumpy and the woman
shows her sin by always picking, picking, picking, picking, picking, trying to
find out what’s going on. Now there’s a
reason why women act this way and you men who understand the Scriptures here
can understand. The woman is trying to
make sure of her base. See, she’s
trusting you and what she’s really doing when she’s picking is she’s trying to
find out if her base is solid. She may
not realize that’s what she’s doing but scripturally that’s what she is doing,
and she can’t trust you, or she’s having problems trusting you, she picks
because she wants…she doesn’t really know what she wants but she wants
something to give her assurance. And
this is when some men don’t know how to respond to that kind of thing and t hey
blow their stack, and if one person gets out of fellowship the other one gets
out of fellowship. Well, it’s a
temptation but God still doesn’t justify it.
We men are commanded in the Scripture that when this happens we are to
give the assurances necessary to maintain their trust in us, instead of blowing
the stack, but all too often we have sin natures too and you can predict the
results.
All right, so
that’s the ‘ezer; she’s damaged. Instead of being a helper, instead of
submitting, she tries to run, wear the pants of the family, this kind of thing;
this always happens. Whenever a couple
is out of fellowship for a prolonged period of time it will always manifest itself…it
may manifest itself in many, many different areas, but one of the quick ways it
will show up is the reversal of the roles.
The female will start acting like the male and the male will start
acting like the female. The male will
sit around after a couple have been in compound carnality for a while and he
acts in his daily life like a woman. He
responds to what she wants; he responds all the time to the situation, instead
of leading he’s responding. He’s not providing
a grain of leadership in the situation.
All right, the ‘ezer is out.
Then you have
another result of the fall, a sinful family, and how does that affect
marriage. It affects marriage in the
sense that the children act now as a competing device for the parents. You will have to train your children and you
too yourself have to fight to keep those divine institutions in their proper
order. Now watch what I mean. They’re not listed by numbers without
reason. You cannot have a marriage where
the second divine institution precedes the first one. Illustration: suppose you say we are going to
have a happy marriage and you make that your goal, your end all, irrespective
of the man’s calling or anything else, that’s going to be it. You will pay any price whatever to get that. Now God doesn’t ask you to do that but some
couples are so desperate that’s what they want to do. They’ll pay any price whatever to have a
happy marriage. God does not want that;
you don’t pay any price whatsoever.
Satan will give you a happy marriage if you pay him the right
price. So that’s not the way of solving
the problem, the way of solving the problem is keep the first divine
institution first, which means individually you have your own lives to lead
before Jesus Christ, irrespective of the marriage relationship. The marriage is built on the first divine
institution, not the other way around.
Now you have a
similar problem with the third divine institution of the family. Here’s the family with all the kids, and the
tendency in any marriage is for the family to begin to interfere with the second
divine institution so that what happens is this. Take an older couple, the kids go away to
college, it’s the last of their children; for 20 years the house has been full
of kids, yelling, screaming, spilling food on the floor and all the rest of it. For 20 years they’ve been preoccupied with
all the details of raising kids. The
kids go off to college and then suddenly… why do you have all the divorces
among older people? Because the marriage
was just dissolved, years and years and years before because the children took
priority. Children do not take priority
in a home; the marriage takes priority in the home. And don’t ever feel guilty about putting
effort into your marriage and (quote) “neglecting” (end quote) the kids. If your marriage is solid you’re not going to
neglect your kids. But children do not
come first in a home.
And then finally,
another result of the fall is injured bodies and you have sickness and so
forth.
All right, let’s
look at God’s gracious solution. If 1
Corinthians 10:13 is correct there ought to be some gracious solutions; the
right man/right woman pattern is now broken because of the fall, so we have to
replace the right man/right woman with the best man and best woman. That means the man or the woman that is best
under the situations available. God, in
His common grace, suppresses the full results in the environment; common grace
suppresses the full outworking of the curse.
The man can secure his calling, under pressure but grace can enable a
man to be somewhat successful, to varying degrees, and there’s where his
satisfaction is going to be. Grace,
through the filling of the Holy Spirit can enable the woman to be the helper
that she should be. It can, don’t argue
that it can’t, don’t say that God’s provisions are not what He said they are,
you make Him a liar. God said that there
is not one temptation that has come up and that includes every test and trial
in marriage for which he has not in advance provided complete grace. Don’t be discouraged this way. God has provided complete means for the
solution to these problems.
Go next to the
family; the family can be partly protected by the fall. So the areas of marriage then, after the
fall, have to do with your best man or best woman. In grace God makes up for these things and
there isn’t one right man or one right woman in this sense absolutely because
of a simple thing called death. Plus we
could add divorce, plus we could add plain foolishness. All those factors argue the fact that you can
blow it and God doesn’t leave you high and dry, He provides someone for
you. That is the doctrine of the best
man/best woman. But to teach children
this and to go back to what we started with, to teach children this whole area,
why did the Bible start out no love marriages, or at least downgrade them? Because the best man or the best woman is
identified by the basis of their character.
And the best thing to sum it all up that a parent can teach their
children is to evaluate members of the opposite sex. Train them, that means (?) discussing a
person of the opposite sex with them, and not judging in a bad critical sense
but just in teaching them to look at their character. Train them over and over and over to watch
their character, watch how they act under certain situations. Don’t let your child walk into these things
with no doctrine whatever, no training whatever, gets to be a teenager and
boom, the whole thing hits. It’s too
late to train them then. The time is
earlier, when you train them to observe the character of his friends. Teach them to be critical, to watch, to apply
the Word.
I’ll give you some
passages in Proverbs where this is commanded.
First look at Proverbs 1, a passage where we dealt with when we first
began the Proverbs series and I want you to see how the father was interested
that his son discern the character of his friends, that he learned to judge
these kinds of relationship. Proverbs
1:10, it’s talking about the wrong crowd, the gang concept, “the guys.” My son, if sinners entice thee, don’t go
along. [11] If they say, Come with us,
let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk secretly fro the innocent without cause,
[12] Let us swallow them up alive” and so on, a gang violence. Now in this case verse 10 on through the end
of that chapter, over and over and over the father’s training his son and
notice how the father trains his son.
See, the son can’t think in abstract terms so what does the father
do? He says son, here’s some things the
gang is going to say and he quotes, verse 11,
that’s what some of the gang is going to say, let’s do this. So he gives his son some examples even before
his son probably has heard of them. When
they come around they’re going to say do this and do that, and then the father
deals with the explanation as we exegeted it verse by verse in 17 and so on,
all the way down.
Then if you look
in Proverbs 5:15, again the command to evaluate. Remember the passage that had to do with his
best woman? How the son is taught about
his best woman. See, this is true “sex
education,” (end quote). The sex
education that is taught in the schools isn’t going to accomplish a thing; it’s
nothing but a glorified plumbing course.
We don’t need plumbing courses; what we need is some doctrine
courses. The doctrine of what a woman
is, the doctrine of what a man is and what he’s to do. Proverbs is the proper setting for sex
education and notice what is emphasized.
“Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine
own well.” This is again saying confine
your sex to your best woman. [16] “Lest
your fountains be dispersed abroad, and be rivers of waters in the
streets. [17] Let them be only thine
own, and not strangers with thee,” strangers, zarah, is the word used for the woman who would be not his best woman. It wasn’t necessarily a Gentile, it’d be just
any woman who wasn’t his right woman, wasn’t his best woman. Then it says, [18] Let thy fountain be
blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. [19] Let her be as the loving hind and the
pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished
always with her love. [20] Why would you
be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger,” and he
goes on.
So sex education
was given to the children but the very fact that the Hebrew had two words shows
this wasn’t just, “don’t do it boys,” that’s not what it’s talking about; zarah, the word zarah proves that in the context of this passage the father is
saying something more than just “don’t” to his son. He’s saying look, that girl’s a zarah, don’t play with the zarah type. Now what would that mean? That would mean that his son would have to
become a judge of character. Over and
over you see this in the book of Proverbs; passage after passage after
passage. Don’t retreat to the
beatitudes, “judge not that you be not judged.”
Jesus was talking there about illegitimate criticism. We’re talking here about legitimate opening
of the eyes to evaluate. How can
children be taught about the first divine institution? Responsibility, over and over. How are they taught about the second
one? Character and judgment, you judge
the person on the basis of their character because you’re going to enter a barith and you don’t enter barith or covenant with a person that
has very poor, very weak, very namby pamby character.
Next week we’ll deal with the fourth divine institution, the institution of
government.