Wisdom on marriage

We’re in a series in Proverbs on Wisdom for Life, and tonight we come to Wisdom on marriage. And if you’d like to follow in the Bibles, not just on the screens, we’re starting on page 527 and Proverbs 1, where I want to remind us of the target audience. Proverbs 1.4: this BIble book is:

to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth

So as I’ve said before, the number one target audience is the young adult on the threshold of independent life – who would still be single. So Proverbs aims to give them wisdom on what marriage is, and the decisions they may need to make about it. And so I’ve primarily had in mind you who are single – not just because Proverbs does, but because the majority of people in our church family and here tonight are single. Having said which, let me also remind us of Proverbs 1.5:

Let the wise hear and increase in learning

So if we’re further on (single or now married), there’s the chance for us to grow in wisdom, too. This is far from everything the Bible says about marriage, but here are four nuggets of wisdom on marriage from Proverbs.

1. Marriage is not the most important or necessary relationship in life.

So if you’re single now, or you stay single longer term, or bereavement returns you to being single, you are not missing out on the most important or necessary relationship in life – which is with God through Jesus. Just look on to Proverbs 1.7:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge [or wisdom]

And as we’ve seen, the fear of the Lord is shorthand for a relationship with the Lord where we trust him and trust his judgement on what’s right and wrong and best and not best. And we now trust him ultimately because he gave his Son to die for our forgiveness. And if that doesn’t show he has our best interests at heart, it’s hard to know what would. So relationship with God through Jesus is the most important and necessary relationship in life. Of we course we need other human relationships, and of course they give us value and purpose and significance and security. But only relationship with God can give us the ultimate value and purpose and significance and security that we need. And if we try to look for those things only in friendship or marriage, we’ll be disappointed. And that’s why when I’m speaking at weddings, I often say to the newly married couple ‘The person you’re now sitting next to is only the second most important person in your life.’ Which is unromantic, but true.

2. Marriage is a commitment before God between one man and one woman to faithful love for life.

Now is not the time to defend the claim that it’s between one man and one woman, but that is clearly the Bible’s claim, and what Proverbs assumes. So look on to Proverbs 2.16. Proverbs says that if you live in the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 2.16-17):

So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God

Now as we saw last time, Proverbs is couched as teaching from father to son –and of course the writer knew that men are equally capable of adultery – in other words being sexually unfaithful to their wives. In fact the statistics say men are the worse offenders. But Proverbs is couched as teaching from father to son, which is why here and elsewhere a son is warned against an adulteress. So if you’re a woman, please re-frame it as a warning against a male adulterer. So this is a negative context that teaches some hugely important postives. So look again at Proverbs 2.17:

[she] forsakes the companion of her youth

And when we did Wisdom on friendship, I said that that word companion translates the Hebrew word for the closest of friendships. And that was radical because the cultures around Israel saw wives largely as servants and child-bearers – as do cultures around the world today. By contrast, I’ve heard several wedding day speeches where the groom has said to his bride ‘I’m so lucky to be able to say I’ve just married my best friend.’ ‘Blessed’ would have been better, but we’ll let that pass. And Proverbs would say, Amen to those grooms. Which is why, when we did Wisdom on friendship, I said it all applies to marriage, especially the first and last nuggets of wisdom we saw, which were:

• Be very careful who you let influence you.
• Be a friend who helps others follow Jesus – and seek friends who’ll do that for you.

Which is why the Bible urges followers of Jesus only to marry a fellow-follower of Jesus. So Paul says of a single woman in 1 Corinthians 7.39:

she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.

In other words, only to a fellow-believer in the Lord Jesus. Because, as we saw last time with that picture of the two arrows, there’s no neutrality.
We’re either living for Jesus as Lord or against him. And if you’re a Christian, you want to marry someone who’s pulling in the same direction, and not pulling you away from Jesus. And there are people in our church family who’ve decided against pursuing a relationship to marriage because they weren’t sure the other person really was a Christian, really was going for it for Christ. And that was a wise decision because marriage is the closest of friendships which will influence us more than any other. And because of that, the aim of going out is to get to know the other person and to find out whether your friendship is good for you both. And sex doesn’t come into that because, to put it bluntly: do you get to know someone better by going for a walk and talking to them for an hour or by snogging on the sofa for an hour?

As we’ll see next, sex is for bonding you with someone you’ve already got to know and decided to commit to for life. It doesn’t come in to going out. So if you need to sort that out in a relationship, sort it out now. Look at Proverbs 2.17 again:

[this adulteress] forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant [in other words, promised commitment] of her God

So, this woman had grown up in Old Testament Israel. She’d heard how God had promised commitment to them, and called them to live his way in response – which included being faithfully committed for life in marriage, to reflect his faithful commitment to them. But she’d deliberately turned away from all that. But the positive is that we’re reminded that God designed marriage and that we enter marriage by making promises before God to live within his design. Which is why, in a marriage service, we don’t ask the couple ‘Do you love one another?’ – as in, how are you feeling about one another, how attractive do you find each other? What we ask is, ‘Will you love one another?’ So we ask him:

Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her and forsaking all others be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?

And the same for her. And they promise to love each other:

For better for worseFor richer for poorerIn sickness and in health…Till death us do part[The Marriage Service]

Now obviously attraction and sexual desire and chemistry draw people together – and are God-given and important. But attraction and sexual desire and chemistry won’t keep people together. Only promised commitment will do that, with God enabling the keeping of those promises – which are beyond any of us to keep in our own strength. So having underlined the commitment side of marriage, and the fact that sex won’t hold it together, Proverbs goes on to underline how important the sexual side of the relationship is.

3. Marriage is a sexual relationship designed to be unique, exclusive and bonding.

Let’s turn on to Proverbs 5 – the reading we had earlier. Again, it’s the negative context of a warning against sex before or outside marriage. But for this sermon, I want to focus on its positive teaching on marriage. So, Proverbs 5.15-17 in contrast to the consequences of taking sex outside its God-designed context of marriage, here’s the positive:

Drink water from your own cistern,flowing water from your own well.Should your springs be scattered abroad,streams of water in the streets?Let them be for yourself alone,and not for strangers with you.

So drinking water is a picture of the desire-satisfying enjoyment of the sexual side of marriage. Drinking from your own cistern sounds to us like dipping into the thing that flushes the toilet – not very romantic. For them, cisterns were underground water stores where you could get a wonderfully cool drink on a hot day. And a well fed by really fresh flowing springs was even better. And get the emphasis, Proverbs 5.15-17:

Drink water from your own cistern,flowing water from your own well.Should your springs be scattered abroad,streams of water in the streets?Let them be for yourself alone…

Now some of us will be thinking ‘I’ve already fallen short of that in sex before or outside marriage.’ So, as we’ll remember in communion, let me reassure us there is forgiveness for all sin. All sin also has consequences we need to deal with, but by God’s grace, whatever our past, we can build or rebuild a marriage with a good sexual relationship. And Proverbs 5.15-17 are saying: God designed the sexual side of the marriage relationship to be unique and exclusive – to be an experience that draws a couple together again and again because they enjoy nothing like this anywhere else. And along with the commitment they’ve made, that helps bonds them. But that bond is weakened if in any way their sexual desire is directed elsewhere. Which takes self-control, because as Proverbs reminds us, temptation is always calling.

So if you’re single and frustrated that right now God calls you to no sex and self-control, you need to know that you’ll need that self-control equally whether you get married or stay single. Because marriage doesn’t magic away temptation. If you have a tendency to look at the opposite sex unhelpfully now, you’ll still have it if you marry. If you find pornography a temption now, you’ll still find it one if you marry. So you need to learn self-control for the sake of both your future singleness and future possible marriage. And we who are married need to keep learning it. So look on to Proverbs 5.18-19, because we all know the Bible is anti-sex and anti-enjoyment, don’t we? Well, hold on to your seats:

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer [actually, that’s literally ‘a love-making deer’ – she actively says, ‘Come on, let’s go to bed’], a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.

That’s the one place the Bible commands people to be drunk. It’s a picture of uninhibited, delighted, joyful sex. And there’s much more of that kind of language in the Song of Songs – for which these verses are just a trailer. (This trailer has been approved for audiences of CYFA and above – but it’ll still make you blush).

I wonder how many of us marrieds thought to ourselves on our wedding night ‘Is this actually really OK now? Does this really have God’s blessing?’ Proverbs 5.18 says: yes. Here’s what a Christian writer Mike Mason says in his remarkable book The mystery of marriage:

One of the most important tasks…entrusted to marriage is the work of reclaiming the body for the Lord, of making pure and clean and holy again that which has been trampled through the mud of shame…For a husband and wife to be naked together…is, as nearly as possible, a return to the last statement that…Genesis makes about mankind’s state of innocence…‘The man and his wife were both naked and felt no shame.’What can equal the surprise on one’s wedding night of finding out that the one thing above all others which mankind has…dragged through the dirt turns out in fact to be the most innocent thing in the world? And if worship is the deepest…form of communion with God, surely sex is the deepest communion possible between two human beings.

And so it’s blessed by God, in marriage, where he designed it to be. But it doesn’t just happen, as in the movies. It takes the whole context of the committed love of marriage to create the safety and security which it needs. It’s part of the marriage relationship, like every other, which needs to be learned with care and patience and consideration and selflessness. And you may think that Proverbs 5.18-19 are completely redundant in telling the married couple to enjoy this side of their relationship regularly. But in the real and busy and tiring world (especially once children come along) we need to be reminded not to neglect this side of our marriages because we need to express our love in this way, and rekindle our love in this way and be bonded together in this way. And if we do, we’ll see the point of Proverbs 5.20. If you have the sexual love life of Proverbs 5.15-19, then Proverbs 5.20:

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

Why would you? Marriage doesn’t make sexual temptation go away. But a good sexual relationship in marriage helps in the self-control that’s still needed against sexual temptation. Lastly:

4. Marriage is ultimately a gift from God – to be prayed for and to be grateful for.

Look on to Proverbs 18.22:

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord.

And correspondingly we can say (Proverbs 18.22):

She who finds a husband finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord.

A good thing is a pretty clumsy translation – literally it just says, ‘finds good’. So what do we learn from this verse? Well, if you find something, it means you’ve been looking. Now plenty of us here are single and not looking to change that any time soon. And that’s great. I quoted 1 Corinthians 7 earlier, and Paul in that chapter says there are really good sides to singleness (like the time and energy you can give to knowing and serving Jesus) as well as downsides that need managing. And if you’re single and not looking to change that right now, that’s great. Use your singleness, and don’t fall for the lie that you’ve got to have a boy or girlfriend to be a real person or a success or whatever. But if and when you reach the point of thinking, ‘I would like to get married, I feel a need to get married,’ you do need to be where you can look, and/or put yourself where you can be found.

So it’s no surprise that many couples say ‘We met through a small group or a ministry at church or through serving at church together or through leading on a camp or whatever.’ But we need to think what to look for in a possible husband or wife. We’ve seen one crucial thing already – which is to look for someone with a real and growing faith in Jesus. And the very last verses of Proverbs underline that. In the eulogy to the wonderful wife in Proverbs 31, it says (Proverbs 31.30):

Charm [literally attractiveness] is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

It’s her faith that’s most eulogised – because that’s the root of all the fruit of her life. And where it says Charm [or attractiveness] is deceitful it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with attractiveness. It means the husband would be wrong to think ‘This attractiveness will never change, this attractiveness will keep me loving her.’ That will prove deceitful – because people do change, in every way. And where it says and beauty is vain it’s not talking about vanity. Vain is the Hebrew word for transitory, temporary, fleeting. Again it’s saying she’s going to change – just like he’s going to change. And what matters most as a couple navigates all the changes in them and around them is a shared faith. That’s why you look above all for the fear of the Lord. But that’s just the start of the list. So for example, if Ephesians 5.25 says Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, you want to be looking for a guy who’s already showing signs of being self-sacrifical, of doing the jobs no-one else wants to do, of talking to the person who’s not easy to get alongside, and so on. In the long term that’ll count for more than the impressiveness of his six pack, or his good sense of humour. But even more important than looking for these things in others, we need to be cultivating them in ourselves. Because as someone put it:

It may be wise to look for the right kind of partner – but it’s even wiser, before marriage and after, to work at being the right kind of partner yourself.

So if and when we reach the point of thinking ‘I would like to get married, I feel a need to get married, we need to look, and we need to know what to be looking for, and we need to pray – because as Proverbs 18.22 says:

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord.

So marriage is ultimately a gift from him, and it’s another example of God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. He sovereignly leads people to one another and to the decision to marry but they’re responsible for looking, for taking the risk of going out, for deciding whether to go ahead or turn back. But if we marry, we need to be grateful to God – and also constantly grateful to and for our husband or wife because, as someone has wisely said:

The easiest thing to do with those who are closest to us is to take them for granted.

So just turn to the end of Proverbs, page 552 and Proverbs 31. It ends with the eulogy of the wonderful wife. And look at Proverbs 31.10-12:

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.

So look what they say to her in Proverbs 31.28-29:

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”

And the point of this eulogy may be for us to aspire to her qualities. But it may equally be to remind us not to take our marriage partners for granted, but to praise them and appreciate them for what they do for us and are to us. So when did you last say something like Proverbs 31.28-29 to your wife? There’s the apocryphal story of the gruff Yorkshireman whose wife complained that he never said any things like that. And he said ‘I told you I loved you on our wedding day, and I don’t see why I have to keep repeating myself.’ But we do, because Proverbs (and the whole Bible) says that the heart of marriage is faithfulness. And faithfulness is love repeated and rrepeated and repeated – till the end of our lives.