Proverbs 5
I Don’t Love You Anymore
Turn with me if you would to the Book of Proverbs to chapter 5. We’ll be picking up at verse 15.
“Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer- may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love. Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man's wife? For a man's ways are in full view of the LORD , and he examines all his paths. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.”
Our Father in heaven, as we come now this evening to this particular portion of Scripture, we ask in particular for the blessing of Your Spirit that You would be our teacher and instructor and that You would bring home to us the wisdom contained in Your word, the blessings of marriage. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.
Now we’re continuing our theme on marriage and the family. If you are visiting, you might think the title of this sermon is a little mushy—they aren’t always like this at First Presbyterian Church—but this is summer.
I recently read about the divorce of a dentist and his wife. She filed for the divorce because she said her husband never spoke to her except to give a direct order. And in 18 years of marriage, he had only bought her two gifts--one of which was a potato peeler. Three years ago, in Christianity Today, there was a sequence of articles in its Christian Woman Magazine. Now I must explain to you that I don’t normally read this magazine, but for the purpose of this series, I have been delving in parts unknown to me before. The series of articles was entitled: “Suggestions on Keeping Romance Alive.” There are a few suggestions I can read to you: “Because he’s a bicycle enthusiast, my husband, Dennis, suggested we buy a tandem bike. Along the three and one-half thousand miles we’ve logged so far, we’ve shared sights, sounds, laughter, tears, and pain. Because we sit so close together it’s easy to talk. (I find that hard to believe.) Sharing the day’s concerns or what God’s been teaching us recently, Dennis says it means a great deal to him that I’ve embraced one of his hobbies. Likewise I’ve seen his patience in teaching me the sport’s skills.”
Here’s another. “Among other things, my husband, Lawrence, and I like to read stories to each other over a pot of tea. (This is more like mine.) Recently we read Pride and Prejudice and the best of James Harriet. This is a much richer experience than watching television.” Here’s another. “My husband, John, and I keep romance alive in our 32-year marriage by remembering our time as college sweethearts. Every few years we travel back to the college where we met. There we stroll hand-in-hand and kiss again where we kissed for the first time--the woman’s dorm where I used to live. We pause and thank the Lord for bringing us together so long ago.” There are others but I couldn’t possibly read some of them from this pulpit.
Let’s turn to Proverbs 5. Proverbs 5, 6, and 7 contain three chapters principally about adultery. With chapter 5 focusing especially with warning about the seductress, the price of unchastity—and there is always a price—and finally, in the section we read together, urging fidelity as the part to follow.
The message of this chapter is a very simple and a very beautiful one. Drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well. Or as it goes on to say in verse 17: “Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth.” It’s a chapter that is full of warnings and admonitions and urgings.
I.
True happiness comes in desiring God’s wisdom.
I want us to see five things together. Let me say first of all that
true happiness comes in desiring God’s wisdom. “Let your fountain be blessed and
rejoice—find happiness—in the wife of your youth. Now you understand that the
Book of Proverbs is written from the perspective of a teacher speaking to his
son. We are to find our greatest source of happiness in the marriages that God
has given to us. And that happiness comes in desiring the wisdom of God. Now,
everybody wants to be happy. Not everybody agrees as to how that happiness can
be attained, but everybody wants to be happy and it’s the perspective of the
wisdom books of the Bible, particularly books like Proverbs, to say that wisdom
comes from knowing and following and adhering to the principles that God has
laid down in His word. God has established a pattern. He’s given us a key. He’s
given to us a program. He’s given to us wise council as to how we are to live
and order our lives even in the practicality of marriage and the relationships
of husband and wife in the home and family structure. And God has established
His word in such a way that the greatest happiness comes in our obedience to the
wisdom that God has laid down in His word. And we can only be happy in our
marriages as we get wisdom.
Go back to chapter 4, verse 5 for a minute. “Acquire wisdom. Get wisdom.” Above everything else, be wise; don’t be a fool. Be wise, and be wise in your marriage and understand that the best marriages and the happiest marriages come from biblical principles that are lived our in the relationship of husband to wife and wife to husband and parents to children and children to parents.
Now the word wisdom in the Bible is not the kind of idea that may readily come to our minds when we think about wisdom. Wisdom in the Bible isn’t a PhD. Wisdom in the Bible isn’t preparing someone for Phi Beta Kappa. Wisdom in the Bible is knowing what God’s goal for our lives is and so ordering our lives so that we attain it. Knowing what God wants for us and making sure that that’s the direction in which our lives are going. So chapter 5:1 begins: “My son, give attention to my wisdom.” Pay attention to the wisdom of God; desire wisdom above all things.
You young people on the verge of marriage, maybe you haven’t even found your marriage partner yet. You haven’t found the wife or husband that God has for you and this is the best instruction that I can give you. Seek for wisdom. Acquire wisdom. Learn the principles that God has laid down in his word and prize them. Prize those principles above everything else. He says in chapter 4 verse 8, “Prize her and she will exalt you.” Think of wisdom as something special. In the same way that you would embrace your spouse, this teacher is saying embrace the principles of wisdom. And “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And “Fools,” the Bible says, “despise wisdom and instruction.” So that’s the first thing. It’s the first rung of the ladder. In marriage as everywhere else, biblical wisdom is the key to happiness.
II.
True happiness in marriage is aware of the lure of temptation.
And there’s a second thing that Proverbs 5 wants to bring to our
attention. And that is this: that true happiness in marriage is aware of the
lure of temptation. It’s aware of the lure of temptation. There’s something
realistic about the Bible. There’s something extraordinarily realistic about the
perspective of Proverbs 5 as this man is addressing his son about marriage.
There’s something unreal about Scripture as it approaches these things.
Temptation to adultery is a very real thing, and the wise master is instructing
his son about it.
Now he talks about the adulteress in verse 3 as having ‘honeyed lips—lips that drip like honey and whose speech is smoother than oil.’ And in verse 20, he talks about the adulteress as ‘embracing the bosom of a foreigner.’ So here’s a father talking to his son and he’s reminding his son of the lure, the possibility of temptation. And the book of Proverbs is saying exactly what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4. “This is the will of God for our sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor.” And the way of dealing with temptation is very clear and very simple--even to the point of appearing simplistic. Look at what he says in verse 8 of chapter 5. “Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house.” The way to deal with the reality of temptation is to avoid the circumstances that leads to temptation. And in this case, he’s telling his son to rejoice in the wife of his youth and to be aware of the lure of finding some kind of joy elsewhere. Remove your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house.
We read this morning from Mark’s gospel in our morning service the words of our Savior. “If your right hand offends you, cut it off. If your right eye offends you, pluck it out.” That’s the way to deal with the lure of temptation. And my friends, nothing destroys the romance of a marriage more than allowing your eyes and your bodies to stray from the pathway that God has laid down. And what that means perhaps in 21st century language is that you may have to put onto your computer, certain protocols that ensure that you don’t go near the door of her house. It may mean that you may have to cancel your subscription to that cable company. Be aware of the lure of temptation.
Sometimes, you know, it begins with an innocent statement and you say to someone of the opposite sex, “She doesn’t understand me.” And she says back to you, “I know exactly what you mean.” And you are on the edge of a precipice when you allow that conversation to go any further. Temptation in the Bible is rarely the heat of the moment. You know, the seeds of desire are often planted a long time before they germinate and we can create the opportunities for temptation to arise. We can deliberately open doors and make journeys that make those circumstances of temptation far more real than they otherwise would be. And you only have to read the accounts in Scripture of the lives of Noah and of Lot and of David and of Hezekiah to see the significance of unmortified sin the lives of God’s people.
III.
True happiness comes from recognizing the importance of God’s Law.
Now there’s a third thing I want us to see. We’re coming to
romance, but wait a minute. True happiness, in the third place, comes from
recognizing the importance of God’s law. Yes, true happiness in the kingdom of
God, in marriage as anywhere else, comes from recognizing and honoring the law
of God. You see in verses 12 and 13: “And ye say, how I have hated instruction
and my heart spurns reproof and I have not listened to the voice of my teachers
nor inclined my ear to my instructors. I am almost in utter ruin in the midst of
the assembly and congregation. There’s the fool. And the fool, verse 23, “He
will die for lack of instruction and in the greatness of his folly, he will go
astray.” The fool pays no regard to the law of God. It’s saying loud and clearly
that adultery is wrong; it’s always wrong, that there’s never any justification
for it. And paying to heed to God’s law here is the way of wisdom.
Now, that may sound legalistic, but that would be a mistake in this case because what the book of Proverbs is saying here is that this is covenant life. This is what it means to be a child of God; this is what it means to belong to the covenant community of God. I love God’s law; I treasure it more than my earthly food. I hide it within my heart so that I might not sin against God.
Notice that he’s using arguments of persuasion too. He’s saying things like, verse 5, that sexual dalliance can lead to death and hell—that you end up having to give your wealth to another. Perhaps he’s thinking of blackmail, perhaps he’s thinking of child support. He’s writing in days where the ease with which pregnancy could be avoided or terminated was not the way it is now. And even to the extent possibly, in verse 14, of having been dragged into a court of law before his peers and being accused and charges leveled against him. Oh, my friends, do you remember what the night of passion of David and Bathsheba brought him? Those words of 2 Samuel 11:5 where Bathsheba says, “I’m pregnant.” That was the result of that. Stuart Briscoe says, “The world is littered with the debris of what sexual lust has promised but never fulfilled. Adultery is life-destroying and soul-destroying and if you keep it hidden, it gnaws away at your conscience and if you reveal it, it’ll probably destroy your marriage.”
IV.
True happiness is found in a faithful monogamous relationship with one spouse.
There’s a fourth thing I want us to see. And that is this: that
true happiness is found in a faithful monogamous relationship with one spouse.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth. Drink from your own fountain, your own well,
your own cistern. I don’t have to explain the poetic imagery here. You are to
find your sexual satisfaction in your spouse and partner and nowhere else,
because there is true happiness.
Now, verses 19 and 20 are about as explicit as the Bible gets on sexual relationships with its mention of the ‘loving hind and the graceful doe and the wife’s breasts satisfying you at all times and being exhilarated always with her love.’ At its least romantic, it’s saying, “Why are you looking for something elsewhere that you can find in your own home?” Yes, that’s about the least romantic that you can get. But maybe, just maybe, in some marriages that isn’t what you’re finding in your own home, and the Bible speaks to that too. In 1 Corinthians 7, the Bible speaks to that, but let me stress what this particular chapter is saying: Don’t take your spouse for granted. Insure that you don’t drive your spouse to other outlets because sometimes, sometimes, you can be partly to blame too.
Charles Bridges, a nineteenth century Anglican commentator on the book of Proverbs, and still my favorite commentary on the book of Proverbs, puts it like this, “Tender, well-regulated domestic affection is the best defense against the vagrant desires of unlawful passion.” Don’t you love that? It says it in that Victorian, nineteenth-century way without it becoming tawdry and cheap. But you understand what Bridges is saying. And I’m not just speaking here about sex. A loving fruitful relationship can exist between and husband and wife without that, and sometimes there are circumstances when that has to be the case. And that, in my opinion, needs to be said in the age in which we live, in the stress, and sometimes the over stress, that is given to one particular aspect of the intimacy of marriage. What happens to marriages after 25 years? We’ve been married 26 years coming in a few weeks time. Brister’s 42nd is tomorrow. What happens after 25 years? Why is it—and it’s a fact—why is it that there’s a peak in the divorce rate when marriages have been 20-25 years or so, when children leave home? The day I got married, my mother said to me on the door of the church as we were leaving. She took me aside, you know, pictures and so on, mother pulled me aside and she said, “Derek, remember that Rosemary is your friend and when the children—of course there were no children then, this was our wedding day—when the children are grown and gone, she’s the only one that you have.” I’ve thought about that, I don’t think every day, but I think I can say with absolute honesty at least once a week, I think about that--the importance of maintaining my relationship with my wife when my children are grown up and have flown the nest.
Now what this passage is saying is simple enough. Take pleasure in your spouse—at every level. Not just the sexual level. I think we can take it in a much broader way than that and it would be more fruitful for us to do that in this particular setting. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. An elder, in this congregation, said to me five years ago. I wonder he still remembers it. He said to me, “Take your wife out on a date regularly.” It had never really occurred to me; that shows how unromantic I can be, I suppose. That’s a wonderful piece of advice. To approach a date with your wife—a lunch, a dinner, a walk—with the same degree of anticipation that you had when you were courting your spouse with a view to proposal to her.
Let me be practical. Treat your spouse as someone special. I said a few weeks ago—let me repeat it again—the Bible’s view of our adoption into the kingdom of God is that men and women are regarded as heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ. In other words, your spouse, if your wife is a Christian and if your husband is a Christian, your spouse has royal blood—come on now, you Republicans, get into the old world for a minute and understand something of the significance of what royalty can mean—that we have divine, royal blood flowing through our veins, and you treat your spouse as a prince and as a princess.
I remember a seminary professor at RTS in Jackson, I remember every lunchtime—this is a tear-jerker now—but every lunchtime he would open his lunch box and there on the top of his lunch box was a napkin and on it, I kid you not—every single day, on it was a message from his wife. Oh, they were mushy you know and sometimes he would read them to us and we would just groan at the very thought of it, but I’ve never forgotten it as a practical expression of rejoicing in the spouse of your youth.
One of the most famous philosophers and theologians of the nineteenth century was a man by the name of Soren Kierkegaard and he was writing once about Martin Luther and his relationship with his wonderful bride, Katy, and he said, “It is only important that Luther had married. It is quite unimportant who, he could have married a doorpost.” Well Kierkegaard was a bachelor, you understand. He had to be to make a daft statement like that. Actually, Luther and Katy are one of my favorite examples of what a marriage can be--it’s an extraordinary story. If you are going away on vacation this summer--apart from Calvin’s Institutes--take with you from the library one of the biographies of Luther. Perhaps the best one is the biography on Luther’s wife, Katy. It’s a wonderful story. He would write letters to Katy. They lived in this old converted monastery—a huge house with lots of space not just for his children—but there would be others there, and it was more like a hotel than a home. But he would write to her and he would call her “the theologian.” “Lord Katy, my beloved one, my dearest one, whom I wouldn’t change for Venice or Florence or France or anything.” In another one he says, “I am an inferior lord, she the superior; I am Aaron and she is my Moses.”
Well, we could descend now into the ridiculous, but it is so very important in the Christian church that the community at large--which looks on at this particular church and its testimony and sees and sees and sees--and oh, that it would see beautiful marriages and godly homes, and husbands that love their wives with a passion, and wives that love their husbands with a passion. If your marriage has grown cold, perhaps it’s because of you. Perhaps it’s your fault. Perhaps what you need to do is to take some time apart—this evening, this week—on your vacation, and reassess how much of a priority you are giving to the instruction of this wise counselor here in the book of Proverbs to rejoice in the spouse of your youth.
V.
True happiness is to be found in the approval of the Lord.
You know, this chapter ends with a dire warning. Verse 21, “The
ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he watches all his paths.” And
it’s saying in the fifth place—supremely—true happiness is to be found in the
approval of God. For the Lord’s sake, do this—not just for your own sake. That’s
why trouble comes into marriages. Because we’re always thinking about
ourselves. It’s always my needs. I’m offended about this, and I’m offended
about that. And marriage is to be approached as the Christian life is to be
approached, that we are servants for Jesus’ sake; we are servants for the Lord’s
sake. For the Lord’s sake, rejoice in the spouse of your youth. “For God’s sake,
do this,” the wise man in saying. Hear what happened in David’s heart. The Bible
tells us what happened in David’s heart in 2 Samuel 12:10. “He despised the
Lord. He lost sight of God. He lost sight of the glory of God and that is
always, always, a recipe for disaster.”
You know, one of the ways to bring back romance in your marriage is the intimacy of praying together. Apart from the intimacy of sexual union, perhaps the one thing that breaks down more barriers than anything else is to hear the voice of a spouse confessing sin, asking God to help them in the relationship of marriage. Maybe that’s a place to start tonight—that together as husband and wife on your knees before God--that He would enable you and me to reintroduce that spark of love and affection that once kindled our marriage. And oh, that it may be so. Let’s pray together.
Our Father in heaven, as we come to the end of this service tonight, we thank You for the blessings and the joys and the intimacies of marriage. We thank You for the way in which You have brought this into the lives of so many of us here tonight. We pray especially for some marriages that may well be in difficulty and tension and strife. Come, Lord Jesus Christ, into these marriages and enable your children to find the love that once drew them together. Our Father, help us to love our spouses and to find the joy in our spouses as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. And in that obedience and giving of ourselves to you, may we find the deepest joy of all, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.