Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] So we're going to be in Proverbs.
[00:00:03] We're going to start back in chapter 18, verse number 22. So if you would go there, we're just going to kind of pick up where we left off last time on this subject of family matters. What we're referring to is issues of the family in the home, that is wives, husbands and children.
[00:00:24] Um, and so we're just looking at verses. Listen, we're not doing anything special really here. We're just looking at what the text says, trying to think upon it, meditate upon it, and see what the Lord shows us. And honestly, that's what I found to be the best way to study the Bible is just to read the verses.
[00:00:45] Commentaries are good to help you with that kind of thing and knowing what the different words mean, having a good dictionary and then just meditating chewing on these things. Because that's remember we studied in Psalm 119, we studied meditations. Remember that? One of the themes that came out often was meditation. But what is that related to? Trivia question what is that meditation related to?
[00:01:11] It's connected to something else.
[00:01:15] Anybody remember fear of the Lord?
[00:01:20] Yeah, but I'm kind of on a lower level than that.
[00:01:26] Meditation is sometimes connected with speaking. Remember we talked about that. Meditating is a reference to speaking the words of the Lord. In other words, you're talking to yourself and you're reminding yourself of what it says. And so that's the idea of meditation.
[00:01:44] Remember we talked about in Psalm 119, meditation is not clearing your mind of something, but filling your mind with something, actively thinking upon something. That's the biblical meditation. It's not the transcendental or Buddhist meditation. All right, okay, so Proverbs 18, verse number 22, I'll read it and then we'll pray. The Bible says well, the Bible says in verse number 22, whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor of the Lord. All right, let's pray together.
[00:02:28] Lord, I thank you first of all for the Lord Jesus, for the salvation that he has provided for us, he has given to us by his grace. Thank you, Lord, for your people that are here in this church come to hear the Word. Even though some of them are tired, some of them have burdens, some of them are afflicted in various ways and anxious and concerned. Please give grace to your people, Lord, and enable them, at least for this time, this morning and today, to commit these things to you and rest in peace. To be able to focus on what you have said and upon giving you praise and giving you glory and thinking upon the songs that we sing and the messages that are taught and preached. Please give grace that we could set our heart upon you without distraction this morning and this evening, all day, as we spend time with you together. I pray, Lord, for Your word as we look at it on the subject of the family here in Sunday school. Please bless it and give us, I pray, understanding. And Lord, really search our hearts.
[00:03:38] Help us Lord, to love the truth. Bless, I pray, the other Sunday school teachers downstairs that are teaching, that have prepared lessons, give them understanding and wisdom as well.
[00:03:50] And Lord, we thank you for all of these things. We pray for our church, Lord, as it was discussed before, many churches are dwindling, many churches are dying.
[00:04:02] And Lord, many of them are dying because they do not have any life, any true life from God at all. And we know this world around us is just getting darker and darker and sin is being exalted and folly is being glorified in every place. But Lord, we pray that you would help us, that you would enliven us, that you would quicken us and that the gospel, Lord, would really be powerful in our midst.
[00:04:34] And Lord, we don't know how to do anything except to try to serve you with all of our hearts. So Lord, enable us to do that and bless our time tonight, this morning, in Jesus name, amen.
[00:04:49] Proverbs 1822 says that whoso findeth the wife, findeth a good thing. And we talked about, just by way of review, we talked about how that the Lord is not necessarily making a comment this is not necessarily making a comment as to the quality of the wife or the husband, as the case may be, but it's referring to the state of being married. Okay? And we'll see that because in the next verse we're going to look at in chapter 19, the quality of the spouse really does make a difference. It's not that it doesn't make a difference, it does.
[00:05:23] But in this case, whoso findeth the wife, findeth a good thing.
[00:05:27] The reference to being married.
[00:05:30] Marriage is designed. God has designed it pre fall before the fall of Adam and Eve. To add good, remember we talked about it is to be a net good in our lives. Now, again, we readily acknowledge that being married adds complexity and sometimes difficulty to one's life. Even forget about sin and the difficulty that comes with two individuals who are merging their lives together. Forget that. Just think about, think about Jessica. That brother Vernon's or Sister Betty's niece, that's yours niece, right? Yeah, sister Betty's niece that he mentioned in the prayer requests. So this lady is in her 30s, like late thirty, s thirty eight. And she's married and had a seizure and apparently has a tumor in her brain. So that's definitely a huge burden on her.
[00:06:33] But that is also a burden on her husband, right? So that marriage, the fact that they are married means that her burden is his. So it's not always good things that come, but what we say is a net good. In other words, it's better than if not right, and you bear the burdens. But even the very things that sometimes cause us difficulty and pain and sorrow are the fact that we're married helps us bear those more easily because we have someone to help us. And so having a partner is an important truth in the Scripture.
[00:07:14] So we looked at that how that the Lord's intention is that marriage is to be a net good to us whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing, it's a good thing. And we also saw how that many people, it has not been their experience, right? So look, when you look at the proverbs, you got to remember, you just got to remember that the proverbs are proverbs. They're sayings, can anybody think of an English proverb? I just want to illustrate this. Can anybody think of an English proverb?
[00:07:54] Anything, any little pity saying, one liners that we use? What's that? Better to be thought of fool than open your mouth.
[00:08:04] Okay, that's good. That's a good one. All right, that's a good one. But look at both of those.
[00:08:14] We'll examine both of those so I can hopefully illustrate what it means to be a proverb. Okay?
[00:08:22] Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth or remove all doubt. Okay, but are there times when you have to open your mouth even if you look like a fool?
[00:08:34] Yes.
[00:08:36] So there are exceptions.
[00:08:38] It's a generally applicable truth, right? In general that would be true. And in most cases that can be applied and it's right. But there are exceptions. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. So if you eat an apple, if you eat an apple every single day of your life, are you never going to have to go to the doctor? Of course not.
[00:08:57] The idea, of course, behind that is taking care of yourself, eating right and things like that. But here's the thing. A proverb is just that. It's a generally applicable truth. We already covered this. But just as a review, it's a generally applicable truth, but it does not necessarily mean there's no exceptions. It's a proverb. All right? Now compare it. And here's why that's important. Because in the Scripture, not everything we read is a command and a promise. There are commands and there are promises that do not have exceptions. But I'm glad the Lord gives another genre of the scripture of literature, the proverbs, because that these things make it very easy for us to assimilate the truth and apply the truth.
[00:09:42] But this is an example of why it's important to understand the distinction between a proverb and something like a promise. Here's why.
[00:09:49] Because whoso findeth the wife, findeth a good thing. And we know that people sometimes get married and they don't find it good. We know that is not always 100% the case. True.
[00:10:01] But it doesn't detract from the reality that the Lord is commending marriage. He's saying this is good, and you that are married, no matter what your personal experience is with marriage.
[00:10:20] And you that are not married, no matter what your personal experience might have been with marriage, ought to we all ought to commend a good marriage because that's a good thing. It's a good thing. This is what this is teaching. And we also talked about how that in many cases we do not find our experience matching God's description. Because for men, our wives are only responding to our poor leadership. That's just the reality of it. So that burden is, of course, upon us. But there's a second part to this verse is where we want to start today. It says, Anne, obtaineth favor of the Lord. Now, I'm going to just dispel this dumb little thing that some people say, well, you get married, you're going to need grace. How many of you have heard some stupid little thing? I've heard people say, well, if you find a wife, yeah, you get a good thing, but you need grace, as if it's a bad thing. Listen, I hate that kind of stuff. You talk about hobby horses and pet peeves. That's one of mine. All right? That's one of mine. What this is not saying is God's going to have to help you extra because you're getting married. No, this is saying that having a spouse obtain a favor of the Lord. Favor being similar to grace. Right? Having a wife, having a husband. I'm extending it. I know it says wife. I'm extending it to also apply to husbands. Having a wife is a means whereby the grace of God comes to us. It is a channel whereby the grace of God comes to us. Listen to this, the definition of a grace. Now, again, a grace. Now we know what grace is. Grace is God's unmerited favor, God's benevolence without any worth or earning on our part, right? But in the grace of God, everything that God gives us by his grace is called a grace. As an account noun, a grace. So that's what this means. Listen, a grace is something received from God by the individual benevolent, divine influence acting upon humanity to impart spiritual enrichment or purity, to inspire virtue, or to give strength to endure trial and resist temptation. This is what a grace is. How many graces does God bestow upon us?
[00:12:57] Sometimes we have opportunities to give testimony about what God does in our lives. Answered prayer, protection, those kinds of things. Every single one of those is a grace. That's what the word grace means. That's what this is talking about here. Now, how many other things in our lives could be considered the graces of God? I won't go into these in great detail because I want to get some other things. But just as an example, in Titus, chapter two, verse eleven, the Bible says that the grace of God teaches us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and Godly in this present world. All right? The grace of god comes to us, and it teaches us two corinthians. Chapter eight tells us of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich. The grace of God. So here's what I want you to understand. When you talk about a grace, sometimes we use the term you got to be careful with this term. This is a very Protestant term, but I think it's a sound term if you understand it right, which is a means of grace. How many of you have heard that term before? A means of grace? Now, Brother David thinks it, hears it, and he automatically thinks of Calvinism because they love to play with that term. But there is truth in that. Often in Catholicism, they use the term means of grace. The seven sacraments, they say, are a means of grace. In other words, if you take communion, for instance, Holy Communion, as it's called, when you take communion, that is a means of grace. That's what they say. So by doing that remember, by doing that, performing that work, you get the grace of God. Well, that's not grace anymore. Yes, sir.
[00:14:48] Infant baptism is a means of yeah, exactly. And that's also true in Catholicism as well, because baptism, Christening is one of the seven sacraments. So basically they say, if you do this, God will give you grace. Well, you have lost the meaning of grace because now you're in a transaction, you've bought it.
[00:15:05] That's not what we mean by means of grace. What we mean by means of grace is a channel through which the grace of God arrives. All right? The cross is a means of grace. You know what? You didn't do anything to get that.
[00:15:23] In other words, God demonstrated his love and provided his salvation through the channel of the cross. I'm using that terminology, but you understand what I mean by means of that thing.
[00:15:37] The grace of God came to us, right, had nothing to do with us earning it. We didn't earn it. The cross was something that God gave to every person.
[00:15:48] When Jesus shed his blood, he was tasting death for every man, regardless regardless of whether they had done good or evil. Of course, we had all done evil. We know that. So we talk about means of grace. We're referring to a channel or a means as a thing through which God gives grace. Our church listen, Choice Hills Baptist Church is to each one of us a means of grace.
[00:16:15] What do I mean by that? Is the grace of God. All the good things God wants to give you, he will give you via this church that if you were not here and you were not actively involved in a good, sound, local church, you would not get.
[00:16:32] So he gives it to you. It's almost like this. It's almost like the Lord gives something to sister Karen to give to me. But if I can't take it from God directly, I take it from her. But it's God's gift through her. You understand what I'm saying? That's what a means of grace is. The church is designed to be that. Did you know? Each one of you can be a means of grace to minister? That's what the st corinthians says. To minister the grace of God to one another.
[00:17:01] Think about that. To minister the grace of God to one another. That means the grace of God is coming to me, and then I give it to you.
[00:17:10] It's flowing through me. That's what we're talking about.
[00:17:15] Listen, this is why it's so important for every one of us to be engaged fully to be not just present, but wholeheartedly, sincerely, actively involved in our church.
[00:17:38] Because God gives grace to each one of us through each other.
[00:17:45] And when we neglect the church, it's not just about us. It's not just about our time and our schedule.
[00:17:54] It's about God and his grace getting to others also.
[00:18:03] This is the means whereby God has chosen to give all the good things that he wants to give us.
[00:18:12] Your children are a means of grace.
[00:18:16] How many things does God teach us by his grace through our children?
[00:18:21] How many blessings and joys do we recognize come from God through the channel of our children?
[00:18:29] We recognize they come from God. We don't look at our child and say, thank you for no. We know that God sent those things through our kids. A means of grace. Our Bible is a means of grace.
[00:18:40] We get God's wisdom and God's blessing and assurance and many other things come from the Scripture and only come from the Scripture. It's a channel.
[00:18:51] Does that make sense?
[00:18:55] That should awaken us so that we don't look lightly upon these different things in our lives that God has placed there for the express purpose of being channels to give us the good things that he has for us. The graces he has for us. One of those things is a wife and a husband.
[00:19:20] That's what this is saying.
[00:19:22] Anne obtaineth favor of the Lord. You see, when you get married, you get a means of grace a channel through which the grace of God is going to be demonstrated through you, to you, by your husband and by your wife. Matthew Henry says this on this verse. He says, God is to be acknowledged in marriage with thanksgiving. Now, hear me. Now. This is an important point. God is to be acknowledged in marriage with thanksgiving. It is a token of his favor that's good. And a happy pledge of further favors.
[00:20:05] It is a sign that God delights in a man to do him good and has mercy in store for him. For this, therefore, God must be sought unto. So if you have a marriage and that marriage brings you see the grace of God coming in. Sometimes the problem is not that the grace of God is not flowing in that marriage to you. Sometimes we're just too blind to see it. But if you're married and the grace of God is coming to you through that marriage, god is to be acknowledged in that relationship.
[00:20:38] You see, God has good things to give to us and he gives it to us wrapped in various packages. In this case, God gives his goodness to us wrapped in the package of a wife.
[00:20:54] Now, if we just think about that, meditate upon that and this could be applied to other relationships as well. But the scripture explicitly says this.
[00:21:03] How then men should that affect the way that we view our wives even when we're annoyed and that happens even when we're bothered or things aren't whatever.
[00:21:17] How should that should alter the way that we view our wives and our husbands and it should alter the way we view our church and our Bible and our children and our grandchildren.
[00:21:30] When you view those things as channels and packages in which the grace of God is sent to us, it'll definitely make us value them differently.
[00:21:46] But what we also see here is notice it says Anne obtaineth favor of the Lord whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing.
[00:21:58] There's a connection between having a wife, having a husband and God's goodness. You see that connection.
[00:22:07] So when we look at our spouses, what this verse is showing us, we ought to see a good thing, we ought to see a good thing and we ought to connect that good thing to heaven. So there is a again, this is basically the Old Testament version of the Old diagram where you have husband and wife and the Lord and the closer the two get to the to the Lord, the closer they get to one. It's just basically another version of that truth.
[00:22:36] Listen, if you are married and you are out of sorts with your wife or your husband and you do not get along with them, we admit everybody has trouble, everybody has problems and arguments and stuff like that. When someone says I've never had an argument with my husband, I just don't believe it. Now, that might be true, but I don't believe it.
[00:23:01] But here's the thing.
[00:23:06] If your marriage is out of whack and it is not the way the scripture describes it, it ought to matter to you. It ought not be something you just give up on and say, well, it'll never be better. It can't be better. And it might not be your fault. It might be the other person's fault. That happens sometimes.
[00:23:25] The problem is that it matters. It matters.
[00:23:31] God should be in the midst of that relationship for his grace comes to us by means of that relationship.
[00:23:39] Look at Proverbs 19, if you would.
[00:23:49] Now, in the verse we just read, there is a clear and unambiguous connection between the wife and the Lord having a spouse and the Lord.
[00:24:01] James 117. Who knows that verse off top of your head.
[00:24:06] I'll start at every good and every perfect gift cometh down from above from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What that tells us is, good gifts come from God.
[00:24:23] Good gifts come from God, and God should be acknowledged. That includes our spouse. For the Bible says, whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing, therefore it comes from God. All right, verse number nine, chapter 19, verse number 14. The Bible says, house and riches are the inheritance of fathers, and a prudent wife is from the Lord.
[00:24:45] A prudent wife is from the Lord.
[00:24:52] This verse is a verse in which we see a conditional not just any wife, but a prudent wife. Okay? Are you a prudent wife? Are you an upright husband? That's a good question to ask ourselves, because not all wives it says, a prudent wife is from the Lord. So therefore there are foolish wives, there are foolish husbands. And those things can't apply to this. It comes from coming from God. In fact, some people some people get married, and the person they choose to marry is not sent from God. It's sent from directly from the devil to derail their lives. And it does. It happens. I have seen it with my own eyeballs, and you probably have, too.
[00:25:34] But notice in verse number 14, a prudent wife is from the Lord is a recognition of the source of our marriage. We recognize that God gave us our spouse. And when we recognize that we are therefore responsible to that fact, we are responsible to respond to that fact in the right way.
[00:26:02] When you have something that's been given to you, the way that you treat that thing is a reflection of the way that you view the person who gave it.
[00:26:14] That's just a reality. For instance, if somebody did something really nice, like when I was 16, I think I was about 16, my grandmother gave me her car. She was buying a new car instead of trading her car, and she gave me her a I'm talking sinfully, ugly, burgundy Plymouth Acclaim.
[00:26:40] All right? How many of you know what a Plymouth Acclaim is?
[00:26:44] Nobody? It's that bad. It's that bad. The outside was burgundy, and the inside was burgundy cloth seats. I love that car. I love that car. But you know what? If I mistreated that car if I mistreated that car, it would have been a reflection upon my grandmother because she gave it to me.
[00:27:06] Well, a prudent wife is from the Lord. So if I mistreat my wife, I am failing to recognize who gave me my wife.
[00:27:17] All right?
[00:27:21] So furthermore, here's another thing we need to understand about this.
[00:27:26] If the source verse 14, a prudent wife is from the Lord, if the source of a wife and then of a husband, by extension, is God himself.
[00:27:39] From whence, then? If you use biblical language, from whence then should we seek a husband or a wife?
[00:27:45] Right? We should seek a husband and wife from the Lord, not Tinder. How many of you don't know what Tinder is? Raise your hand.
[00:27:52] I don't have an account with Tinder, so don't worry about it. Tinder is a very popular dating app, and there's a lot of bad, from what I hear on that.
[00:28:04] Look, we should seek, and we know when we talk about seeking the Lord, seeking a wife, seeking a husband, that just means we want to get married. Do you two want to get married?
[00:28:16] Yes, they want to get married. It's going to be a very long time before they get married.
[00:28:21] No, but they want to get married.
[00:28:24] But the key is to seek the Lord. Now, when you seek God about it and here's the thing, we're talking about husband and wife. But this principle is true in almost just every case. Every case, right?
[00:28:37] You need more money to pay your bills. Talk to God about it, right? You need conflict resolution with someone. Talk to God. In other words, God should always be our first step, the first person we talk to about these things. And the wife and the husband are no different. We talk to God about it. And then the Lord there might be means we talked about, means of grace, there might be means he uses to bring that person into our lives, direct us to marry them. But it comes from God. The source is God. Now, this is contrary to wisdom in our society.
[00:29:15] Contrary to wisdom in our society. See, our society teaches a different way to find a husband and find a wife.
[00:29:25] But then we see also, it says I mentioned this earlier, a prudent wife. So what of the foolish wife? What of the foolish husband?
[00:29:37] They exist. Foolish wives, wicked husbands, they exist. And I know in our society, women and I have a wife, I have four daughters.
[00:29:51] I dare not call them women.
[00:29:55] They're little girls still, right? But our society seeks to I'm just being honest with you. And if you're perceptive, you'll pick up on this. Our society seeks to present women, as always, faultless like in every case, in every divorce.
[00:30:16] That's why you have things like the MeToo movement. And some of that is legitimate. Some women are legitimately mistreated. But the idea is, in every case, a woman is to be believed in all cases, and she could never have a nefarious motive for anything she does.
[00:30:30] That's a running theme in society. But you ladies know you ladies that are honest know that that's not always the case. Women sometimes have evil in their hearts and they plan things and can be vindictive. We know that. I mean, if we believe the Bible, we know that, right? But here's the thing. The same is true of men. There's foolish wives, there's wicked men, wicked husbands. So we acknowledge that exists, okay? This is why it's so important that we look at biblical criteria when we choose a wife or a husband. Because when we make that plunge outside of the will of God, there are no takebacks. When we make that plunge outside of the will of God, then now hear me. That which is intended to be a good can be an evil.
[00:31:26] A prudent wife is from the Lord. So that means we should be seeking a prudent wife. We should be seeking a Godly upright husband, right?
[00:31:35] Even in one Corinthians seven, verse 39, we talked about this a few weeks ago in church. It says if a woman is loosed from her husband, say her husband dies or whatnot, and she seeks a husband, he says, Let them go ahead and get married. But then it follows with these three, four words only in the Lord.
[00:31:57] See? That's a criteria only in the Lord. Because you know what? It matters, because if it's not in the Lord and that's a reference not only to someone marrying someone who is a believer, that is definitely that, but it's also a reference to marrying in the will of God because we want this verse here. A prudent wife is from the Lord to apply to us, right? So we need to keep in mind that there are bad traps out there that can do us harm in this matter. So doing the will of God in this matter is of primary importance. So that thing which God intends for good is good to us. Let's pray.
