Third, get advice, not only about the prospective spouse but also about your own readiness for marriage. If you are listening only to your heart and not to advice, you have left the path of wisdom. Finally, remember Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 7, namely, that we do not need to be married to be a fully completed person. Only union with Christ can do that. So never marry out of desperation. You have the only spouse who can truly fulfill you (Ephesians 5:25–33).
Are you more in danger of overdesiring, or overfearing, or undervaluing marriage? If you are married, what is the main advice you’d give to marriage seekers?
Prayer: Lord, marriage is a great good, but not the ultimate good. Because our enjoyment of your love is so weak, we become too desperate and, therefore, also too fearful of marriage. Lord, there are many not finding marriage who should, and many you have called to singleness who are discouraged by it. Help them all. Amen.
September 23
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. (31:30)
ATTRACTION. Proverbs does not attach much value to physical beauty. Here, in fact, it is seen as deceptive, because it promises far more than it can deliver. Studies show that we tend to trust attractive people more than unattractive ones, assuming their insides match their outsides, which is not true in the slightest. And when thinking about marriage, we tend to simply screen out the less attractive without giving them serious consideration at all. This is profoundly unwise. Physical beauty is fleeting, and for the great majority of us, it won’t be around for most of our marriages.
Instead we should seek a comprehensive attraction to someone we marry. Certainly there should be a physical attraction, but that should not be primary. Attraction to the beauty of someone’s love, courage, servant heart, humility, joy, and peace should have pride of place. And we should also be drawn to what a person is becoming, what God is making them through his Spirit (Ephesians 5:25–27; Philippians 1:6). If this comprehensive attraction is more important than the physical, the physical attraction will deepen and increase as the years go by and your physical youth and beauty wane.
Have you embraced this countercultural approach to attraction? If not, you will have trouble as you and your marriage partner age, or, if you are not married, you may choose a partner poorly.
Prayer: Lord, we talk about not judging a book by its cover and yet when choosing a spouse we moderns are overwhelmed by looks and appearance. The results are many mistaken assessments, and so many overlooked people. Give us eyes to see people truly, and not just for marriage seeking! Amen.
Sex
September 24
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 intoxicated with her love. (5:15–19)
SEX AS BLESSING. This passage forbids adultery but also celebrates sex within marriage. There is barefaced rejoicing in sexual pleasure here, using vivid images. Female sexuality is likened to a well into which there is descent; male sexuality is called a fountain. The husband is to be attracted to his wife’s breasts. To drink water is to quench sexual thirst through lovemaking. Verse 18 actually asks for divine blessing on sex. While the passage shows a reverence for sex, there is not a hint of prudishness. The New Testament agrees sex within marriage is crucial and not optional (1 Corinthians 7:2,5).
In that day it was expected that the husband would find supplemental sexual pleasure elsewhere, but the Bible allows no double standard. Should your springs overflow in the streets? Rather, the wife’s sexuality belongs to her husband (your own well) even as the husband’s to the wife (1 Corinthians 7:4–5)—an expression of equal sexual authority within marriage that, especially for its time, was striking. Within that bond, sex can truly flow and sing.
Are the people in the churches you know too prudish about sex? On the other hand, do they lack a reverence for sex, not seeing it as for marriage alone?
Prayer: Lord, your Word’s teaching on both the sexuality’s meaning and practice was a bombshell in the ancient world and is again today. It infuriates and confounds both the prudish and the licentious. Give your people the wisdom to see and love your wisdom about your creation, the gift of sex. Amen.
September 25
“There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a young woman. This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth and says, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’” (30:18–20)
SEX AS CONSUMPTION. The first three pictures in this passage are of one penetrating into the realm of another. When the way of a man with a young woman is added, it is clear that these are poetic images likening sex to wondrous things like soaring (eagle) or sailing (ship). Then verse 20 is jarring. Sex is likened not to flying but to sloppy eating. This is sex as no big deal, nothing special, nothing to get all breathless about. It’s just a minor high we enjoy a bit, just something people do.
Sex outside of marriage inevitably diminishes it to that level. A consumer transacts with a vendor as long as the produce is good enough in quality and price. Sex apart from marriage becomes a product we consume if we find someone attractive enough in quality and low enough in price. But if the quality goes down or the cost goes up, we can walk away, because there was no covenant. If sex comes only with the radical self-giving and whole-life commitment of marriage, that takes sex off the market, as it were, and makes it priceless. Sex on the market no longer soars. It only wipes its mouth.
Have you seen, in your life or others’, this diminishment of sex?
Prayer: Lord, when your church was born, sex was nothing special, something done routinely with prostitutes, at parties, with domestics, and it was no big deal. Please protect your people from this same devaluation today. Don’t let us be robbed of the joy and pricelessness of sex. Amen.
September 26
“There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a young woman. This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth and says, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’” (30:18–20)
SEX AS APPETITE. 30:20 has a contemporary sound. Many see sex as nothing but appetite. Why feel more guilt about it than you would if you’ve had a good meal? “I’ve done nothing wrong.” But it takes time to become so insouciant about sex. Our natural impulse is to find sex a very big deal and to become emotionally involved. Our hearts go along with our bodies. Only after you train yourself to take physical pleasure without the full personal commitment of marriage do the soul and body become detached. Then you can have sex without being too emotionally involved, and you just wipe your mouth.
Sex should instead be a way to both display and deepen full trust. It is a radical, unconditional, deeply personal means of self-donation. It is God’s created way to say to someone else, “I belong wholly and exclusively to you.” If you use it to say that and mean that, as time goes on it will enable spouses to indeed become more indissolubly one and each other’s. If you don’t use it like that, you’ve turned it into groceries. It will be routine, then boring. There will be no wonder left.
This view of sex and marriage is radically countercultural. Does it make sense to you? Why or why not?
Prayer: Lord, the stories our society bombards us with make sex either too transcendent or too common. Preserve your people, Lord, from these distortions of mind and heart so that both married and single Christians may understand sex in its true nature as covenantal love. Amen.
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sp; September 27
Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. (11:22)
OVERVALUING SEX: PART 1. Our culture has found a way to both undervalue and overvalue sex at the same time. By treating sex as just an appetite or commodity that can be had without lifelong commitment, it undervalues sex. But it also overvalues it. This satirical proverb begins with the picture of a beautiful gold ring. It’s so lovely you want to take hold of it. But if you don’t notice that it is connected to a pig covered in mud and slop, suddenly you will have a mess in your lap. You reached for something beautiful and got a pile of filth.
You ask, “What fool would do that?” But the sage is saying if you enter into a relationship with someone who is physically and superficially attractive and polished but who is selfish, immature, and cruel, it is you who are the fool. Only an idiot would let the gold ring obscure the fact that this is a pig. Only a fool counts outer beauty as more important than inward character.204 Many people missed the true beauty of Jesus because outwardly he was nothing to look at (Isaiah 53:2).
What bad effects have you seen, in your life or others’, of an overvaluing of sexual attractiveness?
Prayer: Lord, you were infinitely lovely in your character but not in your body. Teach us how to discern true beauty and not be distracted by the superficial. Let this spiritual insight infuse not only our Christian marriages, but also the way we conduct all relationships. Amen.
September 28
Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. (11:22)
OVERVALUING SEX: PART 2. Men especially tend to evaluate women on their looks, hence this verse’s metaphor. Today we consider how this harms everyone. It damages relationships between the genders. Women see clearly how men react to beauty and it rightly lowers their respect for men. Also, it distorts women’s self-images and lives. It is difficult for them not to overvalue thinness and shapeliness, high cheekbones and great skin. It’s a huge temptation for women to say, “Why should I care about my character when everyone else—men and women—is evaluating me on my looks?”
Addiction to beauty fuels the pornography industry, which confirms men in their delusion that only young and beautiful women are sexually alluring. Pornography also gives men a way to get quick sexual pleasure without the messy, frightening work of building a real relationship with someone. Finally, many men fail to see wonderful prospective spouses—women who would be absolutely terrific partners—right under their noses. They are “screened out” for not being as good-looking as the pictures in porn. The idolatry of beauty is ruining us individually and as a society.
Can you think of any other ways that our culture’s overvaluing of physical attractiveness is harmful?
Prayer: Lord, we are to pray against the evils of the age, that you protect not only your people but also all that you have made. I pray that the people who promote the pornography industry would be convicted of its malevolence. I pray that its effects would be curbed and people saved from its dehumanizing power. Amen.
Parenting
September 29
Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old. Buy the truth and do not sell it—wisdom, instruction and insight as well. The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him. (23:22–24)
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL. Traditionally parents used strict discipline. The modern view is that parents should mainly be supportive and allow children to do self-discovery.205 Proverbs teaches that the ultimate goal of parenting is neither mere control nor affirmation but to teach their children to become wise and righteous.
It is folly to expect a child to work out for him- or herself the moral wisdom of the ages. What makes a person capable of coming up with a standard of right and wrong is not that their parents taught them exactly right but that their parents did teach them. If their parents held a coherent account of good and evil and tried to impart it, even if later it is rejected in whole or part, at the very least the child will have developed a critical moral faculty. If instead the parents just let their child grow up as a detached, autonomous self, that’s parental malpractice. We should do for our children what our heavenly Father did for us when he sent Jesus to us with his fatherly teaching (John 14:24).
How does this view of parenting undercut both traditional and modern views of parenting? What families have you seen do this well? What can you learn from them most?
Prayer: Lord, our societies are filled with many powerful influences so antithetical to the teachings of your Word. More than ever, parents need to be teachers of their children, but how can they compete with social media? We need your wisdom and the Spirit’s work in our children’s hearts. Amen.
September 30
My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. . . . May your father and mother rejoice; may she who gave you birth be joyful! My son, give me your heart and let your eyes delight in my ways. (3:11–12, 23:25–26)
MUTUAL DELIGHT. The main job of parents is to teach their children about right and wrong, good and evil. But this must be done in an environment of mutual delight. A teacher can have a good grasp of the material but still create a harsh atmosphere in which the students will not really want to learn, even if out of fear they try.
Proverbs directs parents to do discipline and punishment, but behind it all must be a love and delight in the children that is obvious to them. A family needs the constant, every-hour expression of love, joy, and wonder. You must “catch your child being good” and jump on every opportunity for praise. Avoid falling into a habitual, ongoing tone of mutual exasperation and complaint (Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21). If you have a father and mother who are firm, have a coherent understanding of right and wrong, and delight in you, then even if you grow up and do not follow all their values, you’ve still been trained to be a competent adult. If parents don’t show delight to the children they are training, they fail in their job.
What families have you seen do this well? What can you learn from them most?
Prayer: Lord, you said your prophets would turn the hearts of parents toward the children and the hearts of children to their parents (Malachi 4:6). Now, by your grace, put that spirit in our Christian families, and in all believers, that we might take delight in one another across the generations. Amen.
October 1
Discipline your children, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to their death. (19:18)
DISCIPLINE YOUR CHILDREN. The word discipline means to punish. While the primary goal of parents is to teach what is right (September 29) in an environment of love and delight (September 30), one of the main ways to do that is to establish both boundaries and consistent consequences for trespassing those boundaries for your children. Why?
There is a design in the world, and to go against it brings natural consequences. If parents do not bring carefully controlled, unpleasant consequences into the children’s lives, they will go out into the world and bring far more painful and harmful results onto themselves later. Inflicting minor sadness now avoids great despair later. If you do that when they are young there is hope that the child will internalize your training and learn self-control. If you don’t, you are a willing party to their death. Strong words, but fair. God’s parenting is perfect, and he disciplines us for our good. He knows we hate the consequences he brings into our lives now, but later they will bear enormous fruit (Hebrews 12:9–11).
What families have you seen do this well? What can you learn from them most?
Prayer: Lord, the world that you made punishes foolishness and sin with the most deadly natural consequences. Help your people, then, to exercise discipline in our homes and discipline in our churches—in order to encourage self-discipline in our lives and hearts, that we may
live at peace in this world. Amen.
October 2
A rod and a reprimand impart wisdom, but a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother. (29:15)
THE ROD. Proverbs’ call to use the rod concerns today’s readers. Child abuse is indeed a great evil, and the modern debate over corporal punishment is a good one but too complicated to present here. What we can learn from Proverbs includes these things. First, because the rod was literally used to punish criminals in ancient society, it came to be a symbol of authority and of discipline in general. So when Proverbs tells parents to use the rod, it does include the possibility of corporal punishment, but it means much more.206 Second, Proverbs never sees the rod as a magic bullet. No one should look to discipline as the essence of child rearing, or to overrely on corporal punishment as the essence of discipline. 29:15 says that along with consequences must come the verbal, reasoned reprimand.
The entirety of the book of Proverbs implicitly condemns the harsh disciplinarian by its entire tone, that is, “by its own reasonable approach, its affectionate earnestness,” and by the warmth and love that come out in the parents’ addresses.207 Bruce Waltke writes that “parents who brutalize their children cannot hide behind the rod-doctrine of Proverbs.”208
What do you think of the wisdom of corporal punishment for children? How can it be overrelied on?
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