No Off Ramps – Proverbs 18, 2, 31

No Off Ramps

Self(less) Love

Proverbs 18:22; 2:16-17; 31:10-12

The Text

Proverbs 18:22

He who finds a wife finds a good thing

and obtains favor from 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;

Proverbs 18:10-12

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.

Introduction:

Last week, we said, “We need wisdom; specifically for relationships because we live in a uniquely individualistic age.”

For nearly all human history, marriage was understood to be about your social responsibility. Marriage made family alliances, created economic stability, and social cohesion. Love and affection were hoped for and could grow over time, but in traditional cultures you got married because you had a duty to God, your family, and to society.

But our culture is unique. We’re the first society in history to say, “The main purpose of marriage is my personal happiness. If this relationship makes me happy. I’ll stay. If not, I’ll find someone who does. If marriage makes us happy, we’ll get married. If not, we won’t.”

As a society – we do not know what marriage is anymore, and therefore we do not understand its purpose.

As we look at Proverbs, we’ll see our culture has believed a lie about marriage, and Proverbs will also tell us the truth about marriage.

1. The Lie: Marriage Declares Present Love
2. The Truth: Marriage Promises Future Love

1. The Lie: Marriage Declares Present Love

The book of Proverbs was originally written as a training manual for young boys in ancient Israel. It was to train them in the ways of wisdom as they approached manhood, and therefore all the examples in Proverbs are oriented towards young men, but you’ll see that the wisdom here is applicable for everyone.

So, all throughout the book, these young men are warned against impulsivity in their relationships.

Proverbs 2, but also chapters 5, 6, & 7, warns young men against giving in to the emotional impulses of attraction & passion.

As we read earlier, Proverbs 2 warns of the woman who forsakes the person she’s committed to in order to be with someone who makes her happier.

¹⁶ So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,

from the adulteress with her smooth words,

¹⁷ who forsakes the companion of her youth

and forgets the covenant of her God;

Likewise, Proverbs 5:3 says don’t be fooled into being with someone just because their lips drip honey. It’s easy to be swept away by someone telling you what you want to hear. You need someone who will not withhold blunt truth when it’s necessary.

Proverbs 6:25 says look beyond outer appearance. Physical attraction should not be the primary driver in seeking a mate. Physical beauty is temporary, it can mask a selfish heart, and you’ll have a shallow marriage if that’s all you care about.

Proverbs 7:22 says if you choose a partner simply because of how they make you feel today, you’re as naive as an ox being led to the slaughterhouse.

Now, this is counterintuitive to everything we believe about relationships. The wisdom of our day says, “What matters most is how you feel. You should only be with someone if they make you happy.”

In other words, our culture views marriage as a declaration of present love.

Marriage, in the modern mind, is essentially a public announcement that says, “Right now, you make me happy. Right now, I feel in love with you. Right now, this relationship feels good.”

And if those present feelings ever change—if the happiness fades, if the spark dies, if someone “grows apart”—then the marriage has serve its purpose and can be dissolved.

This is why so many people today ask, “If we love each other, why do we need to get married?” Or, “Why do we need a piece of paper to tell each other, I love you?”

And the answer is, “You don’t.” You do not need a marriage license to express how you feel. But that’s not what a marriage is. A marriage is not the declaration or expression of my love.

In the last 25 years it’s become popular for wedding couples to write their own vows. And here’s the funny thing: most of them are not actually vows. They are expressions of how I feel today.

They say. “You make me laugh, you make me think, and above all, you make me happy…”

“I feel more alive with you than I ever have before.”

“When I’m with you, the world feels right. I love the way you love me, and I never want this feeling to end.”

Now, those are nice sentiments—but they aren’t vows. They declare present feelings, but love has been reduced to “how you make me feel today.” The true commitment is to the emotions, the feelings, the passion.

Many people have what I call a Mood Ring view of marriage. Remember mood rings? The idea is that you put this ring on your finger and it helps you read your emotions. So, black means your stressed, brown means you’re nervous, blue-green means you’re relaxed, red means you’re angry.

And it turns out that the rings were filled with a liquid that changed color based on your body temperature. In middle school I thought I was depressed every day. Turns out, I just have poor circulation in my hands.

Many people have mood ring marriages. If they feel good, they love the marriage. If they feel stressed or angry, or sad, they think it’s time for the relationship to end.

So many marriages never reach deep, mature love, because they never move past trying to maintain those initial sparks. They never get past the stage of trying to impress one another.

Very honestly, so much what we call “love” in the early years is really just a performance; each person working hard to show how loveable they are. You’re trying to maintain the feelings of love, rather than actually love.

But after a while, the performance fades. Some people call it the seven-year itch. Others struggle when the kids move out. Whenever it happens, every single relationship will go through a time of testing, when you will no longer care to impress your spouse.

And if your marriage is built on “how I feel right now,” that moment is a crisis. When the feelings fade, many conclude the relationship is over.

But the book of Proverbs and the whole Bible says something radically different: marriage is not a declaration of present love. That’s not what marriage is.

2. The Truth: Marriage Promises Future Love

Think back to the older more traditional wedding vows.

They weren’t declarations of present-tense love. Instead, they promised love in the future.

I take you, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight my troth.

You hear what’s happening? Promising love in the future. That’s because they understood that marriage, at its root, is a covenant. To make a covenant is to make promises, and the oath of the covenant binds you to fulfill the obligations.

Proverbs 2:17 is sobering. It doesn’t just warn about forsaking the person you’re committed to in order to be with someone who makes you happier. It says that when you do that—you aren’t just ending a relationship, you’re breaking a sacred covenant you made before God.

who forsakes the companion of her youth

and forgets the covenant of her God;

The Bible says that marriage is a lifelong covenant made before God. Proverbs 31 says: She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.

You see? Life-long. Doing good. It’s not about temporary feelings or passion. It’s about perpetual obedience.

Now, I know what a few of you are thinking: contracts, oaths! That stifles love. You feel the walls closing in on you.

I want to make two points here. First, I want to explain what the covenant of marriage is, then I want to show you that making and keeping the covenant of marriage is actually the way into deeper future love.

First, let me explain the covenantal aspect of a marriage.

Whenever Jesus, or the Apostles, or the rest of the Bible explains marriage, they always take us back to the very beginning: the Garden of Eden. That’s because it’s the only place we can see human marriage in its pristine state: before sin affect it, or culture shaped it.

There, in the Garden, after God made the first man, he said:

“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Gen. 2:18)

And if you read the entire passage, you realize that God did not make woman and institute the first marriage because Adam was lonely. There’s no indication in the text that Adam was forlorn.

And though Eve would be able to make Adam fruitful with children, bearing children could certainly happen without marriage.

Nor was it to curb Adam’s lust. This is before the Fall, therefore he wouldn’t have been tempted to sexual sin.

So, why was it not good for man to be alone? Why does God give us the institution of marriage?

And the answer is that the covenant of human marriage reflects and reenacts the ultimate covenant of marriage we see in the gospel.

All throughout the Bible we’re told that God is a bridegroom, and his people are his bride.

Isaiah 62:5 “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

Isaiah 54:5 “Your Maker is your husband.”

Hosea 2:19-20 God says to us, “I will betroth you to myself forever.”

And of course, at the end of the Bible in Revelation 19,

⁷ Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

Why does the Bible begin with a human marriage and end with a marriage supper between God and his people? Because human marriage is a symbol and a sign of a deeper covenant that God has made with us.

God says, “I will take you to myself, with all of your flaws, with all of your shortcomings and through and by my sacrificial love I will turn you into something great. I will serve your needs and through my love you will become something dazzling for all eternity.”

Marriage reflects that ultimate marriage, but it also reenacts it. A good human marriage makes the gospel visible. Let me tell you what I mean.

In Ephesians 5:25, the Apostle Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”

Human marriage is you saying to your spouse, “I see in you a glimpse of what you are becoming in and through Jesus Christ. I see your future glory in him, and therefore, I take you to myself, with all of your flaws, and through my life long sacrificial love, I will help you get to that destination. I see a glimpse of what you are becoming in and through Jesus, and therefore, I am committing serve you on that journey. I am committing to help you towards that ultimate goal of glory.”

For this reason, Christian marriage rejects the consumer mindset. “I’ll be the spouse you want me to be, so long as you are the spouse I want you to be.”

Committing to covenantal Christian marriage is committing to lifelong ministry. It’s a ministry mindset to your spouse: to love them when they are unlovable. To serve them when they don’t serve you. To sacrifice for them even when they are selfish. And in so doing, you are reenacting the gospel towards them.

You are being a picture of Christ’s love for them. You are saying, “Because Jesus Christ loved me when I was unlovable, and served me even when I didn’t serve him, I’m going to do the same for you.”

And that’s why we make vows. We’re promising to do things even when we don’t want to. We’re committing to their future glory in Christ.

As Gary Thomas so elegantly put it: we are not given marriage primarily to make us happy, but to make us holy.

You know what marriage is? It’s two sinners learning to wash one another’s feet. It’s two sinners committing to forgive one another, to learn patience, to pray for and with one another as you are both conformed to the image of Christ.

Now, that’s what covenantal marriage is.

Second, let me show you that keeping the covenant of marriage, rather than stifling love, is actually the only way into deeper love.

We didn’t read this passage earlier, but Proverbs 5:15-19 says this:

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

¹⁶ Should your springs be scattered abroad,

streams of water in the streets?

¹⁷ Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for strangers with you.

¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

¹⁹ a lovely deer, a graceful doe… [then you will be] intoxicated always in her love.

Proverbs says, “Do you want to be so out of control and overcome by love? Drink water from your own well.”

Now listen – this isn’t a guarantee. It’s a Proverb, which means, that what I am about to conclude this sermon with is a general principle, rather than a promise. But, here it is:

The way into deep marital love is not to find someone who loves the way you are now, and you love the way they are now, and nothing ever changes.

The way is to find someone who loves Jesus, marry them, and then hang on for dear life as you both change, sin against one another, and learn to reconcile over and over again.

Lewis Smead, writing late in his life says this:

“When I married my wife, I had a smidgen of sense of what I was getting into with her, but only a smidgen. How could I know how much she would change? How could I know how much I would change? My wife has lived with five different men since we were married, and each of them has been me. The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on the day of my wedding; the day I said, “I am he who will be there with you through the journey.”

When someone gives themselves to you, entirely, for decades, they will see you at your absolute worst. And when that day comes, and they still give themselves to you, that is ultimate love.

To be loved on our best day is superficial. To be rejected on our worst day is our greatest fear. But to be utterly accepted when you’re at your worst—is a lot like being loved by God. And in marriage, you get the chance to experience that. You get the change to give that to your spouse.

And you can only do it in the knowledge that Jesus Christ has done it for you.