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Tag: Proverbs

A popular saying, regarded as conveying wisdom. Scripture records a great number of didactic proverbs and also preserves some popular sayings.

Proverbs – Biblehub.com Proverbs topical index

My Love – 5 – Sex

The lure of eros…

as a bird rushes into a snare;
    he does not know that it will cost him his life.

– Proverbs 7:23b

When a Man Loves a Woman

Then the LORD God said,

“It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper who is just right for him.”

Genesis 2:18 NLT

23 Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. – Genesis 2 ESV

Eros: sexual love of a man for a woman and of a woman for a man; often misleading us into sin, though God intends this most intimate love exclusively for a man and his wife to join them together as one.

By sexual intercourse we become one in the flesh and in the spirit with another human being. It is a great and wonderful mystery.

Genesis 4: Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.” And again, she bore his brother Abel… 25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.”

In the beginning, a husband and wife and children.

Do you recall that the controversy between Cain and his brother was over worship of God? Two kinds of love both dependent on the love of God.

It’s all relational and Genesis continues with these themes of interconnected types of love which all affect our relationship not only to God, not only between a husband and wife, and not only between parents and sons and daughters; but all relationships within families and beyond the love and boundaries of family.

These intimate relationships all become quickly complex. (Just take the love of Jacob for Rachel, for example.) At the middle of many intimate controversies we will often find eros, the sexual attraction between a man and a woman.

We remain united in spirit to one we have engaged and known in the flesh. It is an unknowable mystery. The awesome connection of sex becomes even too weighty for our own hearts when we stray outside of God’s will.

Yet Love Is a Many Splendored Thing within the boundaries, commitment and vows of marriage.

Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth. – Proverbs 5:18

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love. 5:19b

He who finds a wife finds a good thing
and obtains favor from the LORD. Proverbs 18:22

Man adam, and woman taken from man and given to man by God that they might be one. A godly wife for a godly husband to bear godly children, to keep boundaries of godly families… from this we have strayed far in these last days.

Eros is a sensual soft linen of the marriage bed, perfumed with the nectars of passion between a man and a woman in love.

How lightly does the world of the flesh misrepresent this beautiful love given to us by God.

The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.

The Bride Confesses Her Love

She

²Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
For your love is better than wine;
³    your anointing oils are fragrant;
your name is oil poured out;
    therefore virgins love you.
⁴Draw me after you; let us run.
    The king has brought me into his chambers.

Solomon and His Bride Delight in Each Other

He

⁸If you do not know,
    O most beautiful among women,
…

⁹I compare you, my love,
    to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots.
¹⁰Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
    your neck with strings of jewels.

Do you not know how the stallion and the mare mate in passion?

The love song of Solomon for his bride becomes as sensual as any erotica or story of sexual love you will ever read. I commend it to you, lovers betrothed, husband and wife. God has intended our love for good and for our pleasure.

Song of Solomon – read by Max McLean

February 14, 2015
My love – 2 – Friendship

A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity. – Proverbs 17:17

[Eleanor Rigby] All the lonely people… where do they all come from?

Are you one of them (at least sometimes in your chaotic busyness)? I think we all are at times; yet not for a lifetime, I pray.

Can you think of any love more important and personal in those times when you need compassion, empathy and perhaps even an embrace of love? Is any relationship on the planet more necessary to you at that moment than the support of a friend?

History and the Bible retell many stories of the great love of friendship. Like the word ‘love,’ we have also cheapened the very love of friendship, philia, or brotherly love. Wisdom and the pens of poets caution us against ignoring, confusing or devaluing the true love of friendships God would put in our lives.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Proverbs 27:6

Has there been a Judas in your life? Yet the love of a friend loves you when you are wronged, embraces you with kindness and defends you in the battle of righteousness. A loyal friend holds near the double-edged sword of truth.

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The incalculable value of your friend is the faithful love of trusted relationship.

A man of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. – Proverbs 18:14

Jonathan was such a friend to David, who would not have become King of Israel without him. Jonathan was a hero to Israel even before David slayed Goliath (many of us will not recall).

1 Samuel 13:3 Jonathan defeated the garrison of the Philistines that was at Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, “Let the Hebrews hear.”

Jonathan, son of Saul, was in line to be King.

1 Samuel 17:

57 And as soon as David returned from the striking down of the Philistine, Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. 58 And Saul said to him, “Whose son are you, young man?” And David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”

18:1 As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 2 And Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house. 3 Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. 4 And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.

The high value of David’s love for Jonathan and the love of Jonathan for David is well-documented in the many encounters between Saul and David prior to Saul’s death and David’s God-anointed ascent to the throne.

Are you a friend like Jonathan to someone you love?

Jesus was a friend to His Apostles.

John 15

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

Imagine, a friend and equal to Jesus! This is the great humility of God. This is the greatest love of all, that He makes us once more His friends and commands us to love each other.

17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Friendship!

This love is the relationship of the church, modeled many times in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters. Perhaps a favorite early unlikely friendship is the one which brought Saul of Tarsus and Barnabas together as friends in the Lord. Here is the beginning of Saul’s story after seeing the risen Christ (you may remember):

Acts 9

Saul in Jerusalem
26 And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.

Barnabas took Paul to Cypress to his home for their first missionary journey. When Peter heard of the gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit, the church sought out Paul, who would become known as the Apostle to the gentiles.

Acts 11

21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number [of gentiles or Hellenist Greeks] who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Acts 14: Barnabas & Paul refuse to be worshiped as gods in Lystra after God performs a miracle through them.

And later, in Jerusalem:

Acts 15:12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

It is a lasting friendship, a faithful love, that blesses the life of a Christian (even that of an unbeliever, who my be won by your faithfulness to God).

The Letter of Paul to the Galatians:

2:1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.

My love, my friend: my dear brother, my dear sister in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,

Do you have a friend you love in the Lord?

We should, in fact, have more than one love, a fellow like-minded believer.

Do you LOVE your church friend? Do you hear in your heart and soul the command of our Lord and friend, Christ Jesus?

To be continued

February 6, 2015
Hope deferred, Desire fulfilled

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

And so it has been, since twice rejected by the wife of my vows. It is not right in the LORD.

Proverbs 30:

The man declares, I am weary, O God;
I am weary, O God, and worn out.
2 Surely I am too stupid to be a man.
I have not the understanding of a man.
3 I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.

‘God is with me. God is with me; yet the son is devoured’

Do these weary, worn words of Proverbs 30 not point to Christ? Yet even I am devoured by my sin on His Cross, God’s own compassion for me.

Who will have such compassion on the weary and worn? Surly the church is too busy to comfort a man of no understanding. Surly the compassion and mercy of Christ hide behind proud deeds of service in His Name, worship to fill one’s own heart.

7 Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
9 lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.

It is the lie of the beloved,

which makes the heart of the lover sick

with hopelessness and mistrust

of hidden unfaithfulness.

1 John 1:5-6 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Colossians 3:9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.

Is the husband not head of the wife? Is it right in the Lord that she should lie to him, who is lord over her body and one with her in spirit? Marriage, the joining of two souls alone, is a great mystery! In the unfathomable mystery of this same deep intimacy of relationship, we in Christ are also joined with Him.

The Bridegroom will return for His Bride, His Church;

Desire fulfilled by the Bridegroom of eternal life.

Proverbs 30:

32 If you have been foolish, exalting yourself,
or if you have been devising evil,
put your hand on your mouth.
33 For pressing milk produces curds,
pressing the nose produces blood,
and pressing anger produces strife.

Would you be a wise woman, a bride worthy of the love of your beloved?

The Woman Who Fears the Lord

^{Proverbs 31}

¹⁰An excellent wife who can find?
    She is far more precious than jewels.
¹¹The heart of her husband trusts in her,
    and he will have no lack of gain.
¹²She does him good, and not harm,
    all the days of her life.

January 20, 2015