Read Proverbs 19:13–15
Questions from the Scripture text: What sort of son does Proverbs 19:13a reference? What effect does he have? What sort of wife does verse 13b reference? To what does it compare her behavior? What does a good father provide (Proverbs 19:14a)? What is an area in which God especially highlights His sovereign providence (verse 14b)? What fault does what harm (Proverbs 19:15)?
What can destroy a household? Proverbs 19:13–15 looks forward to the midweek sermon. In these three verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that a household may be destroyed by any one of its members being a fool.
Proverbs 18:1–19:12 dealt with the harm done to others by fools, and the benefits to others of the wise. Now, Proverbs 19:13–15 compares and contrasts the household in which the father and the son and the wife are all godly and wise, against the harm that comes when the son or the wife or the father are foolish. A foolish father does not need his son to ruin him; he has ruined himself.
So the foolish son is a ruin of his father in a couple of different ways. First, houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers (Proverbs 19:14a). So, even if the father does well early in life, he needs his son to take care of him as he declines. If the son is a fool, his latter years will be a ruin. Even if he did well in his youth and adulthood, if his son is a fool, then his life on earth ends in ruin. Furthermore, what he leaves behind also gets ruined by the foolish son. So, not only does he not have the one to take care of him in comfort and peace and joy in the final years of his life, but he also dies knowing that what he has built is about to be destroyed by the son that he has left behind. It is a dreadful thing to have a foolish son.
Another way that a good man can be ruined is by having a wife who does not follow the first two-thirds of chapter 18. Her mouth is always arguing and criticizing and nagging and gossiping and grumbling. the contentions of a wife are a continual dripping. Now that doesn't sound like much to us because we do not have a roof that was constructed with wooden boards covered by a mesh of sticks, into which clay was put, and then a layer of chalk, and then a layer of mud above that. If we did have such a roof, and it started to rain, and it continued to rain, and it continued to rain, eventually the mud would dissipate, and rivulets would form through the chalk, and cracks would appear in the clay, and the sticks and the wood boards would get saturated, and then the whole house would cave in.
This is what a continually exercised, ungoverned tongue of a wife does. It slowly but surely erodes the strength of the household until one day the whole thing collapses. She is exactly opposite the woman in chapter 31 (who is such an asset that everything that the man builds is multiplied, enhanced, beautified, strengthened—made more of a blessing to him and to others by his wise wife, his godly and kind wife, on whose tongue is the law of kindness (cf. Proverbs 31:26).
The son can be the ruin of the father. The wife can be the ruin of the father. And the father can be the ruin of everyone. A good father provides an inheritance (Proverbs 19:14a) and seeks from God for his son that which multiplies the blessedness of everything else—the way we saw Abraham seeking a wife for Isaac from the right family (cf. Genesis 24:4); and Isaac, once he realized his dreadful mistake in trying to give Esau the blessing, sent Jacob with a blessing to get a wife from the right family (cf. Genesis 28:2).
It is good and proper that the planning and the work, the discretion, to obtain a good wife for your son be done by a godly father. But, like that of the opening and closing of the womb, the provision of a good wife is an area in which God especially highlights His sovereign providence. You can try to do everything right in obtaining a wife, but if she is going to end up actually being a godly wife, who actually strengthens and multiplies and beautifies and improves the moral quality of the household, that has to come from God. A prudent wife is from YHWH. A wife who embodies everything that Proverbs has taught us to seek, so far up until this point, is from YHWH: both in the providence that places her nearby; and, in God's blessing on any planning/wisdom/efforts to obtain her; and, most of all, in the grace that made her what she is. A prudent wife can only be produced by grace.
Proverbs 19:13a, Proverbs 19:14a aren't saying that the prudent wife comes from YHWH, but the godly husband is obtainable through following the right procedure, and the godly son is produced by the right sort of training. Properly biblical parenting employs especially the means of grace, precisely because we know that it is only God's grace that ultimately produces the godly son. Or obtains the godly husband.
If any of these (husband, wife, son) are ungodly, it can destroy the house through laziness. A lazy person (Proverbs 19:15a) is, in some ways, more harmful than a dead person. Because if the person was dead, at least you knew in advance that you couldn't count on them to pull their weight in the household. But the lazy person appears to be part of the household, but is actually exerting a cost upon everyone else, in the way even a dead person wouldn't. Because God has put us into families together, an idle person very easily causes the rest of his household to suffer hunger (verse 15b) with him. He harms even generations to come. Laziness is a great folly.
God revealed Himself to us as a God Who works, and He created us to be image bearers who work. Fearing the Lord means taking eating and drinking and enjoyments as gifts from God. And fearing the Lord means doing all of our labor, all the days of our life, with joy and diligence, also as a gift from God.
So, may God, by His grace, give each of us to fear the Lord in our own part in our current household. And, for the sake of our future households, may He mercifully bring to us those good wives and husbands, and may He bless our efforts and planning for the putting together of these future households.
How are you using your mouth to bless your household? How is your diligence blessing your household? Whom are you trusting to do this in you? How are you employing the means by which you trust Him to do that?
Sample prayer: Father, please help us to use our mouths well. Make us diligent, and grant to us every part of biblical wisdom properly applied. We thank You for the family that You've given us. Work in, and help, each one of us, that we might be a blessing to everyone else in this household—and in our future households. We pray for the future husbands and wives of our daughters and sons, that you would be graciously working in them already. Glorify Yourself by blessing us this household, and the households that come from it, in every way. For we ask it through Christ. Amen!
Suggested songs: ARP184 “Adoration and Submission” or TPH95A “O Come before the LORD, Our King”
No comments:
Post a Comment