Proverbs: Nobility, Discipleship & Heavenly Joy for the Married & Single

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel centered church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

A reading from the book of Proverbs.

The beginning of wisdom is this get wisdom.

And whatever you get, get insight.

Prize her highly, and she will exalt you.

She will honor you if you embrace her.

She will place on your head a graceful garland.

She will bestow on you a beautiful crown.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.

But she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.

The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.

Without counsel, plans fail.

But with many advisors, they succeed.

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?

The righteous who walks in his integrity, blessed are his children after him.

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

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.

Her children rise up and call her blessed.

Her husband also, and he praises her.

Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.

But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Gracious Lord Jesus, we give you thanks that you are present to us by your Holy Spirit.

That you knit us together, brothers and sisters, into this family of faith and call us saints.

Not because of our righteous deeds, Lord, but because of your work in us.

Because of your righteousness given to us as a gift through faith.

So, Lord, we come to you by faith.

We thank you for the invitation to come to your marriage supper, as it were.

Lord, would you prepare our hearts, fix our hearts on where joy is truly to be found.

And it's in your precious name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So my voice is a little shaky this morning.

So for folks who are praying that I finally keep it short on a given Sunday, you might just get your prayer answered today.

I figure this is as good a time as any to have a little bit of a recap because we've had quite a journey through the book of Proverbs so far.

Proverbs is a unique book in the Bible, isn't it?

Probably you've noticed that already.

It's designed quite unlike a lot of the books of the Bible that we're familiar with.

Either books of the Bible that give us narrative history, you know, one story in sequence after another, or books of the Bible that, you know, lay out an argument like many of Paul's letters.

If A, then B, therefore C.

You know what I mean?

The book of Proverbs isn't quite written that way.

It's a collection, it's an anthology.

It's meant not to be uh read like a like a linear sequence of story or argument.

It's instead it's, well, one pastor calls it uh you sometimes you have the milk of faith, which goes down really easily.

There's the meat you've got to chew on, and then he says, this is like the hard candy of Scripture.

Proverbs is the hard candy of Scripture.

You've got to just let it sit in your mouth and let it melt.

That's the idea here.

I don't know if that's helpful or not, but I thought I'd share it.

So when we go looking in Proverbs for God's wisdom, that's what we well, that's what we want to go looking for, number one.

We want to understand what it is to live wisely by God's design, which means first and foremost that God has a design for our living.

He has a design for the creation that we live in.

It is by wisdom that God is created, it's through his wisdom that he governs his creation.

And therefore, it's in our best interest to discover what God's wisdom is and to live into it.

Because when we do, we're living into the groove of the way that God intended his creation, intended us to live.

So when we go through the book of Proverbs and the way it's organized, if we're interested in learning God's wisdom for a given subject, often we have to look not at one particular section, we have to take it, well, we've got to look at the whole, which is why our readings often look the way they do.

We're pulling verses here and there, not because we want to proof text and, you know, grab a verse that just proves an easy point, but because we want to collect those bits of wisdom that start to paint for us a broader picture, right?

A fuller picture of what God's wisdom is for a given uh area of life.

And we've been looking at God's wisdom for how we care for creation, how we work, how we care for our wealth, for friendship.

Next week we're gonna be looking at God's wisdom for sex, so you know, just buckle up.

This week we want to, I want us to look at what does God's wisdom have to say about both marriage and singleness?

Marriage and singleness.

We just read from the gospel uh our Lord Jesus' teaching on marriage in the midst of a controversy about marriage in his day, which, by the way, Matthew 19 can be and absolutely should be its own sermon, right?

So I don't mean to glaze over a difficult teaching on divorce here, but what I want us to capture is Jesus' understanding of marriage.

When Jesus is dealing with a controversy about marriage in his day, he points back to God's original design for creation.

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

And said, Therefore man shall not leave his father and his mother and hold fast, or shall leave his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife, the two shall become one flesh.

What God has joined together, let not man separate.

This is the unchangeable, unalterable standard for what marriage is by God's design.

A lifelong covenant between one man and one woman.

To the glory of God.

Now, you'll notice Jesus not only touches on the vocation of marriage, but he touches on a particular vocation for the unmarried.

Being a eunuch is not the same thing as being unmarried.

But for Jesus' audience, you cannot, they understand you cannot be a eunuch without being unmarried.

And Jesus seems to say, even in this vocation of life, there is a way to apply oneself towards the kingdom of heaven.

There are those who've made themselves eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Both vocation of marriage and singleness have God's wisdom at heart and design.

So what I want us to look at this morning is I want us to look at marriage and singleness from the perspective of God's wisdom.

This is not going to be a top five sermon, by the way.

This is not going to be top five, you know, tips for keeping romance fresh in your marriage or something like that.

This is not a top four qualities to look for in a potential partner or something like that.

No, what I want us to do is to look at God's wisdom for marriage through the lens of vocation, right?

This idea of calling, that God has called us to these states in life, and God has purposes to work in us through those states of life, both marriage and singleness.

Here's what I want us to catch marriage and singleness both are noble callings, are discipleship tracks, and both anticipate heavenly joy.

Both marriage and singleness are noble callings.

They are discipleship tracks, and they anticipate heavenly joy.

And I'm mindful of a couple things as I dive in this morning.

One, there are so many different directions we can take this conversation this morning that it's pretty overwhelming.

I feel pretty dizzy at this point in my sermon preparation.

So I'm going to try and keep myself on point.

But probably there are questions we have that we won't touch on this morning.

And I hope that you'll take me up on an invitation to grab a coffee and talk more if that's what you'd like to do afterwards.

I'm mindful that there's so many different directions we can go front go to.

I'm mindful that I'm I'm preaching as a married man who's been married for eight years and eight happy years as far as I'm concerned, but with its ups and its downs, but I'm also mindful.

Pardon me, that was a weird way to phrase it.

I'm mindful that we've been married for eight wonderful years, but I'm preaching to folks, there are folks in this room who've been married for longer than Rachel and I have been alive.

Let's put it that way.

So I'm not here to be the marriage guru, you know, in that sense.

I think you and I, what you and I have in common if we're here this morning, is we want to understand what it is to be disciples, right?

What it is to follow Jesus, to follow Jesus as single persons and married persons.

And that's what I'm interested in this morning.

I'm sensitive to the fact that I'm preaching to both uh the married and the single this morning.

There are folks who uh might be tuning in line who are newlyweds.

There are folks like Rachel and I who are maturing in our marriage.

There are folks who are well seasoned in their marriage this morning.

There may be folks who are happy or unhappy in their marriage this morning.

And I know I'm also preaching to single folks.

I know I might be preaching to some folks who are quite content with their vocation to singleness.

There might be those who desire to find a life partner.

There may be those who are widowed, or those who are divorced or divorcing.

And so, like I say, I don't mean to glaze over any of these categories.

Each and every one requires God's unique wisdom to be applied and his grace.

But whatever category we may identify with this morning, I want us to consider the goal of our vocation, the common goal that God has in mind for each and every one of us.

Our noble calling, our discipleship track, our heavenly joy.

That's what I have in mind for us this morning.

So if you have your order of service or if you have your Bible, I'd invite you to open it up to Proverbs right now, and let's track with God's wisdom for marriage and singleness.

The first thing I want us to catch is that marriage and singleness both are noble callings.

So, first off, the married life is probably the default assumption of Proverbs.

I think that's safe to say.

Probably you picked up on that in the reading this morning.

We need to bear in mind that Proverbs was written to a particular audience.

It was written to sons of the royal court in ancient Israel, right?

So number one, it's addressing those who, you know, if not for social reasons, for political reasons, are most likely heading towards marriage, so that's the assumed track.

And then number two, it's assuming that it's addressing sons, right?

So when it talks about a spouse, it's going to be talking about a wife.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that the wisdom doesn't apply two ways, if you see what I mean.

Okay.

Married life is a gift from God.

That's the first thing we see in the book of Proverbs this morning, isn't it?

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord, and I want to say amen.

Health, house, and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.

Married life is a gift from God.

But Proverbs also makes clear that married life is not necessarily the ideal life.

So here we have some Proverbs that might hit our ears in interesting ways.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rotness in his bones.

And it is better to live in the corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

Now again, we need to bear in mind this is written to an audience of sons.

This is not to suggest that women are in some way more quarrelsome than men.

There are plenty of proverbs that deal quite brutally honest with brutal honesty with regards to men's tendency towards anger or rage or violence or competition, whatever that is.

Let's remember it's addressing sons about a potential spouse, right?

In fact, uh one commentator writes that the wise husband will reflect on what aspects of his behavior have led his wife to become quarrelsome.

This has mutual application here.

Here's what I want us to catch marriage is not a superior calling to singleness.

It's not a superior calling than to singleness.

And much has been said about the revision of marriage in our present moment, and perhaps rightly so, but I think with a revision of understanding what marriage is purposed for, the glory of God, right?

Mutual help and comfort, etc., etc., more towards an understanding of self-fulfillment or happiness, whatever that might be, with a revision of marriage has also come, I think, a subtle revision of singleness, of the single life.

The single life is, the more we focus on what it is to be partnered or to find fulfillment in finding the right partner, the more we suggest that living the single life is less than happily ever after.

It's an incomplete life, or it's an undesirable or ignoble state.

And I just would want to say that Proverbs and Scripture's wisdom generally does not say that that's so.

In fact, the way Scripture upholds both marriage and singleness is to say both are full vocations.

In fact, when we look at our Lord Jesus, we see a man who is fully human and single.

He was not deficient.

He did not live in an ignoble or undesirable state.

He was not incomplete.

He was fully human.

Yes, to restore our humanity, but as a single man, right?

So we read in Hebrews chapter 2, Jesus had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, right?

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

He took on our humanity, he took on the vocation of singleness.

And you might be thinking to yourself, well, sure, Creighton, that's Jesus.

And you wouldn't be wrong.

But let's remember that God was incarnate in Jesus not to be superhuman, to do the things we, you know, just don't have strength to do ourselves or something like that.

He became incarnate in Christ to be fully human, to restore our humanity, to renew our humanity.

So the vocation he takes on is the vocation that he himself ennobles.

I think it's important to bear in mind that both marriage and singleness rightly have a vital place in the shared life of the church, in the shared life of the saints.

Both are noble callings, and we need one another's mutual affirmation and support.

We need it.

I've heard too many stories, even from friends of ours, who've shared their experience, they're maybe single, and they go into a new church, and they're getting to know the church family, and they want to be known for who they are, but often very quickly perceive that this church family is really just interested in matching them up with whatever single they might have, you know, sitting in their pews.

And while that might be kind-hearted, the message is essentially, well, you know, you're incomplete.

We can fix that for you.

We've got a problem, or you've got a problem, let us offer you a solution.

And I want to say, if we're not careful, we'll start operating outside of God's best design for this vocation.

This is not a lesser-than vocation, singleness, nor is marriage a more-than vocation.

Both need mutual affirmation and support, and there's nothing I could desire for us as a church community here at New Song than to be the sort of church that affirms and supports each and every one of us in our vocation.

Married and single alike, we need one another, and we need to journey with one another in our noble callings together.

That's the first thing I want us to see.

Marriage and singleness are both noble callings.

Here's a second thing I think we need to see.

Marriage and singleness are both discipleship tracks.

Marriage and singleness are both discipleship tracks.

So Proverbs has a vision for discipleship.

Did you catch it?

It's right at the beginning of our reading.

I love how Mike read it, by the way.

I think it's exactly the tone that's supposed to be struck.

The beginning of wisdom is this.

Get wisdom.

Obvious enough, but sometimes we don't stop long enough to think about it, right?

Whatever you get, get insight.

Prize wisdom, prize her highly.

She will exalt you, she will honor you if you embrace her.

She will place on your head a graceful garland and she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.

Proverbs' vision for discipleship, for spiritual growth is grow in wisdom.

Above all else, prioritize God's design and living into God's design in your life.

But godly character, growing in wisdom, Proverbs would tell us, does not happen in isolation.

That's true for both the married and the single.

So verse 15, verse 22, without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisors, they succeed.

And chapter 27, verse 17, Matt read this verse last week with regards to friendship.

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

See, between the wise person and the fool in the book of Proverbs, the fool always has a sort of foolhardy self-assuredness.

I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm talking about, I know I can do it for myself, so I'm just gonna go ahead and do it.

Why would I take the time to talk to others about what I know I can do for myself?

Whereas wisdom stops long enough to say, well, you know what?

I'm not immune from making a foolish decision.

So maybe I need to rely on other trusted sources of wisdom in my life to speak into this decision.

Do you see how wisdom is communal and not isolated?

Often we, you know, I just wonder if we're so individualistic in our kind of Western moment, we sort of think a wise person, you know, did the hard work of becoming wise for themselves.

And maybe that's partly true, but I also think wise people surround themselves with wise people.

And wise people are willing to ask the questions, and wise people are willing to lean on brothers and sisters for insight and for knowledge, right?

That's true, married or single.

Both are discipleship tracks pointing us towards growing in wisdom.

And there is opportunity for the married and single alike to grow as disciples.

Down in Texas, Rachel and I had a friend of ours share just a great point of wisdom that Rachel reminded me of earlier this week.

This friend of ours wanted to remind us of what marriage is all about, and it's a great little pity saying.

Think about that for a second.

The point of marriage is not to make you happy, it's to make you holy.

And I think if that's biblically true of marriage, I think it's biblically true of singleness as well.

God has our holiness, our discipleship, our wisdom in mind.

So when we come to a chapter like 1 Corinthians chapter 7, the Apostle Paul is dealing with all sorts of problems in this troublesome congregation that meets in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

And among the issues they're having is they're having issues in and around marriage and how married couples relate to one another and relate to singles in the life of the congregation.

And so Paul wants to give them pastoral instructions, and he lays down principles for marriage.

Each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

He goes on to say that the wife's body does not belong to her but belongs to the husband.

And at that point, Roman citizens will be going, yeah, that makes sense.

You know, that's how marriage works.

But he goes on to say and husbands, your body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to your wife.

That's a radical kind of co-equalization of partnership and marriage.

That's the Christian vision for marriage, is that sort of co-equal partnership?

But Paul goes on to say, not as a command, he says, but as a concession, as a piece of practical wisdom, he says this.

I wish that all were as I myself am, that is, unmarried.

But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

To the unmarried and to the widows, I say it is good for them to remain single, as I am.

And he goes on to say that he or she who marries his or her betrothed does well, and he or she who refrains from marriage will do even better.

Do you see how Paul both ennobles singleness and marriage as vocations?

They're both oriented towards our discipleship, their tracks for discipleship.

So this is Paul's bottom line.

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him or her, and to which God has called him or her.

And I say this to your benefit, Paul concludes, not to lay any restraint on you, but to promote good order and secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

Why are we parsing out marriage and singleness and Paul is saying?

Paul is saying we're doing that because we are interested in undivided devotion to our Lord.

That's discipleship.

That's growing in true wisdom.

Undivided devotion to the Lord.

And that's what singleness and marriage both are meant to point towards.

Our primary call, discipleship.

One of my mentors often talks about marriage and singleness as two tracks for discipleship that need to be mutually informing.

So I reached out to him earlier this week and I said, Can you expand your thinking on that?

We've talked about it a lot.

Can you share more with me?

And this is what he wrote back in an email.

After 30 years of ministry experience, he says, I believe we need something more than tea and cookies after church in the name of fellowship.

Married and single.

First, we need a renewed emphasis on discipleship.

Christians need to be reminded that they come in two biblically blessed ways, married and single.

All are called to be disciples first.

There is no third way that avoids the prior call to walk the road of discipleship.

That's number one.

Number two, single believers are not made to fly solo.

They have genuine needs for family intimacy and social engagement, and married disciples need to learn how to avoid seeing singles chiefly as cheap babysitting and otherwise married and waiting.

House groups are often the first way that these needs are met, and each learns from one another as they learn to see the world through each other's eyes while sharing a meal, listening and sharing our hopes and dreams, and once people taste genuine Christian koinonia, we're spoiled for anything less.

Koinonia being fellowship.

I love that.

Once we've tasted genuine Christian fellowship, we're spoiled for anything less.

That's the nature of discipleship.

That's mutually supporting and affirming discipleship between married and singles alike.

That's the kind of place we desire to be here at New Saul.

Marriage and singleness are vocations, noble callings, discipleship tracks.

Ultimately, marriage and singleness both anticipate heavenly joy.

This is where I want us to zoom in on the purpose here.

Let's remember that when we read Proverbs, we're not reading Proverbs in a vacuum.

It belongs to the bigger story of God and his people, right?

Our first reading and our first week of looking at Proverbs, we looked at the key verse, right?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, right?

If we're going to fear the Lord and therefore begin the journey of wisdom, we therefore have to know the Lord.

We have to know how the Lord relates to us, his people.

And that's what the story of the Bible is all about.

So when we come to a passage like Proverbs 20, verse 6, many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find, I want to say, what better question could frame the biblical story?

Proverbs 20:6

The whole story of God and his people.

In an often faithless world, the wise will ask, where can we find a faithful one?

And the story of the Bible is a story of faithfulness.

It's a story illustrated through marriage.

All the way back in creation, God says, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

And so God created man in his own image, the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.

Couple things.

Notice that God, when God is addressing himself, he doesn't do so in the first person, he does so in the plural.

Let us make man in our image, human beings in our image.

There is a life-giving unity and a distinction of persons in the very life of God.

I think we're getting our first glimpse of what will come to bloom as the Trinity later in Scripture, but we're getting a glimpse of God's unity and plurality right in the beginning of the biblical story.

And so God, being this life-giving unity and distinction of persons in one being, creates human beings in his image, male and female, to share a life-giving unity in distinction from one another.

See how that works?

Marriage is like a living illustration, a living image, a living signpost of God's very triune being and the sort of life and love that He wants to share with us as His creatures.

And so when we fall, we don't just fall into sin as a legal category, but we reject God's design for our life and enter into a state of shame and blame and alienation.

And the story of Scripture is rescuing us from that state of estrangement, back into a loving relationship with the God who made us.

That's why the prophet Isaiah can announce to a people who know alienation all too well, God's people.

He can say that your Maker is your husband.

The Lord of hosts is his name, and the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer.

Do you see how marriage is such a fundamental illustration of our salvation?

God has the heart of a husband for his wife, his people, and he desires their very best.

He desires their redemption, not that they would suffer and be alienated from him, but that would be reunited.

That's the story of Scripture.

It is God's loving pursuit of his beloved people.

And all of this culminates in what we read in Revelation chapter 19.

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

We read, Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory.

Because at the end of history, the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

And it was granted to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, which is the righteous deeds of the saints.

If the bride is clothed with the righteous deeds of the saints, that means the bride is the saints.

Right?

We are God's beloved in Christ.

That's who we are.

That's the story of Scripture.

A story of reunion.

A love story.

And marriage points us to this reality.

I remember well when Rachel and I were getting married.

I was sweating because she was about 20 minutes late, which wasn't her fault.

But I was sweating up there.

And what a welcome sight it was to see Rachel round the back of the church and start walking down the aisle, dressed in a beautiful white dress.

I mean, she's seen me cry maybe a handful of times in marriage, really.

Any number of times that I've watched Gladiator, really.

But the first and most important time I think you saw me tear up was in that moment where I'm watching you come down the aisle.

And yes, I'm overwhelmed by how beautiful Rachel is.

By how much I have to look forward to.

But, and you can ask Rachel to verify this, and she will.

When she asked me what I was thinking about later on, as she was walking down the aisle, I said, Well, number one, I was overwhelmed by how beautiful you are.

I did say that.

And number two, the verse that came to my mind, or the passage that came to my mind as I'm watching my bride walk down the aisle is this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

That is to say, the way God looks at us in Christ is the way a groom looks at his bride on his wedding day.

Only infinitely more so.

That is why God in Christ is pleased to take the cross on himself, because what husband wouldn't suffer for his beloved?

Right?

And in his resurrection, he wants to share his abundant life with us because what loving husband doesn't want to share everything that he has with his beloved.

This is who we are in Christ.

We have found our faithful one in him.

Whether married or whether single, he is our heavenly joy, and we will participate in the reality to which marriage points.

The marriage supper of the Lamb, the true union between God and His people, which will last forever and ever, world without end.

That is the story of Scripture.

So as we come to the Lord's Supper, we come to anticipate that future union to come.

We come to live out our vocations, married and single alike, as noble callings, as discipleship tracks, ultimately anticipating that day where we will find our fullest heavenly joy in Jesus.

To those who know our heavenly joy, Jesus is our heavenly joy, let's sing.

Not my will, but yours be done.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.