Sermon Cloud

INTRODUCTION

Today we will continue our study in the biblical roles of men and women. A few weeks ago we discussed biblical femininity and masculinity, and this week we will be looking at biblical wives.

Next week we will be teaching on biblical husbands and the week following we will discuss courtship, sex, and a couple other topics sure to rile you up. We endeavor to offer equal opportunity pain!

REVIEW

As a review for the week you were not here, we discussed many things but the main points that we looked at were:

God: Triune; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each equal yet having different roles within the Godhead.

Man and Woman: Both being equal image bearers who were created in the likeness of God, yet both having different roles and dominions before God.

The Fall: Eve was tempted with autonomy from God, and Adam abdicated his role.  He allowed her to be deceived and then he participated in her sin without a fight. Sin enters creation and each child born after Adam, without Christ, is a child of Adam.  Sin now devastates the relationship between man and woman, and between mankind and God.

The Curse: God curses man and woman by cursing their primary orientation. Man was cursed with laboring the ground, and subsequently, the marketplace. Eve was cursed with her relationship with Adam and childbearing, and her primary orientation which is home.

We discussed several lies of the liar, and then looked at sinful women in proverbs, and finished with a godly woman in proverbs 31.

STUDY

Some of you ladies may discount what I am about to teach today because you are single and don’t understand how this applies to you. Let me just say that you may be single because you have not applied what we are about to teach today. It may be a cause and effect.

I mentioned last study for you ladies that if you are catching nothing but sharks, you need to change your bait. That may be the case for some of you.

There is not much that is humorous in today’s message. I find no humor or take no joy in looking at wives that are loud, moody, gossipers that have a tendency towards being wayward and defiant.

My desire is to show you the mirror, which is God’s Word and standard, and allow that mirror to reflect who you are in truth according to the Scriptures.

I ask that you do not use this message as a way of looking at another and focusing on their sin. This message is about you and the Scriptures, not your friend’s sin and your observation of her sin.

Please turn with me to Proverbs chapter 12 and we’ll jump in with the guiding question that I would like you ladies to ask yourselves.

Crown or Decay?

Proverbs 12:4: “A wife of noble character is her husband's crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.”

Literally speaking, she is either a crown of pride on his head, or she is a pain in the neck.

She is decay and robs him of life. She is someone that is like a cancer that eats away at his bones and robs him of vitality and health. She takes from him his vigor and his strength as she slowly eats away at him.

I have seen men that are robbed of life. They look like the walking dead, and then you see the disease with a ring sitting next to him.

Ladies, right out of the box, you need to figure out which team you are on.

Are you a crown on his head and a glory to him as 1 Corinthians 11:7 says, or are you a decay, a disease that is slowly eating away his life and robbing him of strength? Are you a crown on his head or a pain in the neck?

Ladies, you need to check your jerseys today from Scripture to see which color uniform you are wearing.

Let’s not be dishonest by saying that you are not on that team when you are in fact playing for and cheering for the team of decay in your actions and attitudes with your husbands.

Let’s begin by dealing with the decaying wife.

Being A Decay

The Loud Wife

Proverbs 9:13: “The woman Folly is loud; she is undisciplined and without knowledge.”

Some women can’t win an argument based upon their biblical knowledge or the strength of their case, so they try to win by sheer volume.

Godly husbands despise a screaming, yelling, fit-throwing woman.

If a wife yells at her husband, he can’t win. If he yells back or beats her, he is mean. If he cowers and does or says nothing, he is weak. He can’t win.

He either gets beaten or he beats. If she blasts him full verbal assault, he is automatically placed in a losing position. There’s nothing he can do.

If you want to decay your husband, yell at him. If you want to decay him quickly, yell at in front of his friends or others. Give him that look and boss him around in front of his friends. Men just love being treated like a child in front of others.

Some of you grew up under mothers who were loud and you followed her example by being loud as well.

In contrast, 1 Peter 3:3-4 says that you are not to let your adornment or beauty be merely outward but, “let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”

Ladies, do you have a gentle and quiet spirit?

There is a false notion that if you fight with your husband than you are proving your strength to him. No you’re not. Your strength is not having to be loud, throwing a fit, and yelling at him. Your strength is a gentle and quiet spirit.

Some of you ladies have learned how to emasculate men by being loud and yelling at them.

If you constantly yell at and demean a man, at some point you need to understand your declaration of war will be answered. At some point, under the right circumstances, you are going to catch your man in the wrong mood or under enough stress and he will wage war back at you, and may find yourself being physically answered by your verbal attack.

Does this excuse a man that would dare touch a woman in anger? No. But ladies, if you act like a man by attacking him and by demeaning his masculinity and constantly take his manhood, he will at some point respond.

If he doesn’t, you will despise him for being weak and you will eventually increase your assault because you can get away with it, or you will look for a man that will stand up to you and start the process all over again. Either way, you won’t win.

Loud women dig their own grave and dump dirt on their own head and scream all the way to their death.

The Moody Wife

Proverbs 21:19: “Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife.”

Some of you women use your moodiness to get your way and manipulate your husband or other people

Some of you have learned that you can use different emotional strategies to try to get your way or to win an argument.

I have seen women that will start by yelling, which doesn’t work.  Then they turn to pouting, which doesn’t work.  Then they turn to crying, ah…that works.  What is she doing? She’s being moody. She’s jumping from mood to mood to mood until she finds one that works.

Some of you ladies do this with other women, and the godly woman that doesn’t play that game can’t stand it. Neither can the husband. He eventually gets tired of not being able to have a discussion or conversation with you without feeling as if he is being emotionally manipulated.

A moody wife is controlling, and men really don’t like being controlled by manipulation. Do men take that from other men? No.

The Embarrassing Woman 

Proverbs 11:22: "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion."

A Quarrelsome Wife

Proverbs 19:13: “A foolish son is his father's ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping.”

It says that a foolish son is his father’s ruin. I would venture to say that you could easily make a case that a quarrelsome, brawling, disrespectful wife will raise children that are their father’s ruin and disgrace.

Some of you women decay your men because you speak to them in a way that is demeaning in front of your children. You diminish him and his role by your constant disrespect.

Some of you do this by talking about your husband to your children when the husband is gone. You get your children to join you in your quarrel and in your disrespect of him.

Children learn to parrot the mother. If the wife speaks disrespectfully to him, the children will inevitably follow.

How many times have you seen a little demon for a child bark at their father to your disgust? What usually ends up happening is just about the time you are wondering why in the world this kid is so disrespectful, the wife speaks and you know why.

Are we saying that a woman can never disagree with her husband or have strong feelings about something her husband said or did? No. But you don’t do it in front of your children. You reserve those kind of difficult conversations for the privacy of your room or in a place where your kids are not participating.

Isn’t it true that men have a tendency to treat other men the way the wife treats him? If a wife is respectful and loving to her husband, if the wife is tender and gracious and speaks well of him in front of others and in front of the children, people will follow suit.

If a woman is loud and quarrelsome and a decay in her husband’s bones by being disrespectful with disrespectful children, others will treat him likewise.

Ladies, do you want others to speak well of your husband? Then you must be the first to demonstrate that. You must be the one that gives the standard of how you would like others to treat him. No woman, unless she has tremendous issues, wants others to disrespect her man.

Fools for Friends

Proverbs 13:20: “He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.”

Ladies, who are your friends?

Most of you ladies care entirely too much about what other women think.

We see this in the way you parent, dress, and how you treat your husband. You care too much about the approval of other ladies and so you listen to their advice.  You follow their example and you find yourself in opposition to the Scriptures because you are more interested in their approval than your Father in heaven.

If you are not careful in picking your friends, scripture tells us that “Evil company corrupts good habits.”

Some of you ladies have friends that are still single, and that tell you all about their sinful lifestyle. They like to go to clubs, they like to sleep around, they tell you all about the attention they get.

You pick women through whom you can vicariously live your sinful heart’s desire through their stories and through their sin.

Worse, you seek their advice about your husband!

Tell me how this works…a woman of God, called to respect her husband seeks out advice from a woman that doesn’t know God and is single. What in the world could she possibly tell you of biblical value?

Are we saying you shouldn’t have unbelieving friends? Not at all. What we are saying, is that you don’t confide or seek counsel from someone that can not give you biblical wisdom. The Scriptures teach us that we are not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly.

Some of you ladies decay your husbands and you like to decay him by provoking or disrespecting him, and you pick friends that will never tell you to do otherwise.

There is nothing worse for a husband to come home after a disagreement or argument, to find you on the phone with your unsaved single friend telling her all about what happened and listening to her ranting on how she would handle it. She’s single!!! That should give you a hint of how she handles things.

Is it acceptable for a woman to speak to another woman about their problems without her husband’s approval? No, it isn’t.

You should have specific couple or a specific woman who is godly and gives you godly counsel that your husband knows you speak to about your challenges.

For those of you that I have sat down with and spoken with about specific problems in your relationship, what are the rules I have laid out? No talking about your spouse’s sin without them present, and I usually ask you to ask your husband if it’s okay that we speak.

You have to be very careful when confiding in others about what happens in your home.

Ladies, make sure your choice of friends is not decaying your husband.

A Gossiping Wife

Proverbs 26:20: “Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.”

Some women get in arguments with their husbands and they won’t let it die.

Some women don’t talk to their husbands, they talk about their husbands. They won’t let the fire of an argument die, and so they kindle the fire with gossip about their husband.

Some of you do this without even realizing you do it. Your first instinct when in a fight is to tell someone else about it. And even when the argument is over, you won’t let it go; you keep feeding the flames by talking about it like a politician who is looking for votes of confidence. It’s gossip, not ministry.

Much of what passes in the United States as women’s ministry is nothing more than a church sanctioned gossip session about your husbands.

Even in prayer meetings, ladies sit around a pray about confidential issues as a way to gossip about their men.

Women’s retreats turn into husband bashing. I have seen this first hand. I know it happens and I know it is not what should pass as biblical ministry when all it accomplishes is gaining comrades in your quest to win your argument.

How many husbands like to walk in the house and hear their wife talking to her mother about what they said and how they said it? None! No one wants to be gossiped about, especially the one who you are supposed to give the most respect.

How do you think godly ladies will treat your relationship when they hear you gossip? They will keep you at arms length because they don’t trust you.

Let the argument die down and let the flames burn out. Don’t decay your husband by gossiping about him to others.

The Immoral Wife

Proverbs 6:24-25: “…the immoral woman, from the smooth tongue of the wayward wife. Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes…”

This woman is death. She will kill the man quickly.

Some of you ladies learned a simple equation when you turned about 15: more makeup + less clothes = more attention.

It’s historically proven.

Then you get married and you still want the attention. You like to flirt, you like to have men look at you, you like the eyes of other men fixed on you.

This last passage tells you how she does it: with her smooth tongue, the way she speaks with golden niceties and flatteries, and with her eyes. You stare deep into another man’s eyes and allow him to do the same. You know what you’re doing.  You’re not fooling anyone, including your husband and especially God.

Proverbs 7:10-11 says, “Then out came a woman to meet him, dressed like a prostitute and with crafty intent. She is loud and defiant, her feet never stay at home…”

Ladies, let me ask you a question. Does the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ extend itself to your neckline and hemline?

Some of you women dress like prostitutes and you are loud and defiant to your men.

Men, is there anything worse than your wife wearing clothes that make her look like a whore and then flirting with another man by flattering him and looking into his eyes while he looks down her shirt? No, that pretty much does it for a guy. That is when I will be preaching someone’s funeral.

You see, in our society we are told you’re not to be jealous. Yet our God is a jealous God. He has a righteous jealousy that is not pleased or approving of a spiritually immoral child. He does not wink at our spiritually adultery, and He doesn’t allow us to worship other gods.

The same for us; I wouldn’t be okay with my wife giving to someone else something that should be reserved for me alone.

If you want to wear revealing clothes, flirt and flatter, do it at home when your kids are asleep—you have my permission. But don’t do it with someone else other than your husband who loves you and has chosen to be with you for the rest of your lives.

The Unfaithful Wife

Proverbs 25:19: “Like a bad tooth or a lame foot is reliance on the unfaithful in times of trouble.”

Ladies, there are some of you who do a great job in your marriage when all is going as planned. But when adversity comes, when your husband’s industry tanks and he has no job, when he gains 15 pounds, or looses his hair that now grows on his shoulders, you are unfaithful in times of trouble.

It’s like a bad tooth. Anyone here ever had a bad tooth? Isn’t that the worst torture?—a constant ache that won’t go away unless it is removed. This is what an unfaithful wife in times of trouble is like.

Have you ladies planned for those times of trouble? Have you considered that your life may not follow the plans that you drew up in your own head?

A woman decays her man when in times of trouble she kicks him when he’s down.

Ladies, do you think your man responds favorably when you take your finger and stick it into his wounds? Not usually.

What men need most when times of trouble and adversity come is a strong woman who is gentle and respectful of him as he doubts some of his own strength and abilities to provide for his family.

Does this mean that you wink at sin? No. There is a big difference between things that happen to you and things you bring on yourself, but as a rule, always err on being faithful no matter the circumstance.

Ladies, men need you. It is no secret. Men, do you need your wives? There you have it! I need my wife and I tell her I need her. She is vital to my health. Without her help I am crippled. She is so important and so necessary for me to be the kind of man that I desire to be that I can’t image my life without her help and without her presence.

Ladies, be faithful to your man as Christ has been faithful to you in your times of trouble. 

That’s a bad wife: Loud, moody, quarrelsome, who has bad friends that she gossips to, is immoral, flirts, and splits when things get tough.

You place a man with a woman like that, or a woman that has many of these characteristics, and he will be like a caged animal trying to find a way to escape.

This is the guy who for the first time begins to study his Bible, but only so he can find a reason to biblically divorce you. He’s trapped and being decayed and doesn’t want to rot with a woman that is killing him like a cancer.

Does it justify his sin? No, but there is often a cause and effect relationship. You treat him this way and don’t be surprised when he walks from the relationship.

Enough decay, let’s look at a crown.

Being A Crown

Wife as a Helper

Genesis 2:18: “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”

Is this true men? Is it true that it’s not good for you to be alone?

Man has been created in the image and likeness of God, who is in the first and perfect eternal community. And we are to share in that by being together with our spouse in a godly community which is a reflection of our Triune God. As our God is One, man is to be one with his wife.

Isn’t it good that the man needs you? Can you imagine if he was so self sufficient that your ministry and your role was unnecessary?

Ladies, God made you to be his helper and he needs you. Isn’t it beautiful that God gives you someone whose strengths are not your own and whose weaknesses you compliment.

Some of you are frustrated because your husbands are not as good at cleaning the house as you are. You know why? He needs you.

Men, some of you don’t understand how your wife could forget to tell you about the oil light being lit for the last six months.

The man was created to need the wife. God gave him that wife, and that wife is his helper and his crown.

1 Corinthians 11:8-9: “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.”

Ladies, does the word of God irritate you when you read this?

Would it make you feel better if you were told that Jesus came from the Father, and the Holy Spirit is called the helper?

Ladies, it’s a blessing, not a curse, to have a clear purpose and role given to you sovereignly by God. God chose your sex.

Proverbs 31:12: “She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.”

Ladies, this should be your goal to have this on your tombstone: that you brought your husband good and not harm all your days.

A Kindhearted Wife

Proverbs 11:16: “A kindhearted woman gains respect, but ruthless men gain only wealth.”

A kindhearted woman gains respect because her strength is not from volume or her voice, or the amount of weight she can bench press; it comes from her heart which is kind and expresses itself kindly to her husband.

A Prudent Wife

Proverbs 19:14: “Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD.”

A prudent wife is valuable! How many of you have tried multi-level marketing? Wives know better than to buy into a job in which you can make money without doing anything. They are prudent. Guys at times don’t make very good decisions and their wives are invaluable to them.

A Wise Wife

Proverbs 14:1: “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.”

A foolish woman destroys her house with her decay, but a wise woman desires to build her home each day, finding ways to sweeten the aroma of the home.

Titus 2:3-5: “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”

If we could have a church of women that were reverent and that desired to teach the younger women these things, we would have a very healthy church.

Ladies, pray that God would make you a woman that takes other women under your wings to show and teach from Scripture how beautiful these truths are.

Ephesians 5:22-24, 33: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything…the wife must respect her husband.”

Some of you when hearing or reading this for the first time immediately try to put the verse into a context that you can agree to.

This is how we are called to live in relationship with one another in our marriage covenant. Our God is a God of covenants. The husband is to be the covenant head of the relationship, and the wife, as Christ is our covenant head, is to submit to his God-given authority.

Some men use this as a way to get more than they deserve; some ladies ignore this altogether and want nothing to do with the word submission.  Yet, we are told that Jesus submitted to the Father’s will. Are we saying that we are above Jesus and should not do that which God has prescribed?

Proverbs 5:18-19: “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 captivated by her love.”

1 Corinthians 7:3-5: “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

1 Timothy 2:11: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.”

Proverbs 31:30: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

This is the key: a woman who fears the LORD. This should be the most important factor in all of what we have discussed.

Nothing that we have discussed this evening will take effect if you first do not have a relationship with the God who made you by way of grace offered to you in the Gospel.

We try to look at ourselves with good lighting and a soft lens. But the truth is that we have all fallen short of God’s glory, we have all gone astray, and none of us are righteous.

We have transgressed God’s Laws, we have broken His commands and live in ways which resemble the ways of death and destruction instead of life and blessing.

Do you see yourself in need of God’s grace in order that you might glorify Him in your marriage?

Which team are you on? Are you a decay or a crown?

Are you loud and ill tempered? Are you a gossiper that stokes arguments rather than putting them out? Are you flirtatious and immoral? Are you moody and unfaithful in times of trouble?

This is when we respond to the Word by taking our sins and confessing them before God. This is when we cast our burdens at Christ because we know that His blood heals and His Spirit changes us into His image.