Do Eden Anyway: Spouse

Ecclesiastes commends four things to enjoy under the sun — “Worship · Work · Wife · Wine”. Last week was Work (Ecclesiastes 10). This week: the Wife — or, more broadly, the spouse. (Introduction: the letter of Heinrich Marx to his son Karl, March 2, 1837.)

I. Marriage frames the whole thing

A word about a word: “wife” → “spouse”.

Ecclesiastes 9:7–10 (ESV)

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Read canonically, marriage sits on a shelf: Proverbs 31 (the excellent wife) — Ecclesiastes — the Song of Solomon.

Proverbs 18:22 (ESV)

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

Bread, wine, oil — all cultivated. So is the enjoyable spouse: a cultivated product.

II. Insight one — a garden within a garden

Song of Solomon 4:12, 16; 5:1 (ESV)

“A garden locked is my sister, my bride…” “Let my beloved come to his garden…” “I came to my garden, my sister, my bride.”

Eve in Eden — a garden within the garden (Genesis 2). Plant your garden before you build your house.

Proverbs 24:27 (ESV)

Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.

Tend your garden — “he who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28).

III. Insight two — you tend a garden with words

How Christ gardens his bride — with the word:

Ephesians 5:25–26, 29 (ESV)

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word… he nourishes and cherishes her.

What kind of words? Teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Three in particular —

“Love” — “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9); “having loved his own… he loved them to the end” (John 13:1); “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).

“Promises” — feed your spouse the promises of God.

“Praise” — the Song, and the acrostic wife: “Her husband also… praises her: 'Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all'” (Proverbs 31:28–29).

Two qualifiers: never flatter — “a flattering mouth works ruin” (Proverbs 26:28); and never be a words-only man — “let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). Resource: “Practicing Affirmation” by Sam Crabtree.

IV. The outcome — someone to share the good with

C. S. Lewis (Reflections on the Psalms): praise completes the enjoyment. And the man alone has no one to share it with —

Ecclesiastes 4:8–9 (ESV)

…yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.

Genesis 2:18 (ESV)

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Conclusion

1 Peter 3:7 (ESV)

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Coheirs of the grace of life — look at all that God has done.