SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read the word for us, Proverbs 31, verses 10 to the end of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: An excellent wife, who can find?
SPEAKER_00: She's far more precious than jewels.
SPEAKER_00: The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.
SPEAKER_00: She does him good and not harm, all the days of her life.
SPEAKER_00: She seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands.
SPEAKER_00: She is like the ships of the merchant.
SPEAKER_00: She brings her food from afar.
SPEAKER_00: She rises while it's yet night, and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens.
SPEAKER_00: She considers the field and buys it.
SPEAKER_00: With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.
SPEAKER_00: She perceives that her merchandise is pros profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.
SPEAKER_00: She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.
SPEAKER_00: She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy.
SPEAKER_00: She's not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household is clothed in scarlet.
SPEAKER_00: She makes bed coverings for herself.
SPEAKER_00: Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land.
SPEAKER_00: She makes linen garments and sells them.
SPEAKER_00: She delivers sashes to the merchants.
SPEAKER_00: Strength and dignity are her clothing.
SPEAKER_00: She laughs at the time to come.
SPEAKER_00: She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
SPEAKER_00: She looks to the ways of her household.
SPEAKER_00: She does not eat the bread of idleness.
SPEAKER_00: Her children rise up and call her blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband also, and he praises her.
SPEAKER_00: Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.
SPEAKER_00: Charm is deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: Beauty is vain, but a woman who fears Yahweh is to be praised.
SPEAKER_00: Give her the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that you would be encouraged by what we find here.
SPEAKER_00: Dieter and I used to serve in college ministry back in a previous life.
SPEAKER_00: And it was common for us to counsel college students who were engaged or on the cuss of being married or dating, and they were confused.
SPEAKER_00: They had questions.
SPEAKER_00: Questions like, How do I know she's the one?
SPEAKER_00: It's the mythical and mystical doctrine of the one.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that God has one person for you to marry whose identity is carefully guarded by the angels, and you have no way of discerning, and you could marry the wrong person and ruin your life.
SPEAKER_00: And so we would walk college students through what it means to know who you're supposed to marry and how to know.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: God does have one person for you to marry, and it's very easy to identify that person.
SPEAKER_00: Did you marry her?
SPEAKER_00: And if the answer is yes, behold, you have discovered the hidden will of God in your life.
SPEAKER_00: She's the one.
SPEAKER_00: Anything beyond that gets more complicated.
SPEAKER_00: There was one particular couple that was we were meeting with in our apartment, and they had been dating for a while, and we actually didn't I thought they were a good fit for each other, but they had decided to call it off, and we asked why, and the answers we got were along these lines.
SPEAKER_00: I have them written down to this very day.
SPEAKER_00: She uses Mac and he uses PC.
SPEAKER_00: Now you laugh.
SPEAKER_00: That is a problem because in your text messages, if you get the green bubbles, it's all over.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_00: She likes salad, he likes steak.
SPEAKER_00: She would rather stay in a nice hotel room and he go camping.
SPEAKER_00: And it was at that point, I'm like, you know, all this means is that she is a woman and you are a man.
SPEAKER_00: That's about the end of that difference right there.
SPEAKER_00: They ended up marrying other people and having kids and having happy lives by God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: You know what's better than a list of compatibility things like that is Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 31 is given in the Word of God as instruction from a mother to her son, telling her son, I don't want you to mess up your life.
SPEAKER_00: Go marry a woman like this.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 31 is from the mouth of the queen mother, King Lemuel.
SPEAKER_00: His mom is instructing him.
SPEAKER_00: His mom here, who is uh concerned about the way he's living, you can tell that from the tone of verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing, oh my son?
SPEAKER_00: Like, are you out of your mind?
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you giving away your strength to strange women and dissipating your strength with wine?
SPEAKER_00: Instead, put the wine away and speak up for the rights of the poor.
SPEAKER_00: And now she's encapsulating that instruction with marry the right kind of person.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the doctrine of the one, it's the you're dissipating your strength.
SPEAKER_00: Back up earlier in the verse, verse 3, you're dissipating your strength with strange women.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you marry a godly person?
SPEAKER_00: Now Lemuel is the king of an area named Masa.
SPEAKER_00: That's an area just outside of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's in the Hebrew in chapter 31, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make it in the ESV.
SPEAKER_00: The ESV just says the king, the words of King Lemuel, but the Hebrew says, you know, of Masah.
SPEAKER_00: It's an area mentioned a few times in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's Israel adjacent, so he's familiar with, both he and his mother are familiar with Solomon and his writings and the wisdom of God that is contained there.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's appropriate for the book of Proverbs to close out with instruction from this queen mother to her son, go marry a person like this.
SPEAKER_00: It fits in the flow of the book of Proverbs.
SPEAKER_00: You remember, Proverbs begins with an invitation to pursue wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 8 describes lady wisdom and a sense of God incarnate.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom is the second person of the Trinity through which God created the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so the beginning of Proverbs says, you know, it's a it's a dad speaking to his son.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you aim for wisdom, son?
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 2, wisdom is, it'll require fighting for, but it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 3, wisdom is so beautiful you should marry it.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 4 is the marriage speech.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 5 through 7, don't commit adultery with wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 8 is when you're in a relationship with wisdom, you're in a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 9, not everybody chooses this.
SPEAKER_00: Some people go to hell instead.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 10 through 29 is what the life of wisdom looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 30 is the limits of wisdom, and then Proverbs 31 brings it back to earth, and it's no longer the dad speaking.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's the mom speaking, and the mom tells them, you'll marry, you want a wise life, you've adopted the invitation of chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: You want to pursue wisdom, you want to fall in love with wisdom, you want to marry wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: What this looks like now is go actually marry somebody godly.
SPEAKER_00: That's the concluding charge.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it ends the book of Proverbs with this challenge to marry a godly person.
SPEAKER_00: Now, because of this, not a lot of sermons are preached in Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: I talked to somebody uh after first service who said they had never seen this in the Bible before.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know this passage was here.
SPEAKER_00: And man, what a cool jewel to discover, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Come across this in your Bible reading.
SPEAKER_00: Whoa, I did no idea.
SPEAKER_00: This is incredible.
SPEAKER_00: The description of a godly woman.
SPEAKER_00: But because of that, this passage has been attacked by feminists.
SPEAKER_00: You know, feminists tear down this passage and say, you know, the only way for women to have value and dignity is for them to excel in the spheres reserved for men, or for women to have true value and beauty.
SPEAKER_00: They have to be like men.
SPEAKER_00: That's how I would describe feminism, and that undercuts Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, without going down the feminist road, it's still a complicated passage because of how intricate it is and how personal it is.
SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people just avoid it or don't teach it.
SPEAKER_00: Alex Haregrove famously said, of all of the Proverbs, Proverbs 31 is the last.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: There is a lot of wisdom there.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna navigate this description of what kind of wife is fit for a king together.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we do this, a reminder.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs is wisdom, not law.
SPEAKER_00: I've been preaching through Proverbs Sunday night, and so I've been talking about that in the evenings, but I want to reiterate it because if you enter Proverbs as if Proverbs is law, you will be confused and discouraged by a passage like this.
SPEAKER_00: So you'll encounter this and you'll think, oh, my life doesn't measure up.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not the right approach to wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: To help you understand the difference between wisdom and law, consider this Ephesians 5, 18, do not be drunk with wine.
SPEAKER_00: So that's law, that's a command.
SPEAKER_00: If you break that command, you're sinning.
SPEAKER_00: If you're drunk with wine, you're sinning.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be drunk.
SPEAKER_00: That's law.
SPEAKER_00: There's no gray area.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom is like Proverbs says: wine is a brawler, beer is a mocker.
SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good morals.
SPEAKER_00: Those are wisdom principles.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make wisdom into law.
SPEAKER_00: You can't look at wisdom principles and say, okay, so two drink maximum.
SPEAKER_00: No drinking after 8:30 p.m.
SPEAKER_00: Your friends of the non-believer only hang out with them every other week.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's that's taking wisdom and making it law.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom is designed to be applied to daily situations with wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's biblical principles.
SPEAKER_00: You use wisdom to apply to your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's not law.
SPEAKER_00: You can keep the law and be a fool.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot get drunk and still violate the wisdom principles of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Proverbs 31, it's not a checklist for you to go down as if it were law, like yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that.
SPEAKER_00: It's principles.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, it's going to look different in your life than it does in King Lemuel's life.
SPEAKER_00: Lemuel is king.
SPEAKER_00: His mom is queen.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to marry the new queen.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to have servants.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see their servants.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to have servants and slaves, and they have money, and they're in the ancient Near East, for example.
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's going to consider a field and buy it.
SPEAKER_00: The right way to exercise that is not in Fairfax County, you buying up every spare field, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It's going to look differently in your life, in your culture, in our world.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the nature of wisdom, it transcends cultures.
SPEAKER_00: And the wise person looks at the principles here and figures out how to apply them in their life now.
SPEAKER_00: And because it's wisdom and law and not law, that means it is about direction and not perfection.
SPEAKER_00: Don't try to obey Proverbs 31 by keeping all of it perfectly, because the law is designed to break you.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, engage with Proverbs 31 as what direction should I be looking.
SPEAKER_00: And to this is why it's important.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a college student or if you're in your 20s trying to decide who to marry and you take Proverbs 31, it's not going to work because a college student or another 22-year-old or whatever doesn't have the resources to do the things in this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Like she's not a Proverbs 31 woman.
SPEAKER_00: She's hardly bought any real estate at all.
SPEAKER_00: I can't marry her.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's about the direction she's going in her life.
SPEAKER_00: Does she have these kind of principles and the character behind these kind of principles in her?
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: And so the we'll use an outline here.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom is fruitful wife.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing we see about wisdom's fruitful wife in verse 10 is that she's hard to find.
SPEAKER_00: She is so hard to find.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is going to be an acrostic.
SPEAKER_00: Acrostic is a poem that moves A to Z through the alphabet.
SPEAKER_00: Every verse in the rest of Proverbs 31 goes through a subsequent letter, A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
SPEAKER_00: I know it doesn't follow that in English because it's written in Hebrew, and translation doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_00: So don't get frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: Although they did a good job with verse 10, it starts with the letter A.
SPEAKER_00: An excellent wife.
SPEAKER_00: Good job, translators.
SPEAKER_00: But that's about all they get from that point forward.
SPEAKER_00: Why was you writing an acrostic?
SPEAKER_00: We don't use acrostics today.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're like in children's books, is where they are today.
SPEAKER_00: Acrostics are helpful for memorization, and acrostics are helpful to take a lot of information and channel it, make it more narrow and personable.
SPEAKER_00: There's something like 14 or 15 different acrostics in the Old Testament, and they all serve that function, to take a large group of material or a passionate, emotionate, uh, emotional uh content and bring it together in a way you can engage with it.
SPEAKER_00: And let me give you an example in English.
SPEAKER_00: If I said name animals, like you would start rattling off animals, and maybe you could get 15 or 20, and maybe you could get more, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you lose brains freeze or whatever, and you wouldn't have a way of channeling all the animals in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But if I said name animals from A to Z, you would probably actually have a better success rate.
SPEAKER_00: You'd start working through and you're channeling all the animals into the alphabet alphabet.
SPEAKER_00: X-ray beta fish, by the way, if you're wondering, is what happens with the X, X-ray beta fish.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you distracted thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of wisdom in Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: It's pulling it down and giving it to an alphabetical order.
SPEAKER_00: Because, hey, name things that a godly wife should have.
SPEAKER_00: What should a godly wife be like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, where would you even start?
SPEAKER_00: But you can start by going A to Z.
SPEAKER_00: That's what King Lemuel's mother does.
SPEAKER_00: And it will help her son memorize it.
SPEAKER_00: And that is important in verse 10 because it is hard to find an excellent wife.
SPEAKER_00: The very first thing she says is, This is going to be hard.
SPEAKER_00: These kind of godly women don't grow on trees.
SPEAKER_00: They're forged in the foundry of godliness.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: They're not everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: They're so rare and so precious.
SPEAKER_00: More precious than gold.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an idiom.
SPEAKER_00: It means we would bring it in English as worth their weight in gold.
SPEAKER_00: Except the Hebrew is more than that.
SPEAKER_00: They're worth more than their weight in gold.
SPEAKER_00: More precious, it says in verse 10, than jewels.
SPEAKER_00: The most precious things you can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: A godly wife is more valuable than them.
SPEAKER_00: And they're so hard to find.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like when a woman like that is available, she's snatched up and married away.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're so rare.
SPEAKER_00: So rare.
SPEAKER_00: Now, lest you think this is misogynistic or saying it's so hard to find a godly woman, there's just so many godly guys everywhere, you need to know Proverbs says the same thing about godly men.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 20, verse 6 many a man proclaims his own steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: But an actual faithful guy, how a man, how hard is that to find?
SPEAKER_00: And it's the same Hebrew phrase that's used here in verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: There are guys that will tell you how faithful they are, how rich they are, how powerful they are, how godly they are, how cool they are, how funny they are.
SPEAKER_00: They'll just run their mouths, they'll tell you all those things.
SPEAKER_00: But when all the smoke clears, it is so hard to find a dude who's actually faithful to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: Before the smoke even fills the room, Lemuel's mom says right out the gate, it is so hard to find this kind of woman.
SPEAKER_00: What'd she like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the heart of her husband trusts her.
SPEAKER_00: He will have no lack of gain.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband trusts her.
SPEAKER_00: In that world, when men go away on business trips, they would often lock up everything of value in their house, but not this guy.
SPEAKER_00: They think, I don't know if my wife could defend it from thieves.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what she would do with it.
SPEAKER_00: Not this guy.
SPEAKER_00: He leaves everything unlocked because his wife is using it and investing it.
SPEAKER_00: When he gets back from his trip, look what it says in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He'll have gained something.
SPEAKER_00: He comes back from a trip, and there's new things in the house.
SPEAKER_00: His wealth is grown in his absence.
SPEAKER_00: And he trusts his wife completely.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher and I were at a uh uh social get-together in a neighborhood, majority not Christians, and a bunch of the couples were talking, and they were talking about how all of the wives have what they called running money.
SPEAKER_00: All of the wives, these guys were telling us, have a couple thousand dollars hidden in their house somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: So in case they ever need to grab it and get out of town, they've got the cash.
SPEAKER_00: And Dieter and I were looking at each other like, what?
SPEAKER_00: And this other guy's like, Jesse, every wife has that.
SPEAKER_00: You need to know that every wife has that.
SPEAKER_00: So we got home that night and I looked at Dieter and I'm like, is there a couple thousand dollars in her basement I don't know about?
SPEAKER_00: She said no, she has no running money.
SPEAKER_00: That's this in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: They they trust each other.
SPEAKER_00: They have a confident relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12, she does him good and not harm all the days of her life.
SPEAKER_00: This is such a critical verse in marriage counseling, because so often there's conflict in marriage because the two uh spouses are viewing their spouse as their enemy.
SPEAKER_00: They think that that my husband or my wife is actually out to get me.
SPEAKER_00: And that creates a cycle of conflict and arguing that just gets settled in and entrenched.
SPEAKER_00: And in some couples, that in counseling, you wonder, like, do they actually like fighting all the time?
SPEAKER_00: Because it seems like that's what they're trying to do.
SPEAKER_00: And of course they don't, but they just don't trust each other.
SPEAKER_00: And it's an epiphany when you realize your spouse is actually trying to help you, not hurt you.
SPEAKER_00: In our first year of marriage, this is without an exaggeration, the biggest source of conflict Dee Jer and I had was uh scheduling things.
SPEAKER_00: She would have a list and she would say, Hey, you should you should get these people over for dinner.
SPEAKER_00: Uh did you send a thank you card to that person?
SPEAKER_00: You've got this ministry going on, we should meet with those small group leaders.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, our college ministry, we should schedule a retreat for the fall kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: She'd have a list and she would be working through it with me.
SPEAKER_00: And I took those things personally.
SPEAKER_00: I would be like, I know how to send a thank you card.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: Well, did you?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Totally gonna do it tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I know we need to schedule a retreat for the fall.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we can do that in the summer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, kind of attitude.
SPEAKER_00: And it was honestly, I'm saying it in an amusing way, but in our first year, it was probably the biggest source of conflict in our marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And what changed was a kind of a switch in my mind where I realized she's trying to help.
SPEAKER_00: She's not trying to make my life harder.
SPEAKER_00: She is, if I were to listen to her, making my life easier.
SPEAKER_00: And once that changed in my mind, now there's more peace.
SPEAKER_00: Like I recognize we're partnering in this, and that's a silly little example from the first year of a marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of you have been married much longer than that.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same principle, though, you see all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Do you trust your wife?
SPEAKER_00: Is she working for your good or your harm?
SPEAKER_00: The Proverbs 31 woman is always working for, verse 12, the good of the of the husband.
SPEAKER_00: Now, from here, the rest of the chapter turns, and it turns into uh a pair of chiasms.
SPEAKER_00: A chiasm is a Hebrew poetry where the front and the end of it match, and the middle is the main point.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard for Americans to understand this because in our world you have the introduction and you have the conclusion, and the conclusion's the main point, and the middle stuff is just filler.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you might even know people that watch the movies with the beginning and the end, and they skip the whole middle part.
SPEAKER_00: We won't name those people, but they exist.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of Proverbs 31 is two across.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to show it to you so you see how the main point is in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: But first, the wisdom's fruitful wife.
SPEAKER_00: You see it with the fruit of her hands.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of her hands.
SPEAKER_00: The main point in this first acrostic is that her hands are fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: She's doing stuff, she's making things and buying things, and she's hard at work.
SPEAKER_00: Now I say it's an acrostic, so let me put it on the screen for for you to see this.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't normally, I don't think I've ever showed you my notes like this before, but this is a very visual thing, and I hope your eyes are able to see it because when you see it, it kind of pops out at you.
SPEAKER_00: This is the nature of the first of the two chiasms in Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: And you see the first verse and the last verse on your screen match each other, the second and the second to last, and the third and third to last, and the middle verse is the main point.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'll walk you through, I think it's more profitable to go through this chapter in this structure than it is any other way.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, if you see it, she seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands.
SPEAKER_00: That's paired with verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: She puts her hands.
SPEAKER_00: Hands is the word that brings them together.
SPEAKER_00: So verse 13, and she's getting woolen flax.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19, she's making stuff out of the woolen flax.
SPEAKER_00: That's just a throwaway line for us, but you have to appreciate working with wool and flax is hard work.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what do you do to get wool?
SPEAKER_00: You gotta shear the sheep and you take the wool and then you've got to comb it out and you've got to sort it by its density, then you have to wash it and then you spin it and then you dye it, and then only then can you sew it together or use it for some domestic purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And flax, my goodness, for us, flax is something like hippies put in smoothies.
SPEAKER_00: That's what flax is in our world.
SPEAKER_00: But flax is like tall grass, and you've got you can't mow it, you've got to pull it by the root, and then you soak it in water, and then you dry it on your roof.
SPEAKER_00: And initially it's not gonna blow away because it's wet, but as it starts to dry, you've got to keep it from blowing away.
SPEAKER_00: And once it's all dried out, you separate the husk from it and you beat it out, and then you have this wood with a series of nails, and you pull it through the nails, and the nails pull out the flax from it.
SPEAKER_00: And what you're left with like was like hair in a brush, and you pull that out, and that's what you weave together.
SPEAKER_00: That is a lot of work.
SPEAKER_00: Notice in verse 13, she's doing it with willing hands.
SPEAKER_00: She's doing this herself.
SPEAKER_00: She's the queen.
SPEAKER_00: She has servants.
SPEAKER_00: She could farm this out, so to speak, but no, she's putting her own two hands to work.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 19, she's the one, it says, her hand is holding the distaff for the sewing there.
SPEAKER_00: Her hands are holding the spindle.
SPEAKER_00: She is getting the wool and she's making the clothes with her own two hands.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14, she's like the ships of the merchant.
SPEAKER_00: She brings her food from afar.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, she perceives that her merchandise is profitable.
SPEAKER_00: So merchandise is the word that links those two together, and her lamp doesn't go out at night.
SPEAKER_00: She's like the ships of the merchant bringing her food from afar.
SPEAKER_00: So in her world, she's seeing the ships come in.
SPEAKER_00: Massa is inland, so she'd have to go to a port.
SPEAKER_00: She's seeing the ships come in, and different ships have different merchandise in it.
SPEAKER_00: And so she's aware of what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: She sees the ship from Greece and she's like, oh, there's olive oil.
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting that.
SPEAKER_00: She sees the boat coming in from Arabia and she's gonna go get her spices and the one from Egypt and she's gonna go get her bed sheets or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: She is seeing the ships and she knows what they sell that is good.
SPEAKER_00: So how do you Americanize this one?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is in your in your homes.
SPEAKER_00: This is the woman who says, I'm gonna get my produce at Giant and my meat at Costco and my cereal at Trader Joe's and my granola bar at Target kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: She sees the ships.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the Costco truck on the freeway?
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, she knows where to go for what.
SPEAKER_00: And she does it well.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: So hard to find a woman like that, but she she does it and she's bringing food.
SPEAKER_00: In that world, food where it grew is where you sold it.
SPEAKER_00: So you had to work to get something unusual or different for your family, but that's what she's doing.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15 pairs with verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: She rises while it's night and she dresses herself with strength.
SPEAKER_00: She provides food for her household and portions for her maidens.
SPEAKER_00: She's making food for her family.
SPEAKER_00: She gets up while it's still dark.
SPEAKER_00: She's making the kids breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: They're going off to school with lunch that she packed them.
SPEAKER_00: She's got servants.
SPEAKER_00: She could have the servants pack the kids lunch.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: No servants making my kids lunch, she says.
SPEAKER_00: How does she have time to make the kids lunch before they go off to school?
SPEAKER_00: Because she gets up while it's still dark, is what it says in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't just make lunch for her kids and breakfast for her family, she also makes food for her servants.
SPEAKER_00: How easy would it be to switch it?
SPEAKER_00: Tell the servants, would you bring me breakfast in my room?
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this woman does.
SPEAKER_00: She gets up early, makes her family food, and then makes the servants' food as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's just so much work.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17 lets you know the result of it.
SPEAKER_00: Her arms are strong.
SPEAKER_00: This is the only mention of her physical appearance in the whole chapter.
SPEAKER_00: This is the only mention of what she actually looks like, and it focuses on her arms.
SPEAKER_00: She is ripped on the arms.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody showed me a picture between services of a uh like a hand weight that had Proverbs 31, 17 embrazened on it.
SPEAKER_00: The main point, though, of this section is verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: She considers a field and buys it.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: Fruit of her hands is an idiom, it means her profit.
SPEAKER_00: What she worked at made profit for her.
SPEAKER_00: She considers the field and she purchases it.
SPEAKER_00: Now she has money, if you notice verse 18, her merchandise is profitable.
SPEAKER_00: She's got her own Etsy account or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: She's making stuff and selling it.
SPEAKER_00: Facebook Marketplace is all reared up with her.
SPEAKER_00: She's bringing money in.
SPEAKER_00: But now what's she doing with it?
SPEAKER_00: In verse 16, she's consider that word considering it.
SPEAKER_00: She's studying it.
SPEAKER_00: She's thinking about it, she's watching the market to use our own language from today.
SPEAKER_00: She's watching the market.
SPEAKER_00: She sees a field and she thinks there's potential in that field.
SPEAKER_00: That field could be flipped, is what she's thinking.
SPEAKER_00: But right now they're asking too much.
SPEAKER_00: And she keeps her eye on it, and one day the price dips and she pounces, buys the field.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of stuff in Proverbs about this.
SPEAKER_00: There's the wisdom of buying low and selling high, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the fool does it the opposite way.
SPEAKER_00: The fool sees the market drop and it's like, oh no, it's dropping, let me sell.
SPEAKER_00: And then sees the market climbing, like, oh no, the market's high, let me buy.
SPEAKER_00: That's the foolish person.
SPEAKER_00: The wise person flips it around.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's down, I'll buy, it's high, I'll sell.
SPEAKER_00: She's doing that with real estate here, this woman.
SPEAKER_00: Like the field, now it drops.
SPEAKER_00: Boom.
SPEAKER_00: She does some improvements on it, sells it.
SPEAKER_00: Now she has the fruit of her hands, a profit from it.
SPEAKER_00: What does she do from the profit she made selling the field?
SPEAKER_00: She plants a vineyard to grow food for her family.
SPEAKER_00: So she's multiplying her resources.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean by saying the fruit of her hands.
SPEAKER_00: That's an expression from verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the fruit of her hand and the rep of her man.
SPEAKER_00: I had to do a little work to make that fit, but I'm happy with it.
SPEAKER_00: The rep of her man, the reputation of her husbands.
SPEAKER_00: That's the central part of the next chiasm, which I'll put on the screen for you, the rep of her man.
SPEAKER_00: That starts in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: With she opens her hand to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: That pairs with verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: She opens her mouth with wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: She's got her hand and she's got her mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Her hand is being generous.
SPEAKER_00: She's giving things to those who are in need.
SPEAKER_00: Now she's not diluting the family of their wealth or their value.
SPEAKER_00: And I've again I've heard people say that.
SPEAKER_00: They look at Acts chapter 2 and say the early church sold all they had and gave to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: And so to follow Christ, to be a real Christian, it means you sell everything, give to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, that's not wise.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what Acts chapter 2 is describing either.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of stunt you can do once.
SPEAKER_00: And if you did it, if everybody actually in the church sold all they had today and gave to the poor today, then tomorrow we would all be poor and have nothing to sell.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_00: What it means is that you're generous.
SPEAKER_00: And she has been staying up all night making things, and now she has extra.
SPEAKER_00: She invests some of it back in her family, but she's not only building bigger barns, she's investing some back into her family and some to the needy.
SPEAKER_00: Do you notice how well this pairs with what Lemuel's mom told him to do in the first part of the chapter?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, she said, she's almost trash talking to those other kings.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, Why are you drinking?
SPEAKER_00: Uh why are you drinking wine?
SPEAKER_00: Let the kings with like all the poverty and all the unjustice in their kingdom, let those kings drink, not you.
SPEAKER_00: You sober up and speak out for the poor.
SPEAKER_00: And now he's marrying a girl who is the same way.
SPEAKER_00: When she is generous, she's giving things out to those who are in need.
SPEAKER_00: Her kind of ethics match and mirror his.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 26, she opens her mouth with wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Some people open their mouth and it just comes gossip or just comes air, just gibberish.
SPEAKER_00: Not her.
SPEAKER_00: When she opens her mouth, she says something wise.
SPEAKER_00: The teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
SPEAKER_00: There's several proverbs about the nagging wife, better to live on the corner of a roof than with the nagging wife.
SPEAKER_00: She is giving instruction in her family, but she's giving instruction in such a way that it comes across as kind.
SPEAKER_00: Kindness is on her tongue.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a very unusual phrase, this expression.
SPEAKER_00: God is called kind in the Old Testament for sure.
SPEAKER_00: He's kind and gracious.
SPEAKER_00: But this exact phrase, this is used in Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth chapter 2, where Naomi tells Ruth, don't give up on God.
SPEAKER_00: Cling to Yahweh, who has shown kindness to both the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_00: It seems to be an intentional linking here from Proverbs 31 to Ruth 2.
SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty cool if you take a step back.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth is about the promise of salvation coming into the Davidic line, and it comes to David through a woman.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 31 is about wisdom coming into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, Proverbs 8, wisdom is lady wisdom, but comes incarnate in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But Proverbs 31 is taking that expression to say, wisdom is seen here in this world through a woman, through the kindness of her speech.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, she's not afraid of snow.
SPEAKER_00: She's not afraid of snow.
SPEAKER_00: People get terrified of snow.
SPEAKER_00: We understand this in D.C.
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, it snows like once every few years.
SPEAKER_00: DC, it snows like once every other year or so, and yet people are terrified of it.
SPEAKER_00: Snows, cancel everything for a month.
SPEAKER_00: It snows.
SPEAKER_00: When we first moved here, there was a snowstorm.
SPEAKER_00: People are literally abandoning their cars on Little River Turnbike.
SPEAKER_00: Snowflakes on the windshield, we're out, I'm walking, I'll bust the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_00: Done.
SPEAKER_00: People are terrified of snow.
SPEAKER_00: They're afraid of cold.
SPEAKER_00: But not her.
SPEAKER_00: She's not afraid of snow.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Her household is clothed in scarlet.
SPEAKER_00: It's snowing outside, and she's like everybody else is hunkering down, wrapping each up in blankets, getting in front of a fireplace, watching a Hallmark movie.
SPEAKER_00: Not this lady.
SPEAKER_00: This lady, she goes and gets to the bin.
SPEAKER_00: She's got, I got a, I got a bin of mittens.
SPEAKER_00: She's got the she's got all the winter clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Kids, put on mittens, get out there and throw snowballs.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else is hunker down.
SPEAKER_00: Her kids are out in a snowball fight.
SPEAKER_00: That's this woman.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 25, or 20, uh, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Strength and dignity are her clothing.
SPEAKER_00: Does she have a winter jacket?
SPEAKER_00: She has a new winter jacket.
SPEAKER_00: She robes herself in dignity.
SPEAKER_00: She says, winter, bring it.
SPEAKER_00: She laughs.
SPEAKER_00: And the ESV says she laughs at the time to come.
SPEAKER_00: That bugs me.
SPEAKER_00: We have a word in English for the time to come.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the future.
SPEAKER_00: She laughs at the future.
SPEAKER_00: This is probably my favorite description here.
SPEAKER_00: She laughs at the future.
SPEAKER_00: She looks at what's on the horizon, and she says, earlier she said, bring it winter.
SPEAKER_00: And now she says, bring it future.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to get consumed with worry about tomorrow and what's going to happen in our country.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, this judge did this, and what is that going to mean?
SPEAKER_00: Or if the next election goes this way, I won't have a country for my grandkids to grow up in, kind of, kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you're you're just, you don't know.
SPEAKER_00: My husband could lose his job, and then what?
SPEAKER_00: And then what?
SPEAKER_00: And you get consumed by worry.
SPEAKER_00: Not this woman.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is unknown on the horizon, and she laughs at it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a jovial laugh.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's like basically a bring it world.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm ready.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, but I know it's going to be an adventure.
SPEAKER_00: That's her attitude.
SPEAKER_00: How amazing would it be to be married to somebody like this?
SPEAKER_00: That is just like, hey, it's not, it's not going to be boring, but it's going to be fun.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but it's going to be exciting.
SPEAKER_00: That's her.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22, she makes bed coverings for herself, fine linens and purple.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24, she makes linen garments and sells them.
SPEAKER_00: You can see how those two are linked.
SPEAKER_00: And delivers sashes to the merchant.
SPEAKER_00: Her house is well apportioned.
SPEAKER_00: It's decorated well.
SPEAKER_00: It looks nice and dignified and refined inside.
SPEAKER_00: And she's not burning money on it.
SPEAKER_00: She's making a lot of this stuff herself.
SPEAKER_00: Again, there's cultural implications to this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying go home and make your own decorations for your house to be a Proverbs 31 woman.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what she has done.
SPEAKER_00: She decorated her house in a dignified way so that you walk in, you go, whoa, this place is put together.
SPEAKER_00: Fine linen.
SPEAKER_00: Purple is the color of luxury.
SPEAKER_00: And she has it.
SPEAKER_00: Even in her clothes, which she made.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that in verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: She's making these garments and she's selling some.
SPEAKER_00: She makes stuff for her kids, stuff for her husband, stuff for the market, stuff for the poor.
SPEAKER_00: That's what she's doing.
SPEAKER_00: One for the fam, one for the market.
SPEAKER_00: She's selling sashes or scarves, you could translate it that way, to the merchant.
SPEAKER_00: She's bringing in funds that way.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23 is the key point, though.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband is known in the gates.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean by the rep of her man.
SPEAKER_00: People see him and esteem him, and you could say, Oh, that's because he's the king.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's because of his wisdom that he has by virtue of his wife.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of the wisdom is from his wife, and some of the wisdom is his, that he was wise enough to marry her, so that he is known as wise as he sits among the elders of the land.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Lloyd Jones tells a wonderful story about this that there was a pastor, a Welsh pastor who was known, had a reputation for being gregarious and winsome and thoughtful, intelligent, sophisticated.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was excited to meet him.
SPEAKER_00: He preached at his church.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Lloyd Jones said and spent the night at his house.
SPEAKER_00: And on that Saturday night, he was just sitting, talking to the guy, and Martin Lloyd Jones writes that the guy was kind of boring.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't seem that you know intellectually active at all.
SPEAKER_00: But then after an hour or so of just sitting there, his wife came in the room and Lloyd Jones says, his wife lit up the whole room, even the candles burned brighter.
SPEAKER_00: And she started talking to him, and he realized, oh, she is up to date on what's happening in the world, on theology.
SPEAKER_00: They talked about theology and what's happening in the church.
SPEAKER_00: But he said the most amazing thing about her is that she entered into the conversation through her husband.
SPEAKER_00: So she would tell her husband, Do you remember when we talked about this last week?
SPEAKER_00: Or you should tell uh the Reverend this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, do you remember that we had, you know, so-and-so said that, and the husband starts to remember these things and gets more engaged based on what his wife is telling him.
SPEAKER_00: Such as the world, the husband has a reputation for being wise and culturally intelligent and all of this.
SPEAKER_00: But behind the scenes, that's those seeds are all planted there by his wife.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would know that.
SPEAKER_00: That's this that's this woman.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband is known at the gates, and that's a lot of her work.
SPEAKER_00: Third.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen the fruit of her hand, the rep of her man, and third, the praise of her fam.
SPEAKER_00: The praise of her fam.
SPEAKER_00: These last few verses here, they're retrospective.
SPEAKER_00: So these are now shifting to the end of life.
SPEAKER_00: The first part of this is what kind of woman to marry.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're asking, this is so hard for kids to do.
SPEAKER_00: So this is again, this is teenager kind of thinking here, 20-year-old, 25-year-old kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Go out, think of your choice now, and go out to the end of your life.
SPEAKER_00: When your kids are grown, now what are you going to think of your marriage?
SPEAKER_00: And in this situation, looking back on life, this is what it says in verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: She has always looked well to the ways of her household.
SPEAKER_00: She did not eat the bread of idleness.
SPEAKER_00: You understand with this whole chapter, this is not the day in the life of a godly woman.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't get up early and make lunches and stay up at night making, you know, scarlet mittens and satin bed sheets all in one day.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a day in the life of the godly woman.
SPEAKER_00: This is her whole life.
SPEAKER_00: Taken together, her whole life looks like this.
SPEAKER_00: One thing you can say about her, she did not eat the bread of idleness.
SPEAKER_00: That will look different in a 20-year-old, in a 30-year-old, a 40 year old, a 60-year-old, an 80-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: Not eating the bread of idleness looks different at every stage of life.
SPEAKER_00: Of course it does.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the takeaway of this woman.
SPEAKER_00: You know, she did not eat the bread of idleness.
SPEAKER_00: Her children, verse 28, they're gonna rise up and call her blessed.
SPEAKER_00: This phrase, rise up, it was used earlier in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: She rose up in the middle of the night to make lunch.
SPEAKER_00: Now her kids rise up and call her blessed.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is probably retrospective.
SPEAKER_00: The end of life.
SPEAKER_00: Her kids have risen up, they have flown the nest, they're out there around the world, and they get up and they say, You know what, Mom?
SPEAKER_00: She was amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Think of all she did.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband praises her.
SPEAKER_00: Her husband gets up and says, literally in Hebrew, it's Hallucha.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah, hallelujah is praise God.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah is praise her.
SPEAKER_00: That's what her husband gets up and says, Praise her.
SPEAKER_00: He wakes up in the morning, praise her.
SPEAKER_00: What does he actually say?
SPEAKER_00: You get the quote in verse 29: Many women have done excellently, but you have excelled them all.
SPEAKER_00: There's some truth in that.
SPEAKER_00: There are, I know at the beginning of the chapter it said there's so few godly women in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But now at the end of life, you're looking back in things and you say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of godly women out there.
SPEAKER_00: Think of Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: There are godly women all over our church.
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of godly women.
SPEAKER_00: But you have excelled them all.
SPEAKER_00: And then that does not mean that the woman you chose back when you were in your 20s happened to turn out to be the godliest woman in the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: Ontologically, she is the best one.
SPEAKER_00: You chose right.
SPEAKER_00: Your friend is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He can't read Proverbs 31 because it's yours.
SPEAKER_00: No, it means there's lots of godly women out there.
SPEAKER_00: But for our family, you've been the best.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad I didn't have anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: Charm is deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: Beauty is fleeting.
SPEAKER_00: That word deceitful, it's a word for lie.
SPEAKER_00: Charm lies to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's a noun in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Charm charm lies.
SPEAKER_00: Charm is a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Deceitful makes it into a bit of an adjective.
SPEAKER_00: A charm is a liar.
SPEAKER_00: Beauty, on the other hand, beauty is ephemeral.
SPEAKER_00: It dissipates.
SPEAKER_00: It disappears.
SPEAKER_00: It goes, that's the word from Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_00: Vanity, vanity.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is vanity.
SPEAKER_00: Beauty is vanity.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the person in their 20s as like, oh, I think I'm going to marry this girl.
SPEAKER_00: I'm dating this girl.
SPEAKER_00: She's not very godly, but you know, our personalities just match a lot, and I think we'll be good for each other.
SPEAKER_00: And then you meet her and you're like, her personality is what you're attracted to.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna you're gonna date some girl who's not godly because you think she's hot is what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Game that out.
SPEAKER_00: How do you think that's going to play out in 10 years or in 20 years?
SPEAKER_00: You know, she might be more attractive than many other 30-year-olds or many other 40-year-olds.
SPEAKER_00: But at some point, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: That's the choice you're gonna make right now.
SPEAKER_00: How do you think it's gonna play out in decades?
SPEAKER_00: Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vanity.
SPEAKER_00: You marry an attractive woman who's not godly and you think at the end of your life your kids aren't gonna rise up and call her a blessed.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 30 a woman who fears Yahweh, she is to be praised.
SPEAKER_00: So, how did Proverbs begin?
SPEAKER_00: The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom, and it's a dad saying, Son, look at wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Go after her, marry her, be committed to her.
SPEAKER_00: And now at the end of the book, how does the book end?
SPEAKER_00: With mom saying, Son, I'm glad you married a girl like that.
SPEAKER_00: So, give her, the very last phrase, the fruit of her hands.
SPEAKER_00: What a cool expression.
SPEAKER_00: It's this is the close of the book of Proverbs.
SPEAKER_00: Give her what she deserves.
SPEAKER_00: Give her, give this kind of Proverbs 31 woman what she wants.
SPEAKER_00: Give it to her.
SPEAKER_00: She worked hard for it.
SPEAKER_00: Let her have it.
SPEAKER_00: Let her works praise her in the gates.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what does a woman like this want?
SPEAKER_00: She does not want everybody in the gates to gather around and say, Oh, you are such the Proverbs 31 woman, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: That's not what she wants.
SPEAKER_00: A woman like this, what does she want?
SPEAKER_00: This is what John says.
SPEAKER_00: She has no greater joy than knowing that her children walk in the truth.
SPEAKER_00: That's what she wants.
SPEAKER_00: She wants her kids to grow up and know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So give her what she wants.
SPEAKER_00: Give her the work of her hands.
SPEAKER_00: Let her works, meaning all that she's produced at the end of her life, everything she's done in her life, that will be her legacy.
SPEAKER_00: They might not remember her name in three or four generations, but they may very well remember her faith.
SPEAKER_00: Couple concluding comments about this.
SPEAKER_00: I know that earlier I said wisdom is not law, but wisdom is also not gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And you can go through a section like Proverbs 31 and be discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: I've had people tell me, like, oh, if I ever meet the Proverbs 31 woman, I want to smack her.
SPEAKER_00: She raised the bar so high.
SPEAKER_00: You know, let me flip that around on you.
SPEAKER_00: What have I told you?
SPEAKER_00: If I ever meet Timothy, I'm gonna punch him right in the nose for giving us elder qualifications.
SPEAKER_00: How dare he?
SPEAKER_00: And then I remember, oh, one of the elder qualifications is not given to fisticuffs, so can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: This is, you're not supposed to be discouraged by this.
SPEAKER_00: This is a celebratory passage.
SPEAKER_00: It's celebrating what is good and virtuous and wise in women.
SPEAKER_00: It's not meant to discourage you, but it's also not gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you look at your life and you see areas your life has failed, or your husband, you're like, I tried to be this woman, but my husband is not praising the gates.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you that right now.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, like you're just getting you're convicted by this, then what you do with sin is you confess it to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You confess your sin to the Lord, the Lord forgives you of your sin because Jesus bore your sin on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He can forgive you of your sin, and then he can free you to lead a wise life in light of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: This is the pattern to live in.
SPEAKER_00: It's not law, it's not supposed to break you, and if it does break you, you go to Christ for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're so thankful that you have forgiven us for sin through faith in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful that you have given our church so many godly women like this.
SPEAKER_00: So many women who are not adorned outwardly in jewelry and braided hair, but an inward, first of all, an inward quiet spirit, but secondly, an external works that are in keeping with their spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Their beauty is seen, but it's seen in their conduct, in their words, in their actions.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful for our church and the godly women you've given us.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for Christ, the greatest gift of all.
SPEAKER_00: It's in his name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBcC.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.