Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] When I was probably 13 or 14, My family was having devotions and we were reading through Proverbs and we got to Proverbs 31 one night, and in verse 13, the version we were using said of this excellent wife, this godly woman, that she gathers flax and busily spins it.
[00:00:34] And my little sister Hannah piped up, who's Bisley?
[00:00:42] Suddenly there was another character in the story, this other person that's going to be doing the work of spinning the flax into yarn.
[00:00:55] I don't think that my sister had too many ideals of womanhood or anything that were affecting her. She just got words confused sometimes and misunderstood them in hilarious ways.
[00:01:13] And that was one of them.
[00:01:16] And yet it reminds me of the Victorian ideal of what a woman was, that she was a delicate flower who cannot do anything physical herself.
[00:01:33] She is the spiritually mature person, and she spends all her time planning dinner parties or something like that.
[00:01:42] This is not a biblical picture.
[00:01:45] And we are all affected by these kinds of ideals that come from culture, whether it's some sort of Christian subculture, that we were raised to look back into history and be like, oh, man, those were the days, or whether it's modern culture from today.
[00:02:03] There are terribly different pictures of what a wonderful woman looks like.
[00:02:11] And so what I want us to do this morning is I want us to have our picture of what a wonderful woman looks like drawn out of God's word and have that be what we are looking to and what we are seeking after seeking to be as women and looking for in a woman to marry for those young men who are single themselves.
[00:02:44] We're going to come to the reading of Most of Proverbs 31 here in a moment. But even before we get to verse 10, where I'm going to start reading, I just want to remind you that the first nine verses of this chapter are actually written to a king by his mother about how to be a good king.
[00:03:13] And so, mothers, you have a lot not just of influence in your son's life, but you are going to be the one who is passing on the wisdom for whatever it is that he's doing in life.
[00:03:32] Not to the exclusion, of course, of your husband, the father of your children.
[00:03:41] But never sell yourself short in your authority and in your warnings that you have for your children, including your adult sons, who are kings.
[00:03:56] I don't think there are any kings in this room, but if Solomon's mother can speak to him and give him warnings about how the bad kings behave, you can certainly give warnings to your sons. As well.
[00:04:15] Would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Proverbs 31.
[00:04:30] An excellent wife who can find for her worth is far above jewels.
[00:04:37] The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.
[00:04:43] She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.
[00:04:48] She looks for wool and flax and works with her hands in delight.
[00:04:53] She is like merchant ships. She brings her food from afar. She rises also, while it is still night, and gives food to her household and portions to her maidens.
[00:05:05] She considers a field and buys it from her earnings. She plants a vineyard.
[00:05:11] She girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong.
[00:05:16] She senses that her gain is good.
[00:05:20] Her lamp does not go out at night.
[00:05:23] She stretches out her hands to the distaff, and her hands grasp the spindle. She extends her hand to the poor, and she stretches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of the snow, for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
[00:05:40] She makes coverings for herself. Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
[00:05:46] Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land.
[00:05:53] She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies belts to the tradesmen. Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future.
[00:06:03] She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
[00:06:10] She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
[00:06:16] Her children rise up and bless her.
[00:06:19] Her husband also, and he praises her, saying, many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.
[00:06:29] Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.
[00:06:33] But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
[00:06:37] Give her the product of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.
[00:06:43] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:06:46] Please be seated.
[00:06:53] I think last week I said, sit down.
[00:06:59] And I thought to myself, I don't think that's what I normally say.
[00:07:09] Well, this passage, I think maybe the reason I've avoided preaching on it is because it's intimidating.
[00:07:15] It's intimidating to me to preach on it. It's also, I think, intimidating to a lot of women.
[00:07:22] Am I crazy?
[00:07:24] I don't think I'm crazy. I think there's a lot going on in this passage.
[00:07:35] You guys are probably used to me pulling in Hebrew and Greek words every once in a while. But what's funny is I don't ever like to do it.
[00:07:47] But in this passage, this one of the first words, this an excellent wife. That word, excellent, is a great word to use to translate into English.
[00:08:00] The Hebrew behind this passage, but.
[00:08:09] It's so small in meaning compared to everything that is encompassed by the Hebrew word here.
[00:08:18] So most of the places where this word is translated in scripture, it's actually like army, all right?
[00:08:29] And the concepts that go along with it, the other words that it can be used to translate, or translate it in English to, are strong, able, qualified, vigorous, valiant, capable, wealthy, worthy, virtuous, good, and brave.
[00:08:51] So the meaning of this word is super deep.
[00:08:59] I was going to say why. But it's actually just. It's one meaning. It's just.
[00:09:05] It's really deep.
[00:09:09] There's a lot going on in this. An excellent wife.
[00:09:13] Who can find an excellent wife. And so excellent is an excellent word to try to cover everything that this word means, but it doesn't actually show you how deep it goes.
[00:09:28] Now, here's the thing about an excellent wife.
[00:09:34] An excellent wife doesn't just pop out of nowhere.
[00:09:40] You don't turn into an excellent wife when you get married, and suddenly, boom, now you're excellent.
[00:09:50] All of the characteristics in this passage require work and dedication, and they have to be developed.
[00:10:02] And so you girls, you young women and you married women and you old women all see this and see things that you can work on, see things that you can be seeking to develop in yourself.
[00:10:23] It's not like the wife part become a wife at marriage. You do not become excellent at that moment.
[00:10:35] You can be working on that before, during, and after.
[00:10:43] And so this proverb is in some sense written to women, but actually it's not.
[00:10:56] It's written to men. In fact, most of scripture, even the passages that apply most directly to women, are actually written with the expectation that men are reading it.
[00:11:15] So in this context, coming straight out of the instructions to Lemuel the king from his mother, you have a continuation into what a man should be looking for in a wife. This is why I say it doesn't spring out of nowhere.
[00:11:38] You don't just look around and look at other women and be like, man, she's a great wife. Look at what she does.
[00:11:45] You understand from that what you are looking for in a wife.
[00:11:50] Young men.
[00:11:56] And so when you think through this passage, you might think, well, but all the descriptions have to do with, you know, already being married. Well, not all of them, first of all. And second of all, you can tell when somebody is pursuing this work.
[00:12:13] You can tell when somebody is not interested in being like this, whether they're married or not.
[00:12:25] So what is this description?
[00:12:32] Excellent.
[00:12:33] What is this passage telling us about an excellent woman?
[00:12:40] The Woman that is desirable to marry, the woman that has been a wonderful wife.
[00:12:49] Well, the first thing that you see, if you just kind of summarize the whole passage, is that she is a hard worker.
[00:12:57] An excellent woman. An excellent wife is a hard worker.
[00:13:03] She works hard. It's inescapable in this passage, right?
[00:13:07] And it's such a. It's such a joy to see that our work, both men and women, right? To see that our work is part of our character, that it's not meaningless.
[00:13:28] And so, wives, you're called to work hard.
[00:13:36] Girls, you're called to work hard, not to simply be idle.
[00:13:43] In fact, that's one of the things that we're warned against in the New Testament, that women are not to be idle gossips.
[00:13:54] You can see the contrast between the warning and the exhortation that we have here. The praise is for the woman that is the hard worker. The warning is for the one that is inclined to idleness or laziness.
[00:14:11] She's a hard worker. What is the hard work that she does?
[00:14:18] Well, you see a lot about clothing and what else? Kids?
[00:14:27] Clothing and.
[00:14:28] Yes, food.
[00:14:31] Says the man with a belly.
[00:14:35] The young man with a belly.
[00:14:39] He's hungry, and so he noticed. There's a lot about food in this passage, isn't there?
[00:14:46] There's a lot about clothes. There's a lot about food.
[00:14:50] Does anything else stand out to you guys?
[00:14:53] What is the hard work that's described in here?
[00:15:02] This one's a little bit more conceptual than physical, but it's service to others.
[00:15:10] It's just constant throughout the passage, both in terms of her own family and others. Outsiders, strangers, those who are in need, her own husband, her own children, and others service to them in a variety of ways. And even those who are in her household.
[00:15:35] So it's expecting that there are other people that are connected to your family in some way that are not directly family members.
[00:15:45] Those also are being clothed by her.
[00:15:53] So all of these things are service to others, but they're also hard work.
[00:16:01] And in particular, they were hard work in a way that might not be true anymore today.
[00:16:08] Now, when I was growing up, aside from having a sister who had hilarious interpretations of Scripture, I also had a mom who liked to teach me to do weird things like knit or spin wool into yarn. She had a spinning wheel, and she'd get it out every once in a while and show us all how to use it.
[00:16:34] And I'm telling you, when you.
[00:16:37] I think probably only maybe three times my whole life, she'd get a bag Of. Of wool from somebody, and you started off with just dirty, fresh wool, and you had to comb it.
[00:17:00] Now, if any of you have ever tried to comb gum out of somebody's hair, a girl's curly hair, that's kind of what it's like, except you don't have to worry about pain, except for pain for yourself if you accidentally hit yourself with the metal combs that hurt.
[00:17:19] To me, this was just novelty. It was like, whoa, you know, and you get to really work at trying to comb that stuff, and you pull out all of the little pieces of grass and sticks and little broken things that were in there, and eventually you'd have a little bit less dirty wool and all going in the same direction. Just like this much of it, though, this whole bag that you got to do this to.
[00:17:51] I don't have a good enough memory to remember how long it took.
[00:17:54] I just know that it was really hard work.
[00:17:59] From there, you could finally start spinning.
[00:18:06] And I mean, to tell you, what an art.
[00:18:12] Not so much a science, but what an art.
[00:18:15] I'm sure I couldn't do any of it today, and I was never any good at it. I probably made, you know, three feet of yarn in my life.
[00:18:23] And when you have done three feet of yarn from, you know, after a couple of hours of work as a boy, you realize that making clothes is no joke. Joke, Right.
[00:18:37] Making clothes from scratch is no joke. And we didn't even have to go out and get the wool. And that's where this starts. Gathering the flax, you know, is from a field.
[00:18:51] It starts even earlier in the process. And the wool, right? Has to be.
[00:18:56] It says, she looks for wool and flax and works with her hands in delight. Now, in delight is the part where all of a sudden all of you women are like, oh, if this is what the excellent wife is like, I'm going to have to work on my attitude some, right?
[00:19:18] Well, yes.
[00:19:21] And yet, isn't it a delight to have the work of your hands? You get to the end of the chapter and it says, give her the works of her hands.
[00:19:32] Isn't it a delight to have the fruit of what you have produced?
[00:19:38] Now, this is one of the things that is tough in a service economy, okay? Because at the end of the day, It's harder to see and to hold the things that you have accomplished, right? If you've been teaching in a school all day, you probably had a similar situation to what I have, which is you get to the end and you think, I don't know whether I accomplished Anything.
[00:20:06] I mean, I know I did something, but were people actually learning? Did they actually care?
[00:20:17] I guess we'll see. In 20 years, maybe.
[00:20:24] This is different.
[00:20:26] And this is part of what I think. It's easier to delight in the works of your hands when you can see, hey, I made clothes and they're wearing them. Look at them. I did it. They're nice, they look good.
[00:20:44] But when you get to the end of the day and you're thinking, I mean, I certainly don't have anything in my hands that I did, maybe I can pull up a file on the computer and be like, see?
[00:21:01] At most it's tough.
[00:21:05] But you know what's wonderful about being a mother is that so much of it is undeniably physical.
[00:21:16] And so what I want to encourage you all to do is to not be discouraged by the work that you can't see the fruit of, but rather delight in the work that you can actually see. The physical results of taking care of others is almost always able to be seen in some sort of physical way.
[00:21:44] You might not be making clothes anymore, but the work of clothing a household is still work, right?
[00:21:56] And you can still look at how your family is dressed and say, I did it.
[00:22:04] And I like the results.
[00:22:07] You can still look at how they're clean and say, I know they won't be clean for another 45 minutes, but they're clean and take a delight in that.
[00:22:20] So don't look down on the physical, but rather take advantage of the delight that it offers.
[00:22:33] And keep working hard.
[00:22:39] Not just a hard worker, though, she's also capable.
[00:22:46] Capable and strong. Now, part of what you see her capability in is the things that maybe don't pop out to us as obvious. But.
[00:23:04] Going back to my spinning of wool, the thing that, the thing that you can do easily is make really, really thick, lumpy yarn.
[00:23:19] That's real easy.
[00:23:21] What you can't do easily is make consistently fine yarn without lumps.
[00:23:30] And that's what's being described as fine linen. Right. Fine linen requires finely spun.
[00:23:41] What is linen made of?
[00:23:43] Flax. Thank you. Yeah, I forgot already.
[00:23:49] Now, it happens that I'm wearing linen today, and linen is particularly hard to have consistent thread for.
[00:24:06] She's capable.
[00:24:09] She's not just making sure everybody has clothes on.
[00:24:14] She's actually doing good work in the dressing of her family.
[00:24:21] Not just productive, not just saying, well, there's some clothes cover up, but rather beautiful, well made, finely woven.
[00:24:38] So capability is seen throughout many of these descriptions.
[00:24:46] Capability and strength. Do you notice how often strength shows up in these verses, first of all, you notice that many of the things that she is doing are going to take a lot of energy and it's going to take a lot of time. The very fact that it says that she rises while it's still dark, right, she rises in the night is talking about how hard she works. Yes, but it also requires an obvious amount of strength in order to do that physically. That's taxing.
[00:25:30] Also it demonstrates a strength of character, a strength of will, because we know how easy it is to say, I'm going to get up early and start my work, and how much harder it is and how much strength of willpower it requires to actually do it.
[00:25:54] Right?
[00:25:56] And so we see strength in what she is doing, we see strength in her character, and we also see strength in her body.
[00:26:08] It says in verse 17, she girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong.
[00:26:23] Strength is seen throughout. Now, why does it matter that she is strong?
[00:26:34] Why does it matter that you're strong?
[00:26:40] Why does that make her one bit of what makes her an excellent wife?
[00:26:49] Well, partly that's because it's a big part of what excellent means in the Hebrew. And yet there's more to it.
[00:27:02] Today there is in the conservative church, a movement against strength in women in some places of the conservative world. And what a bizarre, bizarre thing.
[00:27:26] Do you know what kind of man wants a woman that is weak?
[00:27:34] A man who is weak.
[00:27:37] A man who is weak doesn't want to be shown up by his wife, and so he looks for a weak woman.
[00:27:50] What a stupid way to shoot yourself in the foot.
[00:27:56] Marry a strong woman and you know what she'll do?
[00:28:03] She'll help you get strong.
[00:28:07] If you're weak, the problem is men.
[00:28:13] You'll have a difficult time finding a strong woman that's interested in marrying you.
[00:28:19] So if I've gotten done talking about the strength of a woman, I haven't gotten done talking about the strength that men need.
[00:28:33] But I hope that you have seen that there is something essential to strength, that the physical and the emotional and the spiritual all come together. When we're talking about strength and we're talking about all kinds of things, but especially, especially when we're talking about strength, there are people who look very strong, but who have no strength of self discipline.
[00:29:10] What's going on there, they're putting on a show. They're looking for other people to see them as a certain way.
[00:29:17] The goal is not actually to be strong. In that case, it's to be seen strong.
[00:29:29] This whole chapter can be something that you women are seeking to appear to be, or it can be something that you are actually seeking to be.
[00:29:41] And I want you to see the difference in those things and recognize that in the end, when you get to the end of the chapter, it is seen, it is acknowledged.
[00:29:59] It's seen in the Gates most of the time and even elsewhere. In this very passage, when it talks about the gates of the city, it's talking about where the men are hanging out and gathering, but really, it's just talking about the public square.
[00:30:21] And so, as you think about.
[00:30:30] What comes from this hard work, from seeking after strength, and she does seek after it. She makes her arms strong.
[00:30:44] Okay?
[00:30:46] What comes from this is not simply everything disappears into nothingness.
[00:30:56] Your work of feeding and clothing and cleaning and all of that stuff that can feel so very forgettable, right, actually ends up producing something that is very seen.
[00:31:14] It's very visible. And the way that you can tell that this is true is because you can immediately see women that aren't doing this.
[00:31:28] Their kids are sloppy, dirty, not dressed, fully not dressed well.
[00:31:37] They're feeding them junk food, and you're thinking to yourself, man, there's something not quite right there.
[00:31:48] Not all of the work that needs to be done is being done.
[00:31:54] Why can you think that? Well, because you can see the visible output from this labor.
[00:32:03] Whether she is working hard, whether she is capable, whether she is strong.
[00:32:09] This stuff is actually visible.
[00:32:16] But the way that it's most visible, interestingly, is in others.
[00:32:23] Now, she is described. It is visible in her. It's visible in how she is dressed. It's visible in what she is wearing.
[00:32:32] But it's especially pointed out how her children, how her household, how her husband is dressed, how they are fed, how they are cared for, and even that her husband is known in the gates.
[00:32:53] That's kind of a strange thing. You'd think that a man should be known in the gates because of what he has done.
[00:32:58] Well, guess what? The best thing you can do to be known in the gates is marry a strong, capable woman, and everyone will go, huh?
[00:33:11] Well, he got her to marry him. There must be something there I didn't know about him.
[00:33:22] She makes her husband look good, and she does him good.
[00:33:29] That's what this passage says.
[00:33:35] What else do we see?
[00:33:38] Hardworking, capable, strong, caring for family and for others.
[00:33:46] Visible. All visible work coming out in the end.
[00:33:52] And also financially wise.
[00:33:57] Again, one of the common concepts that we see in this passage is, in fact, it's probably the one that we should note most today, this financial wisdom Frugal and productive is how she's described.
[00:34:26] Why do I say we should probably note this most today?
[00:34:31] Well, again, because so much of what the modern world teaches us about productivity today is antithetical to this passage.
[00:34:46] And so it's easy for us to forget what is being accomplished productivity wise financially by this work.
[00:34:58] So.
[00:35:04] It's easy to, it's easy to spend a lot of money.
[00:35:12] It's easy to spend a lot of money and end up with bad clothes.
[00:35:19] It's easy to spend a lot of money and not actually eat very well.
[00:35:28] Right.
[00:35:29] It's easy for us to see the solution to problems as simply having more money.
[00:35:41] But what we see in this passage is that an awful lot of the financial well being of the family is resting on the shoulders of the wife.
[00:35:57] And so again, if I just return to the encouragement to those who are single to whether women look, you can be frugal, you can be productive, you can be financially wise right now, right.
[00:36:26] Or to men who are not married.
[00:36:31] This is something that you want to pay attention to.
[00:36:37] Now that's kind of politically incorrect to say today, especially when you begin to actually put some, you know, fill out the picture some.
[00:36:53] But it's not, it's not in the book of Proverbs to be politically correct.
[00:37:01] Proverbs is intent on being helpful in a really practical way in really filling in the picture in such a way that you can tell exactly what it is saying, even if it feels sort of shocking to our ears.
[00:37:21] And so let me try to fill this in a little bit.
[00:37:25] What financially wise means.
[00:37:33] There are real dangers and problems that come from a single woman who wants to get married having $120,000 of debt.
[00:37:46] Practically speaking, this is the kind of thing that Proverbs would warn against. It does warn against debt. But when you bring Proverbs 31 together with the warnings against debt, you can see precisely what, what this passage has to say.
[00:38:09] It's exactly the opposite of coming in to a marriage as a drag on the finances, but coming in as a positive gift financially to the husband. And it's not talking about, it's not talking about the dowry, Right. Not even mentioned in here.
[00:38:32] It's talking about how productive she is and how helpful she is financially, marrying someone who is financially wise, who understands how to deal with money and to save it and how to use it in the places where it makes the most sense right now.
[00:39:06] Yeah, you could say she knew just when to buy Bitcoin.
[00:39:11] Right.
[00:39:12] But that's not what, that's not precisely what this is talking about, it's talking about.
[00:39:19] It is talking about making profit.
[00:39:24] But do you notice how much of the prophet is about the work that she's giving herself to?
[00:39:32] And so it's always discouraging to think about the way that our nation has set up Social Security, where women who have given their lives to raising the next generation of workers and to being productive through the way that they are saving and being frugal. And it's completely ignored by our society.
[00:40:05] It's completely considered worthless.
[00:40:08] But it's not worthless according to scripture. It's not worthless according to God. It's not worthless to you.
[00:40:15] And that's what I want you to leave with. It's not worthless to you either if you're a husband or a wife. I don't want you to walk away believing what the world teaches.
[00:40:33] So this is our passage in a nutshell.
[00:40:44] What the world thinks, what the world has taught, what the world says is valuable about you women. Okay, it has gotten some things right, but it's also gotten a lot of things wrong.
[00:41:01] Okay, it has gotten a lot of things very wrong.
[00:41:08] And one of the things that we can get from this is just to have our whole compass reset to true north.
[00:41:18] What is ideal for me?
[00:41:21] What is good for me?
[00:41:25] What am I looking for in a wife?
[00:41:29] And you come to the end and you get to verse 30, and it says, charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.
[00:41:40] But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
[00:41:46] It's not until the end that suddenly the whole picture is given its magnetic pull.
[00:41:57] All of these things that have been being described, they're all flowing one direction.
[00:42:03] They are all flowing with the fear of the Lord.
[00:42:07] So as you think about what am I giving myself to and why?
[00:42:17] Ask yourself, where is the fear of the Lord in my life?
[00:42:23] Where is the fear of the Lord in my heart?
[00:42:32] Will I at the end have children and a husband that rise up and call me blessed and I will have the product that I have worked for?
[00:42:47] Or will I have the faint remains of charm and the history of beauty?
[00:43:04] Is this what running after God looks like?
[00:43:14] Is this what fearing the Lord looks like?
[00:43:17] You can ask yourself that. And young men, you can ask yourself, what am I attracted to?
[00:43:28] To say that charm is deceitful and beauty is vain? At the end, when having started with an excellent wife who can find, it's trying to point you to what you should be attracted to, what you should be looking for.
[00:43:48] It's very easy for us to read this passage and to Only pay attention to the things that are obvious to us that we already care about.
[00:44:06] There's some men that are really all about thinking about money and concern about finances. It's like, oh, yeah, I see this everywhere in here. And everything else is just right by them.
[00:44:20] There's other people that are all about, yeah, man, I just a strong woman, whoo. Love it.
[00:44:28] And everything else right by him.
[00:44:34] But what everybody, every young man is tempted by is this who she's beautiful and charming and it's like, yes, praise God for beauty.
[00:44:49] Charm is delightful.
[00:44:52] But what is her character?
[00:44:55] Does she fear the Lord in the end?
[00:44:59] This is meant to be a long term passage, it's lifelong that you're looking at here.
[00:45:09] This is why I say it starts with those who are still single, you young men and women who aren't even thinking about getting married yet.
[00:45:17] This is actually for you.
[00:45:21] Both men and women are to be learning from this.
[00:45:26] What is good at the end.
[00:45:33] Give her the products of her hands. You see how it's looking at the end?
[00:45:37] After the charm is gone, after the beauty is gone, after these things have faded, if she fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Her works will praise her in the gates.
[00:45:49] And what will her works be?
[00:45:53] Often it'll be her children.
