Jeff Durbin: The Wise Woman

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If you would, open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs chapter 14, in verse 1.

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Proverbs 14, verse 1. We're in our series called

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Wisdom from Above, Wisdom from God. These are the very words of God.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.

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Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together. Thank you

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Lord for your word. Thank you God that you've revealed yourself to your creatures, that you've spoken.

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We thank you Lord Jesus that you condescended. That you took on flesh and walked among us.

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That you are the very embodiment of wisdom. You are the way, the truth, and the life.

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And you showed us what wisdom is as humanity.

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We just pray God that as we open your word today, that you would speak by your spirit, that you would work through all the deficiencies of the pastor and the teacher.

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That you would by your spirit empower Lord the proclamation of your word and truth. That you would transform our hearts and our minds, each of us.

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Help us to not be knowledgeable fools. Help us to not just know a lot of things about you.

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But Lord help us to have the skill to live in a way that is pleasing to you and glorifying to you. We pray that you renew our minds.

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That you Lord would free us from whatever sinful chains we find ourselves shackled in.

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We pray that God you'd move mightily by your spirit. You'd heal marriages, heal homes, bring repentance, bring encouragement.

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We pray that everyone forgets me and remembers what they've learned from your word today. In Jesus mighty name we pray.

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Amen. Proverbs 14 .1 Today we're meditating on God's wisdom from above regarding the wise woman who builds her home versus the one who tears it down.

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Notice, with her own hands. Folly with her own hands, destroying her own house.

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Now I want to say at the start that of course this won't be comprehensive. We're going to spend about two weeks connecting

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Proverbs 14 .1 with Proverbs 31. So this won't be comprehensive. And I'm sure that we're going to miss some tidbits of wisdom from above.

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And things that could heal or could satisfy or could bring joy in some way. But that's the complexity of a fallen world.

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And if we really wanted to unpack this it would take us about 100 years. And so this is the way I've sort of divided it up.

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I think I want to focus as a minister of the gospel on some of the common or normative parts of the experience of the wise woman versus also the one who tears the home down.

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Now I want to say at the start of this that there might be a temptation to think, because we're talking about a wise woman and folly and tearing down our own house.

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There's temptation to think that I'm picking on the women today. You might be saying as we go through this today, what about him?

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This guy sitting next to me. What about him and his failures and his tearing down the home?

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And I want to say when we get to that verse, I'll give him and all of us men an even bigger spanking.

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Deal? Okay. To the single women, as we start to talk about the wise woman who builds her home versus the one who with the folly of her own hands tears it down.

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To the single women, the widows, and divorced women, I want to say here, everything here in talking about the home and the woman and our duties and responsibilities, everything here still applies or will apply later down the road in your life.

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There is a famous saying, quote, single women need to be establishing their wisdom and nurturing it now.

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Marriage is not a pill that you take that makes you wise and able to build a home.

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Who said that? Me, just now. I did. It's true, right?

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Should be famous. It's good. I just said that. So let's start.

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Chapter 14, verse 1, the wisest of women. Now, it's interesting that we live in a time, sad, it's a sad kind of interesting, a peculiar, squinty -eyed kind of interesting that we have to actually highlight what should be common knowledge or just understood by all of us.

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We have to highlight the uniqueness of the woman. We have to talk about the fact that there is such a thing in the biblical worldview as a woman in distinction to a man.

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It just came up last night, interestingly, because that's what we're talking about today, a clip of Charlie Kirk and the debate thing where they're, it's really interesting where they're surrounded by like 25 or 50 leftist liberals or atheists or whatever and one in the middle and sort of everyone jumps in and says their piece and then the next one dives out and in and all of that.

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And there was a moment, a very short moment, it was an epic fail where this young guy steps in and, of course,

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Charlie Kirk wants to debate that women can be defined. A woman is a special kind of creature, an amazing creature, and there is something distinctive about her over against the man.

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And so as Charlie Kirk starts, he lays down a definition. Definitions are obviously important for people who want to think logically and coherently.

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And so, of course, this young man had a hard time with that. And so Charlie Kirk starts laying down the foundation, his own definition.

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And he says that a woman is an adult female with two X chromosomes.

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Now, if you would have had to say that, you know, 50 years ago, people would have thought that you are stupid for having to say it.

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Right. It's obvious. It's built into nature. You can war against it all you want, but nature will always come back ferociously at you.

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You can try to turn away from it, but it is, in fact, the truth. So Charlie Kirk says that a woman is an adult female with two chromosomes.

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And, of course, this young guy, probably educated by the school of TikTok or Instagram or the government education system, when he's asked, what is a woman?

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This young guy says anyone who identifies as a woman. And so, of course,

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Charlie Kirk, as graciously as he could, tried to push him a little more. That's not answering the question.

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I asked you, what is a woman? I gave you a definition. It's an adult female with two

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X chromosomes. That's the definition. So what is a woman? Anyone who identifies as one. Okay, what is the one thing?

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What's that one part? Like you're using the word, and I don't think you know what it means. So give me the definition of the one part, the woman part.

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And the answer, of course, today is anyone who identifies as one, which is what we call what?

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Circular reasoning. You're not actually defining because you cannot define what a woman is because you don't want to define.

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You want it to be infinitely malleable. You can make it whatever you please. And so goes the thinking of our day.

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We can't even define what a woman is, but Scripture just says it off the cuff.

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Normally, the woman versus the man, the wife versus the husband. We know exactly what a woman is.

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God creates, at the beginning of creation, male and what? And Jesus said, in response to a controversy about marriage in His day,

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Jesus lays down the truth about the distinction. He says, have you not read that from the beginning

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He made them male and what? And that a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cling to his wife and they become one flesh.

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So here is God incarnate saying that from the very beginning He created them with distinctions.

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It is unity in the midst of diversity. It is harmony with order.

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And yet there are distinctions. A man is a man. A woman is a woman.

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You cannot leap from one to the other. There is glory in the man and his special creation and purpose.

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The things that he is to be doing as a man and a separate one for the woman.

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And we've lost that. So we have to start a sermon today in our culture and context saying that there is such a thing as a woman.

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And she is distinct from the man. And she is amazing, especially creative.

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God created with distinctions. Distinctions. And when He created the distinctions between male and female, men and women,

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He called the distinctions good. The fact that there was a diversity between maleness and femaleness is obvious.

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But God calls it good that there is a distinction between the two and there is a harmony between the two.

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There is a coming together as a one and yet that doesn't obliterate their distinctions. Now the pagans can't deal with that.

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Paganism, pagan philosophy, pagan thought cannot deal with the diversity in the midst of unity or unity in the midst of diversity.

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They cannot deal with the one and the many. I'm not going to unpack that right now but pagan thought obliterates that.

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What Christianity gives to the world. That ability to have diversity and unity.

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Now I'm not going to again expand upon that today but it is built into creation. There is a harmonious order to the distinctions and duties of men and women.

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And so this right here automatically in our day offends everybody.

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I mean if you go on social media today and platforms today and you say a wise woman builds her house, the first response from the leftist feminists, the rabid feminists is to say, say what?

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What did you say about a home? What did you say about a woman in the home? And we don't like that idea of saying that the woman builds a home.

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Because they'll say, what do you mean? Is she less than the man? That's her place to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, right?

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I mean that's what people say as though that was a bad thing. Sounds like a great life to me, right?

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But people, you know, that's what you think about women. That's all they're good for, that's what they're created for, to sort of be under the heel of the man and those sorts of things.

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But you're already offended by a sermon like this. A wise woman builds her home. People say, that's not where she belongs, she shouldn't be there.

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And yet, in scripture there is a harmonious order to the distinctions and duties of men and women.

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Think about the fact that we have to talk about this today and say that there is a thing called a woman. And that it is special and that it is purposeful and that it is meaningful.

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And that there are differences between men and women. There are physiological differences to which the world casts that aside today and says, no, no, no.

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No, no, no. It doesn't matter that I've got a beard and something else.

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I can wear the halter top and the pink tutu and run around and call myself a woman.

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The physiological differences are meaningless to which we should laugh and scoff at.

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Amen? But there are other differences, not just the physiological or the physical differences between maleness and femaleness.

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There are obvious, created order kinds of differences that the world wants to obliterate.

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Just take this as, generally speaking, easy to understand, it should be instinctive to all of us.

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Generally speaking, who do you want to hold you and speak to you when you've scratched your knee or you're sick?

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Who? Who do you want to hold you and speak to you and comfort you when you've scratched your knee or you're sick?

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It's the mom. Instinctively, the kid understands that when it happens, the mom runs in, scoops him up and nurtures him and encourages him.

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There's something that's instinctive and built in. It doesn't mean that men can't encourage or bless or hold or nurture, but there is a special design to the woman in terms of what she wants to do is instinctive to her.

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She can do and the child understands. We shouldn't deny that beauty. We should highlight it.

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We can say that she outpaces the man in all the ways that God made her special. She is a woman.

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I'll give you another example. Generally speaking, who do you want to respond to the thief that breaks in at night?

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What would you say to the dude that is laying in bed? You hear the window pane break, right?

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He's laying in bed. Everyone shoots up out of bed. Everyone's looking around. And the dad says, honey, go look.

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What would you say instinctively to that guy?

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Are you out of your mind, coward? Get out of bed and go see what's going on.

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It's not to say, again, you say generally speaking, it's not to say that if you're a woman that you can't get an equalizer and grab a piece that's fully loaded and unload it in the guy.

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It's not to say that you can't do that. It's to say that there is an instinctive understanding of roles and responsibilities.

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When someone's breaking in the home, it is the man who stands up. It is a man who faces the threat.

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It is a man who protects the family. It's a man who is biologically designed to be able to do that kind of protection.

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And we mock that today. And we're fools today where we allow even to blur the distinctions between men and women in physical sports.

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We say, no, there is no difference. And yes, there is. And the most obvious way to prove it is where you put the man pretending to be a woman into the cage with a woman.

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And he literally breaks her skull in a matter of seconds. And everyone turns a blind eye and say, well, that's just,

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Shem is very talented. Okay.

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So, we have to today at least highlight that there is such a thing as a woman.

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And a woman is a glorious thing in scripture. We have to highlight as we talk about a home and a wise woman that there is a biblical hierarchy.

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And you can try as you might to destroy this hierarchy. It's built into nature itself.

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It's built into the creative order itself. The man leads, provides, and protects.

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The woman submits and supports her husband, creates little miraculous image bearers in her own body, fills the home with these little lives, builds her home, creates the family's environment and culture, nurtures them, and prepares them.

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That's just to name a few of the glories of the woman. The Bible praises and extols the woman.

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She's not a cosmic accident. She wasn't created with no purpose. I mean, just think about the folly of the unbelieving worldview.

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They want to mock Christianity for having these distinctives. They want to mock Christianity for God speaking and creating order.

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And yet, when they talk about their perspective on life and the world, they say that women are just the random results of mutations that happen with no purpose over time, that women at one point were just cosmic accidents and their ancestors are just bacteria.

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Women are descendants of bacteria. Where's the glory in that? Where's the power in that?

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Where's the meaning in that? Where's the purpose in that? That is bootleg and bankrupt. That is an ugly, vile way to look at women.

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The biblical worldview praises the woman. It extols the woman. It says that she has meaning and purpose and a weight of glory to her as a woman.

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She is, according to Scripture, equal to the man in terms of essence and nature.

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There is no male and female in Christ Jesus. We are created uniquely image of God. She is equal to the man, yet she outpaces him in the unique ways and purposes that God made her to.

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She is viewed as the hero in many ways, in biblical stories or in principle, in terms of her glory as a woman.

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And she's the hero in many ways regarding the human story of family and experience.

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Now, 14 .1, the wisest of women builds her house. We need to talk about this word, the wisest.

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Now, from the beginning of this, you've heard me say so many times and I need to keep saying it.

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Sometimes I repeat myself as you pass it up. I can give you a sermon for you. I know exactly what you're gonna say here. And I say,

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I hope so, because it's important to repeat these essential things. There's a difference in Scripture between knowledge and wisdom.

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And that is a big difference. It is such a big difference. You could know a lot of things.

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You could be powerful in your mind and your ability to explain the faith, to defend the faith, to articulate the

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Christian faith. You could know all about systematic theology and dogmatics, and you could do all those things very well.

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You can have 500 Bible verses memorized and you could be a fool, a fool.

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No ability to apply knowledge. And so when this is talking here about the wisest of women, it's not talking about the woman who knows so dang much.

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She's read all of Bavinck. She's read all of Calvin. She can articulate all those things.

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She knows all about church history. She can tell you about the councils. She can exegete the text.

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That's not what builds the house. Though those things are important, knowing theological truths, knowing what

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God says, I'm not diminishing the importance of those things, but it is not what the text says.

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It says the wisest of women builds her house. There is a difference between the woman who knows a lot about God and the woman who is skillful in her application of the truth of God.

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And it is the wise woman, not simply the knowledgeable woman, the wise woman who builds her house.

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It's not just what she knows. Here it is, ready? It's how she lives.

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Let that hang for just a moment. I'm not saying to us as a church body and to all of our wonderful women, single, married, whatever you are,

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I'm not saying not to pursue knowledge and knowing things.

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I'm saying that the women of this church, God's people, women, need to allow their lives to show wisdom from above, that they have skill in applying

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God's truth. It's not just that you're articulating it. You can live it and demonstrate it.

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And why is that important? Here it is. Wisdom is not just taught. We're doing that now.

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Yes, there's a category of wisdom being taught. These are the words of God. Brothers and sisters, here's what

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God calls us to. This is what Jesus is like. We are teaching wisdom, yes, but remember, wisdom is not just taught.

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It is, and I would say mostly, caught. It is caught.

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It is caught in our home. It is observed. It is viewed. It is seen.

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And it is absorbed. And so this woman who is building her house is a wise woman.

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She knows how to live this out. It's shown in her life. The children see her.

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They call her blessed. They watch her life, and they know that this is the wisdom of God.

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Here's how mom lives this out. She's not saying one thing with her lips and then living in a different way.

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She talks about God. She teaches about God. She loves the law of God, and she lives it.

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It's applied in our home. The wise woman, the skillful woman, builds her house.

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It's observed. It's absorbed. Doug made a good point,

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Wilson, in talking about wives and mothers and the home and building the home.

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I thought it was a powerful point. He said this. If little girls don't learn, then the women won't know.

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If little girls don't learn, then the women won't know. If little boys don't learn, then the men won't know.

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How would that apply here in terms of the wise woman building her home? Moms, women, wives, if you are not practicing godly wisdom in your home and building your home with that wisdom, then these little girls are not learning it.

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Our little girls become women, and these little girls who don't learn wisdom from their mothers, don't see it in their mothers, don't absorb it from their mothers, if they don't learn from you how to respect and submit to your husbands, then when they grow up and they marry, they will not have been taught wisdom from above in terms of how to love, respect, and submit to your husbands.

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This goes for men as well. Amen? Men, if we don't teach our boys how to be godly and wise men, if they don't see it in our lives, then when they grow up, they will not be wise and godly men.

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This is your home. This is your little patch of garden that God has given to you, husbands and wives.

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This is the little world that He created for you, and He calls you to live, moms, wives, as a wise woman who builds the home and doesn't actually tear it down with her own folly.

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Notice something too. The text says that she builds her house, her home.

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God designates that for her. It's not just the man ruling over the home.

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It's all his, and she's insignificant. It actually says that the wisest of women builds her house.

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It is what God has given to her. This is your home. It is the woman's domain as well.

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It's the little garden, the little sphere, the little amazing world that God's created, and He says, this is your gift.

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This is what I'm giving to you. It's your little bag of gold that the master is giving to the servant, and he expects what from it?

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When he returns, what's the master expect when he gives the bags of gold to the servants? What does he expect?

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A return. Not to bury it, not to squander it, but to say, when he returns, what did you make me from what

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I gave to you? And it says that the wisest of women builds her home. This is the little patch of garden that God has given to you women to tend and to keep.

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It's yours. It's your world. It's your domain. It's your bag of gold. It's what

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God has said to you. You tend to this. You keep to this. Keep this. This is what I'm going to return and ask you about.

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How'd you do? And it's amazing because we don't think in terms of, well, we don't think of this in terms of building and God expecting to get a profit from what he gives to you.

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And we oftentimes are so capricious and we're so willy -nilly and we're sloppy in our thinking and we're lazy, both men and women.

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And this amazing thing that God has given to me, we're idle at times with the things that God's gifted us with, men and women.

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We both sin in this way. And so we don't often take seriously what God has given to us. And he is going to ask us in terms of reward or lack of reward, what did you do with my gift?

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What did you do with this little plot of land that I gave to you, moms? What did you do with the little heroes that I created in your belly?

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What did you do with the little world that I created around you? Did you build it? Or with your own foolishness and sin, did you tear down what

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I gave to you? You know, we love the island of Kauai.

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And as a church, we're still committed to seeing God's work there and putting that island under the feet of Jesus and raising up men now, hopefully to send them to Kauai one day.

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It's a very hard mission field. It's a very, very difficult place to plant a church. And just because of the culture there, the spiritual darkness that is there.

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And so we're still fully committed to it. But years ago, we had to go back and forth to Kauai many times for our mission, to evangelism, and for the church plant.

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And one of the things that was interesting about Kauai is that when you're there, say, if you were visiting or going on a honeymoon and you went to Kauai, you'd probably stay at like a hotel or maybe a resort on the beach.

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And it just seems like, this is like the Garden of Eden. I mean, it feels like that when you're going around it.

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Like, this is what I imagined the Garden of Eden was like. And they call it the Garden Isle because it's this glorious, flourishing garden.

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It's powerful to even see. But when you're there, you're sort of staying on maybe the beach and you're only there for a couple of days.

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And so you don't see what life is really like as a local, just maybe a half a mile more to the west or something from the beach.

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You don't really see how they live and things like that. But if you drive around, you go to the neighborhoods, you'll see a very peculiar thing.

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And that is that they don't seem to really care about the danger that they're in. What I mean by that is that oftentimes hurricanes will come through the

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Pacific and they'll barely nick the islands or maybe just completely pass them.

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But you have a fierce storm coming and everyone's sort of calm and cool about it. There's like a cat five hurricane kind of heading this way, but everyone's just sort of super chill about it.

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And it's weird that they are living in that path constantly and weird because how they build their houses.

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Now we actually rented a house as a missionary house so we can send families that would have long -term places to stay and wouldn't be as expensive.

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And we had to stay there once for about two weeks. And staying in this house in the island of Kauai, it was to me mind boggling.

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This house was like probably a $2 million house if you wanted to buy it. I wouldn't pay a nickel for it.

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The house was thin walls, a thin floor, it's sort of on stilts.

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I mean, if you really wanted to, if you put your foot up and then push it down really hard, you could put a hole right through the floor and probably reach it down to the ground.

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I mean, they're built like little shacks and you feel like you could just, a strong wind could easily blow this thing down.

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And I was reading the account of one missionary to the islands of Hawaii. He said the people of Hawaii are really interesting in this way is they live basically in homes that could be kicked down and are sort of just acting oblivious year -round to the fact that any of these strong winds could blow through and knock this down.

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And actually in Kauai in the 90s, there was a really devastating hurricane that came through and just annihilated the island, blew the homes down.

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And a little side note, one of the reasons that Kauai's bird is the chicken is because when that hurricane came through, it destroyed all the homes and all the chicken coops and it blew all the chickens across the entire island.

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And so now when you're walking around Kauai, there are stinking chickens everywhere just hanging out walking past you.

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And it's a horrible thing because all night long, these stupid things, their internal clock is broken. And so if you're living like, you know, not in a hotel, all you hear is roosters crowing all night.

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You literally want to kill them. And my point is that these people don't seem to understand how to build a house.

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And when you build a house, you want it to be able to withstand the storm. You want it to actually have a strong foundation.

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You want to think about your house in a way that it's actually not going to get knocked down at the first difficulty or the first challenge.

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And women, when you build your home, you should be building your home like that. Strong foundation, walls that can't be penetrated.

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You don't want to easily be able to put your foot through the floor or the smallest storm in your life knocks this house down and obliterates this thing that God's given to you.

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You are supposed to build your house and you will build it if you build it with wisdom.

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Don't be a foolish builder. Folly, what's the text say? Look at it.

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Folly with her own hands tears it down. Now, this is not saying that there are not multiple parties sinning in a home.

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It's one of the challenges in preaching a sermon like this is that there's a particular context to each person's own home.

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And you might be tempted, you might be tempted to argue with the pastor or the teacher in your own mind right now by saying things like, you don't understand, pastor.

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I'm dealing with a man who is living in repeated pattern of sin. You don't understand. I'm living in a home with children who are sinning a particular way.

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It seems like you're putting all the blame on me or the onus of this home and its health and its peace and its joy on to me.

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And that's not what it's saying. There are different categories. There are different issues that need to be worked out.

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Yes, your husband needs to be called to repent. Your children need to be called to repent. There may be something your husband is doing that's actually tearing down the home.

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That goes without question. But this particular bit of wisdom from God is addressing you as a woman.

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These are your responsibilities. This is wisdom for you. And it's interesting that the text says about her responsibilities that it is the wise woman, the one who has skill in theological wisdom, skill in applying this in her life, that she will build her home, but it is foolishness with her own hands that will tear it down.

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That is to say, that is speaking directly to wives and mothers and women in your home, you will be responsible for the destruction that you bring into your own home.

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It is your own folly that will tear down the walls around you. You will be the one who is responsible before God for how you build or tear down the home.

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And notice that it says it is the foolishness with her own hands that does it. You will tear it down.

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How? By not being wise. What's the contrast? This is happening throughout the

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Proverbs. Parallelism. Contrast. It is all throughout. There is wisdom that builds and it is foolishness with her own hands.

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It is her own wisdom in God that will build the home and it is her own foolishness that will tear it down.

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What kind of foolishness? Well, she could be the kind of woman who in the home is constantly a gossip.

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The children see it. They see her talking badly about other women or other men.

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They see her constantly making accusations. They see her anxious and fearful of the future.

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They see her not trusting in the Lord with all of her heart. They see her with a sharp tongue.

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They see her without respect for her husband. They see her scoffing when her husband tries to correct her.

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She's tearing down her own home. She's breaking down the God -ordained order. The purpose of God in her own home.

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It is her own foolishness that is tearing down the walls and ripping out the foundation.

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It is her foolishness and her lack of wisdom. We have to recognize as we talk about the woman and wisdom and the order in the home that there is an order that God has ordained for the home.

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An order for men and women. An order for husbands and wives. The wisest of women builds her home.

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So if the woman said, that's what I want for the glory of God. I love my husband. I love my children.

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I want to glorify God. I want to have a home that's built up with wisdom in God. A home that withstands the storms and the difficulties and the trials.

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That's what I want. The first thing we have to recognize is that there is a woman and there is a man and there is an order in the home that God has put there.

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In hierarchy. In order. Go to your Bibles to 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3. 1

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Peter 3. Verse 1. These are the words of God. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word, by the conduct of their wives.

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When they see your respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adornment be external, the braiding of hair and putting on a gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

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For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed

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Abraham, calling him Lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

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Now there's words later for the man, again we'll get to that later, but this today is to the woman.

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And notice how offensive to our modern sensibilities that that is.

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Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands. Peter's not sorry. He's not apologetic.

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He's not saying, now I understand that we don't like to have the order this way. He's saying, wives, submit to your own husbands.

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And notice what he says in verse 6. As Sarah obeyed Abraham, as Sarah obeyed

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Abraham, calling him Lord. We don't like that today.

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And admit it, even as a Christian who believes this truth, that God created an order, male, female, husband, wife, leader, roles, distinctions, admit it, we are all impacted and indoctrinated by the culture around us.

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Sometimes we're even afraid to say this stuff out loud to the culture around us. Yes, wives are to respect and submit to their own husbands.

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And notice how just sort of easily Peter says it. That she obeyed Abraham and she called him

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Lord. And women, you are daughters of Sarah. You should be like that with your husbands.

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Obeying your husband. Calling him Lord. Now careful with that.

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Some guys, you're going to make that trouble in your home. Be careful with that.

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The point here is the obvious noticing of the hierarchy, of the order, of the purpose that a wife is supposed to submit to her husband.

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So, wives, listen, the fast track, the best way for you with your own foolishness to tear down your home is to sin in this way in your home and to do it regularly.

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To sin in your home, in this way. To not respect your husband. To not submit to your husband.

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You are on the fast track to the destruction of your home and let me just say, be frank, you are on the fast track to divorce.

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Don't think because you love Jesus and he loves Jesus and you married well and you made those promises and you're committed to God, don't think that you will not divorce if, of course, both are sinning, yes, but in this particular way, if you live a life as a wife, as a mother in the home where you do not submit to your husband and respect your husband, you will tear down your home.

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That is how God builds the house. That is the order, that is the hierarchy God calls the woman to that.

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Ephesians 5, you know the verse, it's read in almost every single wedding, Ephesians 5, 22 -23.

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Wives, submit to your own husbands. You want order and wisdom in the home?

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Moms, wives, practice submitting to and respecting your husband.

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Right now, does everyone feel this tension in the room right now? Do you feel that? No? If some of you do, you've been indoctrinated.

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If it's offensive to hear that, to submit to your husband, to respect to him, and I think that there's a problem here too, is that we oftentimes are able to pass the theological exam as Christians and as women, we can check the box.

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What is your responsibility, woman, in your marriage to your husband? The wife can say, I need to respect my husband,

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I need to submit to him. Okay, right. It's easy to say that. It's easy to check the box to get past the theological exam.

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It's much harder to walk in wisdom and apply it. Amen? Because oftentimes, the woman says, well, generally speaking, generally,

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I will submit to my husband. And then when you get down into the nitty -gritty of daily life, it becomes much harder in the standard fair conflict you may have in the home, in the disagreements in the home.

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Now, don't hear me wrong. If there is a domineering and authoritarian husband who is prideful and haughty and mean -spirited, he needs to be called to repent.

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Amen? There is no call here in submission to husbands that you submit with ultimacy.

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There is an order in the home, and that order is not ultimate.

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Let me just say that to get away from any confusion. If there is a husband who is sinning, who is doctrinally sinning, teaching things that are doctrinally sinful, unhealthy, wrong, is the woman to submit to the husband if he is sinning, even theologically?

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Like if the husband says, all right, I've changed my mind now. God is not a trinity. We're going to go with Unitarianism.

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Is the woman supposed to submit to the husband there? No. If the husband is calling the wife to sin in some way, let's say sexually, or to sin in some way in terms of relationally with someone else, is the wife to submit to the husband there?

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So when we say, wives, submit to your husband, we're not saying ultimately submit to your husbands.

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We're saying as to the what? As to the Lord. It is a genuine submission.

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It is a biblical submission. It is a godly submission. It is not ultimate because God is the ultimate.

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So that is the order. Now, I'll point back to Doug. I think he had some good insight here when he was talking about men and women in relationships.

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He brought up a good point. It's something that's in all of our marriage ceremonies. And most of us sort of do it today.

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I mean, unbelievers do it today because it's just sort of traditional. It's been passed down. Right? And it's in, it's that really important part of the marriage ceremony where it's the covenant and the vows.

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Do you promise to love, honor, and what?

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Obey. Do you promise to love, honor, and obey? A good point was made that a lot of times today, that's in the wedding of an unbelieving couple.

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They're not even holding to the Christian worldview, but because it's so traditional, it's just part of the traditional vows. We say it, but actually in today's day, in terms of the indoctrination and the collapse of the human family, that last part, obey, is one of the most important parts of the vows that you made.

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If you want to be a wise woman, if you want to be the kind of woman that actually builds a house with wisdom and doesn't tear it down with her own hands, love, honor, and obey.

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Now again, I want to say it again to not even allow for any confusion, that obedience and submission of the wise woman in a home is not ultimate.

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However, if the husband is in sin, women are not called to submit to a man that is in sin in that way, but the vow that you made is love, honor, and what?

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So say it together. Love, honor, and what? That's what scripture teaches. That's how the vow goes.

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If he's in sin, you can minimize at that point, in that moment, the obey part, but what other parts of the vow still remain?

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Love and what? So just because a woman doesn't have an ultimate allegiance to her husband when she must resist sin from the husband or sin in the home, she is still called to the vow that says what?

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Love and what? Honor. That would be how a wise woman builds her home.

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Now, when scripture calls us here to submit to our own husbands, we need to think about what that looks like daily.

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What does the man call to primarily in the marriage? What's he called to? Lead, yes.

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But husbands, what your wives? Let's say it together. Husbands, what your wives? Love your wives.

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It's all my years of marriage counseling sitting with thousands of people counseling in thousands of counseling sessions with married couples when there's a failure in the home.

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It's amazing. It goes back to it every single time. Somehow, he's failing in the home in not loving his wife.

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And the conflict for him oftentimes just goes right back to the foundational thing. What is she not doing to her husband?

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Not respecting her husband. Not submitting to her husband. And we're in this vicious cycle where she doesn't feel loved.

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He doesn't feel respected. And so we're like two wheels running opposite directions because we're not giving each other what godly order actually is in the home.

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And so, we have to think, and again I'm going to point back to my friend here, about love and respect.

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If we're going to build our house and have an ordered home with harmony and joy, we have to think about love and respect as food and nutrition.

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Food and nutrition. The person has a need that has to be satisfied.

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That's how god built the world. He made distinctions. He made purpose. He put an order into it.

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He tells us, you love her. You respect him. If you want to build the house, wisdom looks like love and respect as food and nutrition.

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Here's what I mean by that. The guy might say, now, she knows that I love her.

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She knows that I love her. Or, she might say, he knows

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I respect him. That might be generally the consensus in the home if you ask the guy.

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He says, well, she already knows that I love her. And she might say, well, he knows that I respect him.

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Let me just say this bluntly. Not if you aren't saying it and doing it.

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Not if you aren't saying it and doing it. It's like the difference between knowing what a hamburger tastes like and actually eating it.

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If someone is starving, you don't describe a delicious hamburger. You get them one, and you feed it to them.

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And if these are god -ordained needs and duties in a marriage, the wise woman will build her home making sure she's feeding the husband the nutrition that he needs.

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So let me just say, you might say as a woman, wanting to be a wise woman, well, I do respect my husband.

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I respect him. I honor him. I appreciate him. My question to you would be this.

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When's the last time you told him that? When's the last time you said it?

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When's the last time you looked your husband in the eyes to say with your own mouth what you respect about him, what you appreciate about him, how thankful you are for his hard work and how he provides for the family.

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You might say, he already knows that I feel that way. Let me just say this. Probably not.

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If you don't say it. If you don't tell him. Again, the difference between knowing what a hamburger tastes like and actually feeding somebody a hamburger so that you satisfy their hunger and their need.

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How often as a wise woman are you pursuing making sure that your husband knows how you feel about him.

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That you tell him how you respect him, how you honor him, that you're thankful for him. And brothers and sisters, of course yes, that goes the other way as well.

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The husband might say, well, she already knows that I love her. I stood at the altar there and I told her so. Well, how often do you work to make sure that she feels that, that she's fed?

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How often are you working wisely in the home to make sure that the duty to love the wife is obvious to her?

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How much are you feeding her what she needs? So, again, my friend points this out.

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I thought it was a fine point. We need to learn if we're going to be wise and build homes to use the currency that each of us need and require.

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Use the currency that each of us need and require. Men, love your wives and spend well daily.

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Say what she needs to hear, say it to her, and do what she needs to see to know that she's loved by you.

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Right? Oftentimes guys will say, well, I don't need any of those things. I'm a guy. I don't need those things to know that I'm loved.

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But how often are you doing, as a man, what she needs to be fulfilled and satisfied to know that she's loved by you?

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How often do you say it? Do you send her nice messages to make sure you remind her of how much she means to you?

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Do you tell her how you feel about her or how she makes you feel when she comes into the room? Do you go out of your way to make sure that you're doing something special to feed what she needs to feel nurtured and loved by you?

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And wives, are you doing the same? Are you doing the same? A wise woman builds her home.

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There's an order and a hierarchy to the home. Submission and respect. Duty. That's what

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God says. You want to tear down the home? Rip up the foundation? Avoid that. He already knows that I respect him.

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He already knows that I love him. Not if you haven't told him. When's the last time you said it to him?

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When's the last time you allowed your children to see you as a wise woman, speaking to the husband in such a way that you respect him, honor him, love him, and appreciate him?

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Again, little girls, if they don't learn when they grow up, they won't know.

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If you dream of having a daughter who loves and respects her husband, submits to him, she needs to see it first in you.

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Amen? Amen? We might be tempted to say that he knows

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I respect him. Well, he probably doesn't if you don't tell him.

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He knows I'm proud of him. Well, he probably doesn't if you don't say it.

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He knows that I desire him and I'm attracted to him. Well, he probably doesn't if you don't say it or show him.

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He knows that I'm thankful for him. Well, he probably doesn't if you don't tell him.

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So, it says the wisest of women builds her home, and it says folly with her own hands will tear it down.

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So, let's just cover just a couple of points of wisdom, things that we've already gone over as a church body over the last two years.

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How would you tear down your home with your own hands? Well, one of the ways you can tear your home apart with your own folly is you can undermine your husband as a regular practice in your home.

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It's a feature in your relationship with your husband. You undermine your husband. Think about your children and how they see you interacting with your husband.

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Do they see you debating him or scolding him? Is that a feature in your home?

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If your children were to look to you as a mother as this is a source of godly wisdom in my life, how would they view how you interact with your husband?

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Would it be a feature, a regular practice that they see you oftentimes debating your husband or scolding him?

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It's not to say, brothers and sisters, that women can't disagree with their husbands. Amen? Sometimes husbands need the help meat.

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Amen? That's kind of the purpose. That's kind of the order. But how we do it is a difference between wisdom and folly.

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Amen? Wisdom is the woman who is his help meat coming to encourage him or to serve him to maybe point out what he is missing but not to do it in such a way that she looks like she is undermining him or challenging his authority.

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Think about what the child learns in the home when the child sees the mother undermining the husband or debating him.

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What does the child learn? To disrespect and disregard the authority of the father and the husband.

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If the child sees the mother debating the father or scolding the father, disagreeing with the father, diminishing the father's counsel or the desires of the father, then the next conflict that happens between the father and the child, the child will follow suit.

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Amen? Because they've seen the mother debate, scold, and disregard the authority of the father, and so now for them, that's wisdom.

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It is folly with her own hands that is tearing down her own home. So ask the question, wives and mothers, do you undermine your husband?

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Do you challenge him or scold him when there is conflict? Or, when the father is, say, trying to be a good dad, and he's trying to correct the child, do you swoop in when he is correcting the child, challenging the child, do you swoop in to correct him?

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Do you swoop in to stand in the way? That's also a common thing in marital conflict, is the husbands will often say that I'm trying to be a good father,

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I'm trying to shepherd my kids, but every time I try to challenge or discipline my child, my wife steps in to correct me.

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And so now when I try to challenge my child, or discipline them, they don't want to listen to me, they just go looking for mom.

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Or, literally, when the father goes to challenge the child because of this pattern in the home, as soon as the father tries to shepherd the child, challenge the child, discipline the child, the child literally calls out for who?

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Mom! Dad's doing it again! Doing what? Trying to discipline, trying to correct.

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So one of the ways you can not tear down your home with your own folly, is to not always try to swoop in to the rescue of the disciplined child.

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See, there's a conflict here that happens, right? It's a fallen world, sometimes this is a problem in a fallen world, the mother can have a completely strong commitment to the glory of God, the law of God, the wisdom of God, they want

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God's order in the home. They love God's law, but there's also within the woman, built in by God, this protecting and nurturing desire for the child.

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She carried this little miracle inside her body for nine months. That child was at her breast, surviving because of her, and there's these glorious sweet moments of that mother looking into the eyes of the child, feeding off her own body that men will never understand.

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And that's okay, that's a good thing, it's a glorious thing. So there's this special connection between mother and child at the breast itself, and then that child grows up and sins.

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Dad comes in, dad tries to shepherd, mom feels the motherly instinct.

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And now she's having an internal conflict. So how does it get resolved? Not by emotions, not by feelings, but by submitting to the word of God.

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Amen? What's the father's role in the home according to scripture? He is supposed to be the leader of the home.

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And so when the father is disciplining in a godly, wise, biblical way, mothers, you need to submit and allow your husband to discipline.

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If he is disciplining in a sinful, ungodly, and unwise way, of course not.

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But oftentimes, that conflict between husband and wife and discipline occurs not because of ungodly discipline, it occurs because of a lack of wisdom and a conflict of principles where the mother is trying to nurture and protect the child.

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But sometimes, brothers and sisters, a child just needs a spanking. Amen? So moms, get out of the way!

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Let the man be the man. If you have questions, come to your elders. Come to your elders and ask questions.

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But get out of the way. Let the father be the father. Or, one of the ways you can tear down your home, moms, wives, is not taking correction.

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You see, the godly woman, the Christian woman, the one who loves Jesus and wants God to bless their home with joy and obedience and faithfulness, she will say that she wants her husband to be a shepherd to her.

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Now, men, we fail in this area often, being godly shepherds to our home.

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Our lives need to be a pattern of repentance and a desire to be a better shepherd to our wives and to our children.

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But the wife might say, I want him to be a better shepherd of this home. That is his role.

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That's what I want God to do. Can I ask you a question? When your husband tries to shepherd you, are you teachable?

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When he tries to shepherd you, are you teachable? Because, you know, there's different aspects to shepherding.

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There is shepherding that is loving, nurturing, pouring into, corrective, those sorts of things.

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And there's a kind of shepherding that is also a corrective shepherding. Now, men need to be corrected.

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Amen? But oftentimes, wives and mothers also have to be corrected. We're all being sanctified.

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So the question is, are you the wise woman who builds her house up or are you tearing it down with your own folly when your husband tries to be a godly man, peaceably, gently tries to correct you?

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Are you receptive or do you resist? Are you looking for the opportunity to argue and debate?

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Or when your husband as a gentle, peaceable, godly husband gives you correction, are you receiving it with submission or are you resisting?

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What is the wisdom we've been studying together as God's people? What is a scoffer? What's a scoffer?

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Say it out loud. An unteachable person. We're not going to repeat today all of the texts we went through on what scoffers are in the book of Proverbs, but it's in there quite a lot.

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The unteachable person. The folly of the scoffer. Ask yourself, moms and wives, are you a scoffer?

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Are you looking to debate constantly and defend yourself or are you a teachable woman? It's the difference between a built house that withstands the storm and a house that is ripped apart.

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Ask the question, are you the nagging and quarrelsome woman in the home?

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Go to Proverbs 21 .9. This is

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God's wisdom. Same book. Not many chapters later. Proverbs 21 .9.

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

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Well, there you go. We're talking about homes again. There's the house. There's the home. There's the woman.

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One's with wisdom. One tears it down with the folly of her own hands. Are you the quarrelsome woman?

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The text says it's better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. I love how the

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Proverbs does that. It sometimes gives you the cartoon picture, right? The image so it can immediately just strike you and have you avoid the sin.

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It makes it cartoonish in a way. Hide somewhere else other than being with a woman who's constantly quarrelsome. Are you a wise woman who is peaceable, gentle, do you control your tongue?

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Or are you always arguing? Are you always quarreling? Next. The wise woman versus the foolish one.

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The gossip. Proverbs 20. Verse 19. Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets.

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Therefore do not associate with a simple babbler. What do your children see from you?

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What do you want them to know? What kind of foundation do you want them to have in your home? How do you want to send them off into the world?

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How do you want to grow them up? Do you want them to see that you have a very loose tongue?

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Do you want them to see a pattern of life in you where you easily talk about someone else's deficiencies, you make accusations about others?

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They see you in church with a smile and the God face. All is well. And then as soon as you get in the car, you're talking about that woman and what she did and some accusation against her.

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Do your children see in you a woman who guards her tongue? Who is slow to speak, quick to listen?

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Or do they see a woman who is a gossip? A wise woman builds her house, following with her own hands, tears it down.

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How about equal weights and measures? How do your children view you as a godly woman?

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Do they view you as a woman who wants to have equal weights and measures in conflict? If there's conflict between the kids, do you show partiality?

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Do you have a favorite? Do your kids fear getting in a conflict with one of the other kids because this one is mom's what?

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Favorite. If something happens between me and them, I know mom's gonna pick their side.

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Or are you the kind of woman, the kind of mother, when the children run into the room and express a conflict that they just had that you did not witness, are you the kind of mother that wants to sit them down and cross examine them and look for evidence and witness?

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Or do you just show partiality and pick a side? Brothers and sisters, how will our children learn to manage conflict in a godly way if they don't see it from us in our homes?

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There's a recent controversy. I won't go into details about it right now, but some insight was said

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I thought that was brilliant. People talking about, you know, we want to see Christ put this nation under his feet.

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We want to see the law of God in every sphere of life. We believe that, right? Amen? We believe that Christ is gonna have victory over the world and that Christians are supposed to be the ones that have the law of God and the wisdom of God that blesses the world.

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And in a recent controversy, it was amazing to see that so many people who want to see a Christian nation have shown that right now they're not worthy of it at all.

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We can't, on Twitter, keep our mouths shut for long enough to hear both sides.

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We can't, in the midst of conflict, use equal weights and measures and to allow things to be adjudicated in a way that is glorifying and honoring to God.

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What do we do? In our day, we say we want a Christian nation, but we've shown that we're not even worthy of it.

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We can't guard our tongues on Facebook. We can't guard our tongues against slander on Twitter.

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We've shown ourselves as just just as susceptible to slander and gossip as the world.

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Brothers and sisters, if we're going to build a future with wisdom, our children have to first learn it from us.

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Amen? And when there is a conflict, we use equal weights and measures. When there's a conflict, we'd say, one person's case sounds true, till another one comes to examine them.

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We want to be the kind of people to make sure we gather all the evidence, we hear all the witnesses, we believe the best about both parties, but we use wisdom in terms of accusations.

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A wise woman will build her home and she'll do it with godly wisdom. Do your children see you using equal weights and measures?

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Do your children see you showing no partiality? Do your children see you with a tongue that is used to bless others, encourage them, or do they watch you as a woman tearing down your own house with a tongue that is filled with venom and vile?

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How do you speak as a woman? Do your children see you as the angry person?

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Proverbs 15, 18, 29, 11. We just did these verses in this study.

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Are you an angry person? Or how about this one? This would be a little more probably close to home to many.

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The wise woman builds her home. How does she build it?

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I'd say some foundational things. Number one, fear the Lord. That's the beginning of wisdom, amen?

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Yes? That our children need to see in our mothers and our fathers, but our mothers right now, they need to see in a mother someone who fears the

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Lord. She has a reverence and an awe for God and all that she says and all that she does.

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But she also has a trust in the Lord. You know this one? Everyone knows it because it's on coffee cups and it's always posted.

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I hope you know it. Proverbs 3, 5, through 6, it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and what?

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And lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall what? Direct your paths.

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The wise woman is a woman in her home who builds it with trust in the Lord. Do your children, ladies, do your children watch you fear the future?

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Do they see you as an anxious person? Do they watch your distrust when difficulties arise?

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Financial difficulties? Personal conflicts? How do you approach that as a woman with wisdom?

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How do you approach it? Is the pattern of your life that your children watch you in your anxiety and fear of the future?

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How will they learn wisdom? How will they learn to trust the Lord? And you might just say, Pastor Jeff, you don't understand,

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I've got a medical condition or this has just been a part of my life. I'm an anxious person. I want to say, okay,

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I understand. We all need to heal. We all need to be sanctified. Anxiety was one of my great sins when

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I first came to Christ. I totally understand. But brothers and sisters, that is no excuse to continue the folly.

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That is no excuse to continue the folly. If you are a fearful, anxious, worried person, you are dealing with unbelief.

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Put it to death because that kind of folly will tear your house apart.

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If you want wisdom in a house that's built up, you need to give to your children this visible portrayal of trust in the

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Lord. Trust God. They know that when they look at Mom, she's strong. She's joyful.

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She does not fear the future because she trusts in the Lord. It's not just said to them.

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You can say all day long to your children, son, daughter, trust the

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Lord. But if they see you fearing the future constantly, they will not learn to trust the

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Lord. Where are they going to see it? They're going to see it in you first. They're going to learn it and absorb that trust in you first.

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In you first. So brothers and sisters, this is the start. Next week we'll do some more.

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Proverbs 31. We're going to look at the excellent wife. We're going to look at more of the woman who was wise, who built her home, built her marriage, and I pray that God blesses us over the next two weeks as we do.

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Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word, the blessing of your correction, for your instruction, your teaching.

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We pray as a body that you would bless us. Renew us as men.

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Renew us as women. Help us to not be knowledgeable fools. Help us to be wise.