Proverbs 2:12-22 (Wisdom For Men and Women)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word, and may the Lord be with you.

Over the last several weeks, we've been in this book called Proverbs, and we've began our journey there.

Proverbs is about wisdom, and it's really in this first couple chapters making a case for why wisdom is so absolutely critical.

It's a matter of life and death, actually, that we would have wisdom, and as Christians, in our culture, we don't often think that way.

We think about a New Testament -only kind of faith that give me Jesus and give me the

Bible, and that's all I need, and truly, that is the bedrock of everything.

But on top of that, permeating through that, is this concept of wisdom.

Wisdom is truth applied. We need truth applied, especially as we prayed earlier that we live in such a tumultuous time.

We need wisdom and how to navigate it, and the book of Proverbs is going to lean in and pour into us and give us wisdom, and if you remember, as a child, that time when you had that cold and you had that medicine that came in liquid form and you had to drink so much of it, and it tasted disgusting, and your mother's like, it's good for you, and you're like, it doesn't taste good for me.

Well, sometimes wisdom doesn't taste good to our senses. Sometimes wisdom offends our sensibilities.

But I would ask, as we go through today's passage, that we remember that the words of God, even if they chafe us, are for our good, and they're for our growth, and they're for God's glory.

So, today, we're gonna be looking at the end of Proverbs 2.

You'll remember, last time we were here, we talked about the if -then status of wisdom, how if you do these things, then you will receive those rewards.

For instance, if you will receive the words of wisdom, treasure the words of wisdom, give ear to the words of wisdom, incline your heart, cry for discernment, lift up your voice, seek it with all you've got, then you will discern the fear of the

Lord, discover the power of God's knowledge, discern righteousness, and all of these things. So, we saw this if -then relationship.

Well, today, we're gonna finish out that if -then relationship with three more things.

If you will seek wisdom with all of your, I'm already getting bad, Steve. If you will seek wisdom with all of your heart, then there's three more things that Proverbs 2 says that will be added to us.

Number one, you will be delivered from the evil men. Number two, you will be delivered from the evil women.

And number three, you will be delivered for a purpose to a kingdom. So, if you will, turn with me to Proverbs 2, verses 12 through 22, as we examine these three things together,

I'll read the passage. Proverbs 2, 12 through 22.

To deliver you from the evil, from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness, who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.

To deliver you from the strange woman, from the adulteress who flatters with her words, that leaves the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her

God. For her house sinks down to death and her tracks lead to death.

None who go to her return again, nor do they reach the path of life.

So you will walk in the way of good men, and keep to the paths of the righteous, for the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be uprooted from it.

It's the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for these three aspects of wisdom that you communicate to us this morning.

Lord, let us see very clearly the way of the wicked men. And in response,

Lord, let us understand what is the way of the righteous man. Lord, let us see very clearly the way of the wicked woman.

And as response, Lord, let us see the way of the righteous woman. And Lord, as we begin to understand what righteousness is and when it comes to masculinity and femininity, let us be excited and eager and earnest to step into and receive the kind of kingdom that you have prepared for your saints.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. If we will become the kind of men and women who will obey

God's word, then the Lord will bring us into the kind of kingdom that he promises.

That is what he's getting after here. Now, to understand this, we need to first understand the characters that are at play.

There's the evil man, there's the evil woman, and then there is the kingdom. The text says that we're gonna be delivered from the evil men.

Solomon's understanding at this particular time in redemptive history is that there is such a thing as manhood.

He believed that men were made for a purpose. That men were made by God in a particular way and that they were meant for culture building and culture warring.

Now, our society doesn't know what manhood is. These days, our political leeches spend millions of dollars trying to put tampons in men's bathrooms or trying to advocate for men to dominate women in swimming pools and in track fields.

But in Solomon's day, it was very clear what a man was. They had no problem with the theology of the difference between a man and a woman.

That men and women are equal in their personhood and yet they are distinct in their roles.

This is a biblical concept that runs through almost every passage on masculinity and femininity.

That men and women are equal in their person and yet distinct in their role.

Say it another way, there are different domains in which the male and the female work. Both are called to work and yet there are different spheres by which each are called to work.

According to Proverbs and the view of the rest of the scriptures, men are called to work in the world.

They're to leave the home, they're to go out into the world and they are to lead and to rule and to govern and to subdue and to rule and to create and to wage war in that way.

To bring the dominion of God to the wilderness regions that exist outside of the home.

They are to be warriors, leaders, culture shapers. And as fathers, especially here we see this with Solomon, it's our responsibility to prepare our boys.

It is not our responsibility to raise androgynous, Y -chromosomed little individuals who will grow up and play it safe.

It is our job to raise men, future men, who will bring the glory of Christ to the untamed parts and who will do it with courage and who will do it with joy.

Now who were the evil men that Solomon is warning against? He's not just warning against a few bad apples in Jerusalem.

He's warning about the broader world. He's warning about a kind of masculinity that is unbridled to and untethered to the spirit of Almighty God.

And there are two kinds of masculinity that we know today that are abhorrent to God.

And that is the effeminate coward and the blowhard, angry, chest -bumping, self -righteous, smug, domineering jerk.

Both of those stand opposed to the things of God. And both of those are who

Solomon is warning about. Men who, without the spirit of God, tear down culture.

Men who tear down order and society. Men who increase suffering, misery, and ruin in the world.

We are to be on guard against such men. And without the spirit of God, those men can do nothing but tear down and bring death and bring ruin.

And bring misery. Solomon gives us four examples of these kinds of men in the text.

The first one is the evil men speak perversities. He prays for his own son that he would be delivered from the way of evil.

From the man who speaks perverse things. Solomon identifies that the wicked man is one who speaks perversities.

And these are not just cruel jokes or crude jokes. The word perverse in Hebrew means something that is twisted or distorted or corrupted.

It's taking something good and mangling it. Like the serpent. And because they do not have the spirit of God, men who are wicked, deceive, mislead, destroy, and take the truth of the word of God and use it as a weapon, just like their father, the devil.

Solomon is warning his son to flee from such men. To be on guard against such men.

Because they're gonna weaponize words for their evil agenda. And we have seen this all over our culture.

Legion as examples could be given. For instance, you think about the power of words and how wicked people weaponize words today.

Redefining terms, calling what is good evil and what is evil good. You think about words like reproductive health, which is code word for abortion, which in itself is code word for cold -blooded murder.

Euphemisms are used by evil people to pervert the simple -minded. Euphemisms are used by evil people to pervert the simple -minded.

What about gender -affirming care? That's code word for let's bring your three -year -old in and chemically castrate them.

It is not accidental that evil men pervert words. That is a part of it. That every society we've ever seen that has gone the way of evil has taken language and twisted it and maligned it and used it as weapons.

And we have to have wisdom in the way that we even navigate a culture that has no concept of concrete reality and uses weapon in such disgusting ways.

We have to be very careful in the things that we listen to and the things that we pay attention to because without the

Spirit of God, wicked people weaponize language. It happens and it's happening today.

We need wisdom to be able to hear the hiss of the serpent underneath their words and to identify the very subtle twisting of faith or twisting of truth.

You remember when Satan came to Adam and Eve, he did not say something utterly wrong.

He took something that was kind of right and twisted it. When he came to Jesus, he took a

Bible verse, quoted a Bible verse, but twisted it. This is why we need wisdom because the blaring nature of it is often not seen.

It is often subtle, the way that language is twisted. And before you know it, you are down the road with them, believing the things that they are saying and wondering how you got there.

Number one, we have to have wisdom when it comes to language. Number two, Solomon goes on to say that evil men leave the path of righteousness.

That's verse 13. He says, and from those who leave the path of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness, he's praying that his son would be wise against that crowd.

And let's admit what he's saying here. In order to leave the paths of righteousness, you had to first be on the paths of righteousness.

Solomon is warning about a kind of evil that used to be in the fold, but it was abandoned in the way of truth.

That used to be walking in the light, that used to taste the heavenly treasures, but now is walking in darkness.

Solomon is saying that they have not merely stumbled into darkness. There is a kind of evil person that we must be very weary of and use great wisdom with that left the lightened path because their hearts were darkened.

Every week I'm so blown away by how God weaves together the service and the sermon in ways that I can't even anticipate.

Second John, talking about how those who went too far and abandoned the teaching, and they abandoned

Christ ultimately as they went too far, they apostatized. This is what Solomon is saying, that they went too far and they apostatized and left, and we have seen this over and over and over in our society.

When we first planted the church, the first example that I gave of apostasy was a man named Joshua Harris.

Joshua Harris wrote a book when I was in high school that was a very popular book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and as of 2019, he kissed

Jesus goodbye. We live in a time of increased apostasy. We live in a time of increased heterodoxy, and what

I mean by that is that you have those who have left orthodoxy, have left truth in order to bumble into wokeness and liberalism or whatever other deadly ism there is and who have functionally abandoned the lordship of Christ.

And perhaps you know someone right now who's affirmed that they're a

Christian but who supports the LGBTQ agenda. Who said that they're a believer but they are full on with woke ism, with abortion, supporting the

Democrats. Solomon says to avoid this ilk.

And the reason he says to avoid them, like an alcoholic should avoid a six pack, or like the immunocompromised should avoid a walk -in clinic on Friday night.

The reason he says to avoid them is because compromise is contagious. Compromise is contagious, and it doesn't happen quickly.

It happens very slowly and imperceivably. It happens not instantly because you wouldn't do it if it happened instantly, it happens slowly.

You walk into a room and there are germs that are floating around, and then the next day you feel a little under the weather, and then a couple days later you're in the bed sick.

You didn't even see it when it happened, but it was there. We have to be wise and we have to be careful.

Think about seminaries in this country. Seminaries like Harvard and Princeton, who magnified the name of Jesus, and that was their stated purpose, was to raise up preachers, to herald the gospel of Christ.

And then a couple hundred years later are the exact opposite.

The tar pit for stupidity and lunacy. Compromise happens very slowly.

You can be one degree off course, and over 10, 20, 30, 40 feet, you won't even notice how much you've slipped, but over 100 miles, 1 ,000 miles, 10 ,000 miles, you're so far off course that you don't even know how to get back.

It's like a car scratch that happens. I don't have any of those on my beautiful blue Civic.

But it's like car scratches. It's just a little scratch, but before you know it, water starts chemically changing the metal, and then it rusts, and then before you know it, you've got a rusted outside of your car because it's got this hole in it from the chemical change that happens.

It happens slowly, and it changes you, and it breaks you.

Compromise is contagious. So we have to avoid such men, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of truth, and we have to surround ourselves with those that are godly, men especially, because we're in this section right here talking about men.

One of the most important things that you can do in your walk with Christ is to not be alone.

One of the most significant things, and you can ask many men in this congregation, who I know know that it's true, one of the most significant things you can do for your walk with Jesus is to be around other believers who are walking in the same direction towards Christ.

It's so easy for us to become lone rangers. It's so easy for us to spend all of our time isolated from other believers, but it is a danger to do that.

This is a silly example, but when I play golf with Jeremy, my golf game looks better.

I almost feel like that I should be working towards the PGA Tour, because strokes get shaved off of my game, but when

I play with Derek, but when I play with Derek, I only did that because you were laughing.

No, but when I play with someone else who is, we're just there for fun, we're just, we're not there to play a good game of golf,

I play worse. There is a principle here that if you spend time with someone who is better than you, stronger than you, going after something harder than you, the magnetism of that draws you in and pulls you up.

It lifts you up, and it is true of my life when I am around Christians who love Christ more than me, who are more mature than me, and who are running after the things of God harder than me, and who can look at my life and call me out and tell me to suck it up, buttercup, and to stop doing what

I'm doing. Those kinds of relationships are life. Hanging out with those who are compromised is death.

The third example that he gives of evil men is that they delight in evil. He says in verse 14, those who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil.

This is not ordinary rebellion that he's talking about. This is the kind of celebrations that we see in our day where sin is done openly, proudly, with joy, seeking to bring other people in.

The evangelism of sin has never been stronger in this country than it is today.

For instance, we only have one day to celebrate veterans, and we have an entire month for the

LGBTQ abominations. And if you don't celebrate with them, then you're a bigot.

If you don't line the streets with your multicolored mohawks, then you are an awful human.

If you don't join the choirs of women shouting their abortions, then you're a misogynist and a hate monger.

We are no longer a sin -reluctant people. America has never been a fully

Christian country, but we have, for a long time, been a sin -reluctant country.

And we're not anymore. We're a sin -exuberant country where we sin enthusiastically and require others to join in with us.

And we must flee this madness. Men, the public square belongs to Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 28, when He said, all authority in heaven and on earth now belong to Me, He was saying that every inch of earth and the cosmos belongs to Him.

And when He said, now therefore, go, He was making you His emissary so that you now bear the authority of Christ.

Everyone in this room, you walk into the room with, I don't care who it is, the

King of England, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, I don't care. You have authority that they don't have because you're an emissary of the

King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The public square belongs to Christ. Christ is the head of every government,

Romans 13. And because Christ is the one who rules, men, when we leave our homes in the morning and when we go out into the world with our lunchboxes and with our day planned out, our goal is not primarily and only to get a paycheck.

Our goal is to bring the goodness and the glory of Jesus Christ into a world that hates

Him. And we are to take it. And like Adam should have done, we are to subdue it for Christ.

For far too long, we have approached culture like ostriches who are hiding their heads in the sand that if we just hang out inside of our churches long enough, then everything will get better.

It hasn't worked, has it? When I was in California National Training Center, there was a turtle that was there.

And I think this is a perfect example of modern evangelicalism. There was a turtle that lived there and we were given a briefing that you cannot walk up to the turtle, you can't look at the turtle, you can't breathe on the turtle, you can't touch the turtle, you can't pick up the turtle, you can't do anything to the turtle.

Why? Because apparently it has a defense mechanism. And its defense mechanism is that it gets scared and it hides in its shell and it urinates inside of its shell and it drowns.

What an example of the modern church where we've hidden from culture and we're drowning when the

Lord has given us the authority to go and take it, subdue it, and make it for the glory of Christ.

That's the third. Number four, Solomon says that evil men are crooked.

He says, the ones whose path are crooked and who are devious in their ways. He's saying that evil people's paths are marked by crookedness, not by straightness.

Paul even says that we are lights to a crooked and twisted generation because evil is always either seducing or being seduced.

They're always crooked in their machinations. As I said before, the wicked don't come to you obviously.

They don't come to you on MSNBC and say, we would like to implement socialism and it's gonna destroy your lives, but we're gonna get rich in the process.

They're not that obvious. They talk about things like income justice, equality of outcomes, price controls.

We have to be wise to discern their foolish language. They don't come to you with a

I'm with Satan T -shirt. They don't. They come like their father in a spirit of light, a spirit of kindness.

The modern day Democratic Party is brilliant at this. If we were to compliment them on anything, they're brilliant.

And this is why 70 so percent of women in this country support the

Democratic Party because they are incredible at pulling heartstrings. And by the end of it, you think that the only moral thing to do is to do whatever they have said.

They tell stories really well. They let you think that they're the ones who care and all the while they're giving you poison that is going to destroy this country.

That's not the point of the message, but it is an example of the wicked hide the hook in a shiny bait.

And when you bite it, they drag you away with them. Brothers, we need to be delivered from this madness.

And I pray that if you have bought into any of this madness that you would repent and that you would pray and you would ask the

Lord to give you wisdom because wisdom is available. The whole book of Proverbs is predicated upon this. Men, we need wisdom as we go out into the world, as we go into the streets, as we go into our jobs and as we go into our vocations.

We need wisdom so that we can bring the holiness of God to a world that is broken. We need wisdom to be able to detect their deceit, their traps, their compromise.

That's the first thing. The second thing is we need not just men to have wisdom. We need our women to have wisdom as well.

Solomon doesn't just tell us that he wants us to be delivered from the evil man. He tells us also that we should be delivered from the evil woman.

Now, again, this is not a controversial topic in Solomon's day. He knew what the Bible said, that women have an equal in personhood, but yet distinct in role and responsibility from men.

He called men to engage and to build on the outside and he called women to engage and build on the inside.

And if I had to argue for either of those, that the most important, the most glorious work that's done on earth is inside of the home.

The home is a little garden of Eden in a world full of serpents. The home is a little temple where the glory of God manifests in such beautiful ways in a world full of shadows.

Your role, ladies, is not to adopt the posture that we have seen in our day where you are to compete against men.

Your role is not to do that because that is beneath your calling. It would be like the president joining the secret service.

It would be beneath his calling. It's the secret service there to protect him and it's the president who's there to have a very important job.

You think about it in the way, I'll give you another example, Rome. Rome was destroyed in two fronts.

Both are important. It was destroyed outside on its flank as the vandals came in, but it was also overran in the city of Rome.

If you can look at that as a metaphor, men are supposed to be the flank. They're supposed to be the wall. They're supposed to be on the exterior, guarding things so that they don't come in, but the final stop, the final point of defense is the home so that you could say at the collapse of Rome, it happened on the outside and it also happened on the inside and in the collapse of Christianity in the

West, it's happened in our men who were to guard the flank and it's happened in our women who were to guard the home and when the attacks have come, this is how sinister and how sneaky the enemy is.

We have sent our women outside of the home so that our home is defenseless and when the arrows come, every one of them hit so that she can compete with men.

Just as sin tempts men to surrender to culture or to abandon culture, sin tempts women to abandon the home.

Solomon introduces a character here called the adulterous woman. Listen, she does certain activities even before she commits adultery.

What is the first thing she does? It says that she abandons the companion of her youth. It says that she forgets the covenant of her

God. It says that she leaves the home that she was responsible for. You can't commit adultery if you're this woman until you leave and abandon the domain in which

God called you to be so that in this passage, when the men fall into evil, society collapses.

And Solomon is pointing out that when the women fall into evil, the home collapses.

Look at what Solomon says in verse 16. He's praying that his son would be delivered from the strange woman, from the adulteress who flatters with her words.

She is not strange because she likes emo music. Sorry, that was the first thing that in my mind that associated with strange.

She's not strange because of her choice of dress. She's not strange because of her opinions. The way the

Bible is talking about this word strange is in the same way that we talk about stranger. When you're in your home, you're known.

When you leave your home, you are a stranger to everyone who is out there.

He is, Solomon is saying that this woman is strange because she's left her home to be known, to be known in the way that she can only be known in her home to other homes, which makes her estranged from her home.

Long before she commits the sin of adultery, she becomes strange and she leaves the domain that God has called her to becoming estranged from her responsibilities that God has given her.

And she participates in the destruction of her home. She doesn't just destroy her home. She destroys two homes.

She is the one who leaves, it says in verse 17, who leaves the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her

God. Her primary unfaithfulness, or at least her first level unfaithfulness is not in the sin of adultery.

It is the sin of leaving. It says that she abandons her covenant responsibilities. What does that mean?

She was a wife. She was a mother. She was a covenant keeper. She was a protector. She was a worker in her home.

She was like the Proverbs 31 says that her children rise up and call her blessed. And she was like the woman who the husband is known in the gates because of her work in her home.

And I understand that gender roles have been thrown out the window today by our society, so much so that this is probably one of the most controversial issues in the

Bible. I will tell you this, that it seems to be that the most controversial issues in the

Bible are the ones that show up in Genesis 1. God established masculinity, femininity, marriage, children.

And it is those things where Satan is attacking most fiercely. So we should pay very close attention to that.

We should also pay attention to this. It's not just what Kendall Langford is saying. This is what the Bible is saying. And I would encourage you to be

Bereans on these things, to look into these things because you cannot find a single positive command in the scriptures where women are called to leave the home and to go fraternize and work with and have careers alongside of the men.

You can't find a single passage that says it. You ask yourself the question, well, what about Deborah?

Deborah is an example that people give. Deborah is called a mother in Israel.

And because all the little boys in Israel were acting like cowards in that season, she mothered them and she cared for them.

And when they were strong, she sent them off to war and she stayed home. Read it.

It's there. And in the book of Hebrews, we read earlier, or we referenced earlier in Sunday school, the hall of faith.

It is not Deborah who makes the hall of faith. It is Barak, the scared, cowardly boy that she encouraged.

People reference Esther. Esther is not a woman who is leading by independence.

Esther is a woman who is submitting to Mordecai and submitting to Ahasuerus, her husband.

And in everything she does, she is the picture of godly femininity. She's suggesting.

She's loving. She's doing her domestic duty as a wife. And through that Ahasuerus does what he's supposed to do by impaling

Haman. There are two examples of women who take and seize control in the public sector.

And I doubt that anyone would want to imitate them. There is Athaliah who killed her own child or grandchild to become queen.

And there's Jezebel, which is the female equivalent of Judas. Her sin is that she left and abandoned the domain that God had said is very good and blessed.

It's not just marital infidelity here. It is covenant disloyalty. When a man abandons his role in building and working and when a woman abandons her role in building and working, disaster and ruin come.

And if you don't believe me, just look at the example of America. When the vast majority of families transition to a two family income, and where children were being sent to public school, the fruit of that nationally is that children have left the faith overwhelmingly and our culture has slid into idolatry.

When we forfeited the home and gave it up, are we surprised that the enemy attacked it?

Let me give you an example. I am not a hockey aficionado. I grew up in North Carolina where there is no ice, except in your sweet tea.

I think I know what I'm talking about here, but if I don't, show me grace. In hockey, it is a very rare thing for a team to pull its goalie.

And it's a move of great desperation. You really need to be in a place where a miracle has to happen for you to win the game.

Now I will confess to you, I've seen three hockey games in my life, one in person and two on TV. And two times that this was done, it's called a power play.

The team lost worse than they would have if they kept their goalie in the net. Because when you take the goalie, who is the most important player in my estimation, because you can't win if the other team scores more than you.

When you take that person out and you forfeit the net to the enemy, I don't care if they have one less offensive player than you do or not, they can fling pucks down the ice from 50, 100 feet away, and there's no one there to protect it.

When we took our women, the most important and the most glorious creatures for the building up of Christendom, when we took them and we said that you need to put on your work boots and go work with men, we left our nets open.

And one arrow after another after another, the enemy has been lobbing attacks.

And under our watch and under the church's watch, because many have been afraid to say these things,

Christianity has rotted in many ways and we need repentance.

And we need revival. And we need wisdom, as Solomon is saying.

These are things that the Bible talks about. And we need courage in order to obey the Bible in a culture that finds every possible way to disobey the

Bible. Isn't it interesting that the movement, feminism, that was meant to be for the empowerment of women now denies that there is even such a thing as a woman?

What seems good in seed form, wait until it's a tree. And you will see the rotten fruit that comes of it.

We need wisdom in the church of Jesus Christ to navigate these things. And I think we need a high view of women again.

I think we need a high view of the beauty and the loveliness and the integrity and the glory of woman.

Because it's a low view of woman that's got us here. Now, we're being attacked on two planes, as Solomon indicates.

We're being attacked out there because in many ways our men have put down their swords, put down their shields, and we're being attacked from within because we've sent our women out to join us in the workforce.

Solomon talks about at the end of this passage what will happen if we revive just these two things.

If we revive a godly picture of masculinity, we raise up future men, warriors for the cause of Christ.

And if we raise up godly women who build homes that are impenetrable, if we do that, this is how the passage ends.

We know what it's like if we don't do that. In a few minutes, we're gonna walk outside and behold it again.

But what happens if we do that? This is what Solomon says. So you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous, for the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in the land, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be uprooted from it.

Just these two small things. If we were to do these things for the glory of Christ, the wicked will be uprooted in this land.

The inevitability of the collapse of America is not inevitable. Because why? We're on the side of victory.

The Bible doesn't say that this is a gamble or a coin flip. If you are in Christ, then you are on the side of victory.

If you are in Christ, you are in the one who raised from the dead. And you're now seated at the right hand of the

Father. And the only reason that this Christian church and every other

Christian church in America needs to collapse is out of willful ignorance to what God says. But if we will obey what

God says, I believe the Lord will use us. He says that the wicked will be removed from the land.

They will be uprooted from the land like weeds and that the righteous will live in the land.

There is not a picture all throughout the Bible, this verse included, of doom and gloom Christianity, where we need to just continue being righteous as the world continues to rot.

And then when it's just moments away from collapse, Jesus comes and vaporizes us out of here like Star Trek.

That's not the picture of the Bible. The Bible is a picture of men faithfully working, getting up every single day and giving everything they've got to the glory of God.

And women waking up every single day and for the glory of their Creator, building homes that are impenetrable.

And when we do that work every day, even though it's not glorious, even though you're probably never going to be famous, even though no one's going to know your name when you die a hundred years later.

If you do that work every day, if you plod in that work, then this is what will happen. The righteous will live in the land.

The wicked will be uprooted. This is wisdom from God for us.

I pray that we would receive it. And I pray that we would live in the victory of Christ because whatever

God says is good. And when we disobey what God says, we invite wickedness and evil.

Amen. Let us pray. Lord, thank you so much for today. Thank you for the fact that you will uproot the wicked.

Thank you for the fact that you will, by your power, sustain the righteous.

That Lord, we are not waiting for a cataclysmic defeat for the people of Christ.

We are waiting for the people of Christ to adopt the word of God and obey it. Lord, I pray for my brothers in this room.

I pray for our men that you would give, that you would light a fire in their heart to be men of Christ and culture, that they would bring all of Christ into every facet of their life and that they would bring

Jesus into every sphere. Lord, I pray that we would raise boys that are not cowards, but who are courageous.

Lord, I pray that we would have a culture here of women who with fierce tenacity and with strength and dignity build homes that cannot be lost and that would build from the home outward a culture that will be reclaimed for the name of Jesus.

Lord, these are very simple things and these are areas where Satan is attacking so hard right now.

Satan is attacking masculinity and femininity and we have the words here in the

Bible, the words of life. Lord, let us not, let us not look at your words as loathsome and at the words of the culture as if they're somehow better.

We know what happens when we follow culture and we know what's going to happen if we continue.

Lord, let us follow these words, the words of life and may it revive us as a people and may it revive