Proverbs 31 Man

Father in heaven, it is good today to be alive, to praise your name, and to think about your

Son, Jesus Christ, the author, the finisher of our faith. We're thankful today that we can look to you,

Father, and realize that our faith even was a gift. Salvation, full and free, and then faith is a gift, and we are recipients of your grace.

And thank you for choosing us, for having your Son die for us, and then having the Spirit of God not just seal us to the day of redemption, but also help us, helping us illumine our minds so we might understand these scriptures.

I pray for Pastor Dan and his daughter. I pray for the daughter that there be a good diagnosis, and Father, that you and your providence and through the medicine, through the doctors would heal her.

There'd be a sweet fellowship today down at Providence. And we ask that you'd help these dear people in understanding the scriptures today better here in the

Proverbs. In Jesus' name, amen. What I'm going to do today is first ask you some questions.

I don't know if Steve's been doing a lot of interaction, but I like interaction. First of all, mothers only.

Mothers only that have boys. What do you tell your son as he gets older, or if you're an older lady, what did you tell your sons about picking the right kind of woman to marry?

So if you've got a boy and you've given some advice to him as a mom, what would you say? Now this is the right kind of girl to marry.

Anyone? Or if you're older and you've already given that advice, what kind of advice would you give?

Marry this kind of woman. Deb? What about Proverbs 31?

Okay, well you know the good news about Deb is she knows the Bible. The bad news is

I've lost my introduction because Proverbs 31 is not necessarily for ladies, although secondarily it is.

But Proverbs 31 is the Proverbs that a mother taught a daughter to say, this is the kind of woman you ought to look for to marry.

We tend to think of Proverbs 31 as some kind of book where that's the mirror that we hold all ladies against kind of thing.

Lots of times I see people read Proverbs 31 and if they're a woman they go, who could live up to this?

This is more discouraging than it is encouraging. We'll talk about that a little bit as well.

But turn your Bibles to Proverbs 31 and this is going to be advice from a mother given to her son what to look for in a wife.

Isn't that amazing? What to look for in a wife? And you say, well I don't have any boys.

Well this is going to be a good chapter for you anyway because I think the flip side will be true if you're training up girls.

If you're already older and you say, well I've married a woman and she's Proverbs 31 woman, then you ought to thank your

God that you have a Proverbs 31 woman. Maybe you're married and you say, I'm married to someone who's maybe like a

Proverbs 30 and a half woman. She's not quite there. Then these are going to be good ways to pray for your wife that she, by the grace of God, could attain to some of these standards that without the

Spirit of God these are impossible for anyone to live up to. And so today we're going to look at Proverbs 31 and we'll just talk a little bit about praiseworthy women.

I have one son and I want to tell him and teach him and encourage him to marry the right kind of woman.

Think that'll be a good thing for me to do? That'll be a lot more beneficial than root for the right kind of baseball teams.

Learn how to make a lot of money and get a lot of power in politics.

I mean who knows? But today we're going to look at Proverbs 31, not just for women. If you came here today and you think

I'm a single person, what am I going to do with this? Then this is good for you because you need to know the right person to marry and the world is going to tell you the opposite.

The world is going to tell you, look for somebody who's got a lot of money, look for somebody who's famous, look for somebody who's good looking.

Now I don't know if there's anything innately wrong with being good looking, having a lot of money, or being famous, but it's the right motive.

And so Proverbs 31. And what happens is at the very beginning you'll see that this is an odd kind of proverb.

That is odd, strange, out of the normal when it comes to Proverbs. The words of King Lemuel, the oracle which his mother taught him.

Who can tell me something about King Lemuel? Well, I'm glad no one raised their hand because we don't really know anything about King Lemuel.

Jewish tradition says it's probably Solomon. And so Solomon is being taught according to Jewish tradition.

There's some other weird things in this tradition so I don't really buy it. But this is Bathsheba teaching

Solomon about what to do and what to be. Who to be.

And so what does he, what has he taught? Well there's four keys to start off with and if you take a look at verse 3, here's the first key that his mother taught him.

This is the first lesson. Mother to son lesson 1. We won't focus on lessons 1, 2, or 3 but I just want to give you an idea of what the chapter was like.

First lesson is found in verse 3. Do not give your strength to women or your wages to that which destroys kings.

This is the realm of sexual talk where don't just be so driven by lust, so driven by this search for this illicit kind of sex that you just lose all your strength, that you're so preoccupied you spend all your time and money and thoughts and energy on that because it's just not going to be profitable.

So the mother says to the son, number 1, I want you to be sexually pure. It's a good lesson to teach a son or to teach a daughter because you know the world is going to teach what?

The exact opposite. It's the exact opposite. You know when I grew up it was always just be careful.

It's the language of as long as you love each other, hope anybody doesn't get pregnant, don't catch something.

All this kind of language and here this king's mother says

I want you to be pure. I want you to be holy. This is for the glory of God. Number 2, interesting,

I don't know what kind of advice you give to your kids but here this woman gives this advice to her son, the king.

Don't get drunk, basically verse 4. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine or for rulers to desire strong drink.

Alcohol in and of itself is not good it is not bad, it is neutral and so for the king he has to make all these decisions.

He doesn't need to have his mind clouded by all these kind of issues. There's a time for drinking according to the woman of this, the mother of this king and if you look at verse 5, for they will drink and forget what is decreed and pervert the righteous of all the afflicted.

Here's the time, verse 6, give strong drink to him who is perishing and wine to him whose life is bitter.

Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his trouble no more. Number 3, here's the third bit of advice before we get up to this

Proverbs 31 woman, found in verse 8, you hear, you can just imagine the mother sitting down in the back yard,

I guess the back palace. Here the mother says to king O Lemuel, be sexually pure and don't get drunk.

Number 3, stick up for the rights of the needy, very important. Verse 8, open your mouth for the dumb for the rights of all the unfortunate.

Open your mouth, judge righteously and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy. Why would that be important for a king to do?

He's the authority, good, so he would set the tempo as it were for the entire kingdom, good,

Joni. Yes, who else would do it, who could do it and since he has the power to do it for the widows and the orphan and the needy, they need to stick up for them because they're able to and so she says, be sexually pure, we want to make sure you don't get drunk and go off the deep end there and then stick up for the rights of the orphans and widows.

Great advice. Now we come to what we typically hear about Proverbs 31. Every time I hear

Proverbs 31, it's the Proverbs 31 woman, don't you hear that a lot? And so I want to call this the

Proverbs 31 man, that's what I want to call it, the Proverbs 31 man. What do I mean by that? This is what the mother says to the son to look for.

So when you think of a woman to pick, you think of this kind of woman. This is the one and again, if you married a

Proverbs 29 and a half woman and you just pray towards these end that God would help you in this area.

The praiseworthy woman. The fourth thing Lemuel's mother says is pick the godly woman, pick the right kind of woman.

Now we believe God's sovereign. We believe it's all orchestrated. We believe in one decree of God, yet there's human responsibility.

And so when someone needs to be saved, we pray for them even though we know God is in charge of salvation.

So too, you say, well, I know God will bring the right kind of spouse to my son. We are to encourage, instruct, pray for still.

Yes, I don't want us to be kind of hyper Calvinist about this.

I want us to make sure we understand that we need to have a human responsibility. Now, before we go into the passage, if you had to tell your son, mothers, what kind of woman to look for?

I wonder how close it would be to Proverbs 31. Probably a different kind of language because it's a different kind of language they use back then.

So dads, what would you tell your sons? This is the right kind of woman. Dad's telling your daughters, this is the right kind of man.

I love what MacArthur said, and I think it's almost comical.

If you ask society what to look for in a woman, quote, she would work at a job, build her own career, demand and get equal pay with men.

She would refuse to submit to her husband, demanding equality with him in everything. She would have an affair or two or three, a divorce or two or three, an abortion or two or three.

She would definitely exercise her independence. She would make sure that she was eminently fulfilled herself.

She would rely on no other resources except herself. She would not want her husband or children to threaten her personal goals.

She would have her own bank account. She would hire a maid for cleaning services. She would eat out at least 50 % of the time with her family or without.

She would make cold cereal and coffee, the standard breakfast fare for the family, and quick frozen meals, usually dinner fare.

And she would certainly expect her husband to do half the housework. She would be tanned. I don't even know how to say this word, but I'll give it a shot.

Co -fured, is that right? C -O -I -F -F -U -R -E -D. Coiffured, excuse me, pardon me, pardon moi.

Aerobicized, bulging with muscle. She would be shopping to keep up with the fashion trends and make sure she could compete in the attention -getting contest.

She would put her children in a day care center, making sure that each also had a TV in his or her room so that when they were home, they wouldn't interrupt her routine.

She would be opinionated. She would demand to be heard from and eager to fulfill all her personal ambition.

The world would applaud her and she wouldn't be able to stay married or happy, and her kids would probably be into drugs.

But she would be the woman of the 80s. That's when MacArthur wrote this. And she is a million miles from the woman of God described in Proverbs 31.

Isn't that interesting? Vita. Yeah, well, whether it's now or any kind of women's liberation movement, that's pretty much it, except this is almost kind of a shadow, a distorted shadow of what they would want now.

They would turn it up a notch through the 90s and another notch here in 2010 almost, and that's exactly right.

I keep thinking of the Virginia Slims commercial. Who's old enough to remember the Virginia Slims commercial? Wow, this is a lot of hands going up.

It was a cigarette commercial, and remember the slogan? You've come a long way, baby, but isn't there a sub -theme to that?

You can have it all kind of talk. Oh yeah, you get your own cigarette. Who wants to smoke a man's cigarette?

You can have your own. Now listen, there are a thousand different exceptions in terms of single mother, all these kind of other issues.

We're just going to look at the standard, and then you can ask your own self, how do I measure up? Lord, how do

I get help? What do I tell my kids in terms of looking for a future spouse? I think we'll be encouraged as we go through this.

I don't want you to say, I can never live up to this, because in biblical sanctification, what do we do?

We learn about the truth, and then we ask God to help us live that out. But if you don't learn about the truth, there's nothing to help live out.

You learn through knowledge, through your mind. Not just your mind, but you have to have your mind engaged to learn and to grow.

Your mind is the essential component to biblical sanctification on the receiving end.

You receive the word of God, your mind has to wrap itself around there, and then you go, okay, now

I'd like to kind of live this out. So let me give you the right kind of wife, picking out the right kind of wife.

And let me give you six attributes to look for in a future wife. And they're all stemming from verse 10 of Proverbs 31.

Take a look at Proverbs 31. An excellent wife who can find, for her worth is far above jewels.

An excellent wife who can find. Here's the idea. Excellent wives are rare, but they're not quite extinct yet.

That's the idea. You ever watch those shows? You know, polar bears are almost going to become extinct and all kinds of other crazy ecological stuff that there's.

I think there's more polar bears now than there's ever been in the world, but that's another topic. I was at True Value Hardware the other day, and I needed to get something.

And they said, would you like a bag? And I said, yeah, I think I'd like one.

And they said, they're green bags. Oh, wow. Green plastic.

I don't know how that all goes together, but green bags. And I said, I'll take the green bag, but the world's not meant to last anyway.

The person here, the person here, the person over here, they all looked at me with some kind of triad of disgust.

What do you mean? The guy goes, do you know the

Mayan calendar doesn't go past 2012? I said, well,

I don't know about Mayan calendars, but I believe what the Bible says, and the world's not meant to last.

I just thought, I have to sound like a complete kook. And when I hear people talk kind of like that on other subjects,

I just kind of dismiss and go, these are the crazy kooks of the world, and off we went. This kind of woman may not be found easily, but when this kind of woman is found, you ought to rejoice.

You ought to say to yourself, rare but not extinct, and I can't believe I found such a woman.

Back in the old days in Israel, someone would get married, and then the other men, the other young men, the older men would say a year into the marriage, did you find?

Did you find? Meaning what? Is she really excellent? And it says here, an excellent wife, who can find?

Did you find the excellent one? Not easily found, but when that woman's found, she is to be treasured.

Her worth is far above jewels. Proverbs 18, verse 22 says, he who finds a wife finds a what?

Ball and chain. See, this is the new inspired version here. No, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the

Lord. Ruth, chapter 3, verse 11, here's a woman of noble character.

Same root Hebrew word, and now my daughter, do not fear, I will do for you whatever you ask, for all my people in the city have known that you are a woman of excellence.

Remember, we sometimes elevate all these people to Bible, the righteous ones, to superstar status.

These people were regular people, they were sinful people, tainted by the fall, and here is Ruth, a

Moabite woman, woman of excellence. Number one, what should you look for?

If you're a man and you're not married, I just saw a couple in here, this is the kind of woman you look for.

If you're a mom and you've got boys, this is what you tell your son to look for. If you're a dad and you've got girls, this would be the inverse of what you should say to look for in a man.

If you're married to a woman, this is what you pray that she would become more like. And the list goes on.

Number one, look for a lady who fears the Lord. Look for a lady that fears the

Lord. We'll talk about fear in just a minute. Proverbs 31, jump down to verse 30, please.

We'll kind of jump around a little bit. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. What does that mean, by the way?

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. Okay, good, especially when the charm is deceitful.

I'm thinking, and I should have probably clarified it, Daniel, I'm thinking about the beauty is vain. I'll have to confess right now,

I don't think beauty is vain. That's why I married Kim. If I thought beauty was vain, why bother?

I don't think beauty is vain, but the word there is the same word used in Ecclesiastes.

It could be translated vain, it could be translated futile, it could be translated what?

Fleeting. You take a little, if I was Wes Jameson, I'd take a little bubble thing and I'd put the bubble thing in and when he taught

Ecclesiastes and then he went and all those bubbles come out, what do all those bubbles do?

You go, those bubbles are vain. Those bubbles are what? Short -lived.

Beauty, I don't think is vain, but beauty is fleeting, isn't it? I think

I was on the internet a while ago and they said, here's Greta Garbo at 85 years old and I looked at her and I go,

Greta Bargo, hello. You go, beauty is fleeting.

So you see society is saying, look in the outside, right? We could say that. Pick somebody on the outside and they look good, they're fashionable, they're pretty and I don't think there's anything wrong with being pretty or handsome or anything like that.

You shouldn't try to make yourself the opposite. But there's something way more important and we know what the text says.

But a woman who fears the Lord, she will be praised. So he's contrasting, well she really, as she teaches her son, is contrasting the fact that one day when the person that you're married to is older and maybe doesn't look as good as they used to, they still will fear the

Lord and that's what you're after. She who fears the Lord. Charm is deceitful.

The Hebrew word for charm there is bodily form. What they look like, that is deceitful.

Because it doesn't tell you what's in their heart. You look at a person on TV and you go, they look beautiful, they look handsome, but you don't know what's on the inside and you don't know if they fear and adore and reverence the

God of the universe. But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

Okay, I got to be careful because we're going to turn this into a series here. That's what I just do in my life.

I just turn one part messages into five. What is fear?

We want to make sure we get this fear down properly because if you have to tell your son's mothers, you want to find a woman who fears the

Lord and then I think your son's probably going to go, what's fear? I thought perfect love casts out all fear.

Charlie? Okay, I like that.

Anybody else want to add to that? Vida? Okay, let's talk about that just for a second before I get any other questions.

True or false? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Oh good, you guys are sharp.

Proverbs 1, 7. If you want to show me somebody that has real wisdom, I don't go to Yale or Harvard or any place else like that.

I say the person who says I fear the Lord. This is kind of this initial, this is salvific fear.

This is this fear that says there's one who's over me, he's made me, he keeps his covenant, here's all his attributes.

I always think of my father. My father, I had an admiration for, I had an awe of,

I had a healthy respect for, but I also had what? I feared him.

That's like 1 Peter chapter 1. If you approach God as father, you still ought to do it with fear.

It's that I respect you, I adore you, but every time I come to the place, when I look at the scriptures where it says fear, even in the

New Testament, fabas, I don't immediately go, that's just healthy awe. I think it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living

God, and it's also the fear of the Lord the first time you realize I am not worthy,

I am not autonomous, I am not independent of this God, I am under this

God, and I will bow one day before him, one way or the other, I will worship this God, and I better make this

God who is mad at me, now happy with me. And then you come to realize you can't do that at all and it has to be done by him, etc.

Good, you can be close to God and you can still be fearful of God. Yes, you think of Isaiah, you think of all these prophets, you think about Peter in the boat with Jesus.

Okay, I'm going to take one more, I've got to move because I'm about halfway through my point. I think

I have six. Fear of offending God, good, there is a reverent, easy for me to say,

I sound like I'm talking like Bugs Bunny, a reverent wall. There is an awe of fear with reverence.

I wasn't supposed to teach today. Dave Jeffries came along and he said, do you know, I know, just have some time off with your wife and I love to preach and minister and all these steroids that make you aggressive and everything, just take some time off.

And I was all happy and then Steve has to go minister to somebody and now here I am stuck teaching you guys. I probably wouldn't have known what to do with myself if I would have walked in here and not taught, so it's a real privilege and thank you

Dave for teaching for me this Sunday as well. Sometime, we don't have time now, but I did initially plan on it.

Go through the Proverbs and just look up with your concordance, fear, fear of the Lord and just see how many different times the fear of the

Lord comes up and it will also begin to define it for you. Fear of the Lord, let me just give you one example.

Fear of the Lord is to hate evil. You go, what does it mean to fear the Lord? Crouching and cringing, you go, well you know what, one of the things when

I fear the Lord, I'll hate evil. And then you look at the next one and you say, okay the fear of the Lord prolongs life.

You could do a good series on that just for yourself. So back to Proverbs 31 .30, charm is deceitful, the way people look on the outside, beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the

Lord, she shall be praised. And the flip side of that is, it will be a non -fleeting praise.

It will be a praise that doesn't go away with age. As the wrinkles multiply, this does not diminish.

And then it says in verse 31, give her the product of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.

So everything about this woman is to be praised because she fears the Lord. True or false, it was a regular occurrence for women to be at the gates even.

When you learn about women at the gates, it's a pretty short study because it's the men who are at the gates and it was this place of discussion commerce, respect.

Here's where they gathered. What does the text say? Verse 31, let her works praise her in the gates.

That's a very unusual thing. Unusually high recognition for a woman in the

Bible. Number two, what to look for in a future wife. Number one, look for a lady who fears the

Lord. Number two, look for a woman who serves the Lord and others with joy.

Look for a woman who serves the Lord and others with joy. If I look at verse 13, this is where I'm kind of deriving this.

She looks for wool and flax and works with her hands in what?

Delight. Works with her hands in delight. I don't want to read too much into the text, but I think it's fair to say as a

Christian, we should have the view of work. We should have the view of our jobs. We should have the view of mothering.

We should have the view of what we do during the day, even if you're not paid to minister like I might be to say,

I can look at these dishes. I can look at these diapers. I can look at these, you know,

I can look at gardening, whatever you might do, or maybe you go outside the home and help contribute. What you do, men too, you go to work and you say,

I can worship as I work. Is that true? Sometimes I've had jobs where I've actually hated the job, but I think, you know, the whole time

I'm just doing this for the money. But as a Christian, you can say, I can do this for the money to supply things for my family, but I'm also doing this because God takes delight in the way

I work, my attitude towards work. I can actually delight in work. Think about those assembly lines.

I always think of some kind of Detroit manufacturing cars and like 20 years, nine hours a day, putting these same widgets on day by day by day by day.

Could that person think to themselves, I'm doing this for the glory of God, whether you eat or drink or put widgets on for 20 years, do all for the glory of God.

Could you do that? That's the kind of idea I have here for this woman. It seems to me that the text is she works with her hands and she does it with what pain toil, aggressiveness.

Who are you to tell me? I can't believe I'm forced to do it. What does she do? I do it with delight.

She says, I do it with delight. Mundane matters. Daily matters, daily living skills.

She has delight in those things. That would be a good thing to look for in a wife. Someone who says

I can have joy. I can have the fruit of the spirit in no matter what I do. For Charlie's point, just a moment ago, having an eternal perspective seen through these things.

Now I don't tell many jokes from the pulpit. Don't think it's right. This isn't really a joke, but I found some things from an anonymous mother in Austin, Texas that she's learned from her children.

And some crazy things happen at home and it would be good to have an eternal perspective. I won't read all of them.

Just a few interesting ones. A king -size waterbed, this is what she's learned from her children. King -size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2 ,000 square foot house four inches deep.

If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 -pound boy wearing

Batman underwear and a Superman cape. Certain Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a four -year -old.

No matter how much Jell -O you put in a swimming pool, you still can't walk on water. For the older people in the crowd here,

VCRs do not eject peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I read through this list and I thought these people are at home working all day, these people meaning mothers, and still you say, you know, here

I am ministering and mothering to these people all day long and the Proverbs 31 woman can do it with what?

Delight. I think that's an amazing thing. Let's see if there's any other ones that I can't pass up. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes for six -year -olds.

You probably don't want to know what that odor is. The fire department in Austin has a five -minute response time.

All right. Praiseworthy women work with their hands in delight.

Number three, we've got to keep going. Look for a lady who is faithful. Look for a woman who's faithful. Now we're going to look at different areas of faithfulness.

Look for a faithful woman. Verse 11 back in Proverbs 31. Who do you want your son to marry?

Someone who fears the Lord, someone who can work, do menial things as it were with delight because they're thinking about the

Lord and they're thinking about where they providentially are. Number three, faithfulness. Verse 11, the heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain.

I think that's a good area of faithfulness. Faithful to your own husband. Pray for your son.

Instruct your sons to marry a woman who would be faithful. The heart of her husband trusts in her.

Verse 12, she does him good and not evil all the days of her life.

I love one commentary and it said this, the wife is an asset to the husband not a liability.

I've met people in this world before and in ministry where I think to myself that was a really, really bad choice that you've made, man.

And that choice was marrying your wife. And you now are yoked together to this woman for the rest of your life and you can't even trust her with your checkbook.

Now, does that mean God can't do a good work and wonderful work and all that stuff? But this kind of woman in Proverbs 31 that Lemuel is told by his mother to look for is faithful to her husband.

Faithful with everything. She's an encouragement. She's a support. And the godliness that she has been given by the

Lord flows over and her husband is a beneficiary of her godliness.

Just like if you would marry an unbeliever some of that sin would flow over as it were and here we want the opposite.

Hawkins said, quote, in a modern society that has tried to declare marriage and family useless and relics of bygone days.

Proverbs 31 stands out like a literary statue of liberty welcoming all who have tried the sociological jargon about the loose commitment and easy divorce and found it wanting.

Well, she's not just known in the gates, verse 23, her husband is known in the gates. They all know when he sits among the elders of the land.

They as it were were wishing they could be married to the woman he's married to. Proverbs 12 says an excellent wife is a crown of her husband but she who shames him is as rottenness in his bones.

Donald Blush said the model of a woman in tribal patriarchalism is a brood mare.

In hedonistic naturalism she is the bunny or plaything. In feminist ideology she is the self -sufficient career woman.

In romanticism she is the fairy princess or maiden in distress waiting to be rescued.

In biblical faith she is partner in ministry. Is that good?

And so you say, son, pick this kind of woman. Pick a woman who will be faithful to you physically obviously but faithful in every other area up and including ministry.

Don't you want your son married to a woman like that? Absolutely. Faithful to the children.

Think of Eunice and Lois faithfully preaching to Timothy. Faithful to her realm of work.

Now I'm not here to talk about is it right, ever right for a woman to work outside the home because I think it is.

Because you see this woman right here. But I will read these two verses for those of you who think

I'm falling off the deep end. Well you know I've fallen off the deep end.

It's just how far have I fallen. That's always the question around here. First Timothy chapter 5 verse 14.

I want younger women, younger widows rather to get married to bear children to what? I can just hear the scratches on the wall in the now headquarters to keep house.

That's what the text says. Titus chapter 2. What should older women teach younger women to do?

Love their husbands, love their children, to be sensible, to be pure and to be workers at home.

That's just what the text says. How about faithful to the needy verse 20. By the way we're going to see in just a minute that this worker at home still has enough energy to go outside of the home to make money.

That's not wrong. I always think of Kim's foster mother who would on Saturday nights go to the hospital to be a nurse for a shift before Sunday morning and she'd come home in the morning.

The kids would all be still sleeping and she'd make breakfast and off they'd go to church. So if you think I'm like anti -women ever working outside the home, this woman provides.

But we'll talk about that in a minute. Look at how this woman is faithful to the needy. Verse 20. She extends her hand to the poor and she stretches out her hands to the needy.

She has everything in such order that she can actually go outside the home and she can serve these needy ones.

As the mother says to Lemuel, you have to stick up for the rights of these needy people. I want you to also pick a woman who will do the same thing.

Not so focused on herself. She's not self -ish. She's selfless. That would be the kind of woman to marry.

Verse 28. Her children. What's the result of all this faithfulness? God -given of course, but she still is faithful.

God isn't faithful for her. She's faithful. What's the payoff? She gets a raise.

She gets a new career. She climbs the corporate ladder and gets stock options.

Maybe some of those are true. I don't know, but the text says something a little bit different. Her children rise up and bless her.

You can always picture that in your mind and imagine what the kids do. Her husband also. He praises her saying, many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.

You're the best. Proverbs chapter 11 says a gracious woman attains honor.

You excel them all. Same root word of the excellent woman in Proverbs 31.

Just a few more to go. Number four. Look for a lady who forgets herself.

These kind of flow into each other, but that's all right. Who forgets herself or is selfless. I've heard of that little acronym before for joy.

J -O -Y. Jesus, others, you. That's that kind of thing.

I almost said Jesus, others and me. And that would be. Oh, that's a

Hebrew word. J -O -M. It's a, it's kind of like a hard sound when you pronounce it now.

There's not a verse explicitly in Proverbs 31 that talks about selflessness, but I put it in here because what was implicit in the text, she is just serving the

Lord and other people. I went to make explicit in my little Sunday school lesson. So you just see, this is a woman who is always focused on other people.

And if you said to yourself, the second great commandment is love your neighbor as yourself.

You read Proverbs 31 and you can just see Lemuel's mother saying to him, pick a woman who loves to serve other people.

Jesus isn't on the earth. The Messiah isn't on the earth. So love the Messiah's people.

Show me a woman who's godly. And I'll show you a woman who loves the local church, who selfless at home, selfless at church.

A teacher asked a boy this question. Suppose your mother baked a pie and there were seven of you, your parents and five children.

What part of the pie would you get? The boy said a sixth. I'm afraid you don't know your fractions said the teacher.

Remember there are seven of you. Yes, teacher said the boy, but you don't know my mother. My mother would say she didn't want any pie.

All right, back to the text. I thought that was good. You guys are all sitting there, okay.

I guess you don't know my mother, you don't know my wife. Number five, look for a financially prudent lady.

Financially prudent. Verse 14.

You could say she wants to help, you could say all kinds of things. Verse 14, she is like merchant ships.

She brings her food from afar. The text says she's like merchant ships.

It doesn't say she buys enough at the mall to fill a merchant ship. I want to make sure you understand that very carefully.

She's enterprising, she's enterprising. That's what she is. That's the idea. You say, well, you know, I'm at home and I don't have enough time to go get a full -time job, this or that, but there are just ways.

She's crafty. She can make things. She can sell things. She thinks about that. Merchant ships.

Can you imagine if you were on shore and the merchant ship was arriving? You'd have as much joy and glee and happiness as people who live in island towns when they see the

Royal Caribbean pull up and they just go, this is going to be good. Verse 15.

She rises while it's still night and gives food to her husband and portions to her maidens. She goes the extra mile.

She just gets it all done. She considers a field and buys it. This is not the woman who's barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

She does other things as well. From her earnings, she plants a vineyard. She's resourceful.

She's entrepreneurial. She girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong.

Literally, she works hard. She's got a good attitude about work. She's not lazy.

You know, when I think of this kind of woman, here's the exact opposite to this woman. She's up on the latest soap opera drama.

She knows all the Oprah gifts, guests. Who has time for that?

Verse 18. She senses that her gain is good. Her lamp does not go out at night. She literally burns the midnight oil.

Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. I wouldn't use that for her, but I would say she's probably the last one to go to bed and the first one to get up.

And for that, Lemuel is to think, that's an excellent woman. She stretches out her hands to the distaff, verse 19, the thing that held wool, that staff that held the wool.

And her hands grasp the spindle. Stretching out, she's working.

She's not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. By the way, that's the best.

That's the best stuff. She doesn't go, well, you know, my kids, they just, you know, just the hand -me -downs are good enough for them.

It's the best stuff. She's a planner. They must have been living up high somewhere in Israel, up on a mountain someplace or up on a plateau because they're getting the snow here that's fairly irregular at lower altitudes.

She's busy. Could read two cloaks. Her household's clothed with double cloaks.

She makes coverings for herself, verse 22. Her clothing is fine linen and purple.

Effort, reward, faithfulness, hard worker. Verse 24, she makes linen garments and sells them and supplies belts to the tradesmen.

She's productive. She looks well to the ways of her household, verse 27, and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Show me a woman who does this and I'll show you a woman who has no time to get into trouble. Commentator Arno said, empty hours, empty hands, empty companions, empty words, empty hearts draw in evil spirits as a vacuum draws in air.

To be occupied with good is the best defense against the inroads of evil. The devil will find work for idle hands to do.

And she's busy morning, noon, and night. And she's to be praised for that. And lastly, number six, there's much more to be said.

Number six, look for a woman who fills her speech with wisdom and kindness.

How do you know what's inside a person? Answer, listen. You know what's inside of a heart when you hear them speak.

So here we listen to this woman. What kind of person would you want your son or daughter to marry?

Someone who speaks kindly and it shows that their heart is tender and kind. Verse 25, strength and dignity are her clothing.

That's neat language, isn't it? And she smiles at the future. Why? She's prepared. She's got it worked out.

Verse 26, she opens her mouth in wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

She's wise because I could probably say by inference, she has understood wisdom. She understood who the

Lord is and his word and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She's a teacher and she might not formally teach this five solos, but she's teaching as she opens her mouth and she's teaching kindness because that's on her tongue.

Not gossip, not slander, not idle talk. Friends, it is not sexist to say that men have their own problems in life, but a particular problem for women, and maybe it is because they could have idleness at home if they're not careful, is slander and gossip.

Busybodying kind of talk, that's according to the Proverbs. You want to know if a woman's got worth and value, then you say, listen to what she says.

She loves the law of kindness and she's full of love and sympathy. We don't want to be the opposite.

I'll never forget, as long as I live, we were in California and I heard Chuck Swindoll say this, so I had to look it up. It's in Killing Giants, Pulling Thorns.

Chuck talks about this gray slate New England tombstone near a churchyard.

Beneath this tombstone a lump of clay lies Arabella Young, who on the 24th of May began to hold her tongue.

That's not the Proverbs 31 woman, is it? No way. The lips of the wise spread knowledge,

Proverbs 15. Proverbs 12, anxieties in the heart of a man weighs it down, but a good word makes it glad.

That's the kind of woman that's here. You can study Proverbs 31 more, but here's the picture.

Lemuel, you're a king. Let me give you some advice. Let me pray for you. Let me tell you what to do.

I want you to think properly. Here's kind of lesson at home. Lesson number one, be sexually pure.

Lesson number two, don't get drunk. Lesson number three, stick up for people who can't be defended.

Number four, you see all the extra time spent here. By the way, this is an acrostic.

What's an acrostic? How many letters of the Hebrew alphabet? Twenty -two. This is all arranged in these 22 easy to memorize steps, 22 bits of information, kind of like the

ABCs of how to pick a good wife. Pick a good wife, and she needs to fear the

Lord. She needs to be industrious. She needs to be faithful. She needs to be the one who says, I'm here to serve, and then when you're old, you won't say that good woman is vain.

That choice was vain. You'll say, it was never fleeting. She's praiseworthy.

Bishop Taylor says this, probably capturing the sentiment of Proverbs 31, and I close. If you are for pleasure, marry.

If you prize rosy health, marry. A good wife is heaven's last best gift to a man.

His angel of mercy, minister of grace is innumerable. His gem of many virtues, his box of jewels, her voice, his sweetest music, her smiles, his brightest day, her kiss, the guardian of innocence, her arms, the pail of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life, her industry, her surest wealth, his economy, his safest steward, her lips, his faithful counselors, and her prayers, the ablest advocates of heaven's blessing on his head.

If you're not married, you need a Proverbs 31 woman, don't you? And if you've got one, you ought to be very, very blessed, and you ought to feel very lucky.

Just kidding. You've just seen Dan Rathman. What did he just say? You ought to say,

God, thank you for such a wife. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for the word today.

I thank you for these dear saints who have come and who have desired to learn and grow, and I pray for the women here that you'd help them to become more like Proverbs 31 women.

I pray for the men here that you'd help foster such a relationship where those women can grow into what you want them to be,

Lord. I pray for those who are single, maybe 10 or 12, 15, maybe young adults, 20, 25,

I pray that you would guide them into the paths of a wise woman, a wise spouse.

And Lord, that they would trust in you, and if you've given them salvation, you'd give them every other good thing. Help them to be patient, help them to wait, especially if they're men,

Lord, help them to look, to be on the, I don't want to say aggressive, but just be the ones who are initiating.

And Lord, we just ask that you'd bless our time now as we get together soon for corporate worship, the blessing of the word preached through Pastor Dave, and to thank you for loving us enough to tell us the truth and giving us