We are going to do something fun in between our series on Acts and our Advent series on Ruth. We are going to look at Proverbs and Song of Solomon first. We have to remember that Solomon, who curated all and wrote many of the Proverbs and wrote Song of Solomon, was also Ruth’s great-grandson. These books were not written in a vacuum. They actually inform each other quite a bit. Now, in a perfect world, I would walk through Ruth first and then do this, but I’m going to keep Ruth where it is for Advent and hope this gets us ready for that series. So, today we will be looking at Proverbs 31. 

How many of you have heard a sermon or gone through a Bible Study on Proverbs 31? If you’re honest, how many women feel like this chapter has been used against you? Far too often, you will hear a Bible study teacher or even a pastor walk through this passage to show married women what they need to be, young men what kind of wife they should be looking for, and single women the prerequisites for finding a husband. They need to be like this woman in Proverbs 31. 

The problems with this are many. First, this wasn’t written to women, but to young royal men. So we have an audience issue. Second, we have a context problem. This ‘woman’ isn’t a real woman. Solomon is writing this for royal princes in the 9th century BC. So, this woman, who we call Lady Wisdom, is actually wisdom personified in the most attractive possible way to these young men: The perfect wife. The purpose of this passage isn’t to put the spotlight on the woman, but to put the spotlight on wisdom. This is why all through Proverbs you see this contrast between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. Don’t run after the adulterous Lady Folly who will not bless you. Run after Lady Wisdom who will. 

Third, even if you didn’t know anything about the audience or context, just read what this woman does! I mean, she’s perfect. If you are a married woman, you only have to read this passage one time to feel totally under the pile. This wife wakes up before the sun is up to make food for her husband and all their servants. She stays up all night making merchandise to sell the next morning. She is both a night owl and an early bird! What’s wrong with you women? I asked Angela if there was anything I should know about a Proverbs 31 wife and she responded, “Just that you haven’t found her yet!” 

I mean, if you read all this woman does, it makes you wonder what in the world the husband did? I picture this super lazy guy watching tv as the wife makes the food, the wife makes the clothes, the wife earns the money, and the wife deals with the kids. The passage starts by saying, “An excellent wife, who can find?” I wanted to title this sermon, “Seriously, who can find her? And what stimulant is she on?”

Whoever is going to argue that this is a real woman still has to deal with the fact that all the verbs in this passage are in the past tense. That means that even if you are going to say this is a real woman who really could do all these things, you can’t say that she did these things on a daily, weekly or even yearly basis. The best you can do is say that she did these things during different seasons of her life. It would be like someone praising my wife in her 80s and saying, “Angela was so great. She stayed at home with four kids, she discipled an army of women, she was an accomplished writer, she made the family extra money as a counselor, she maintained a beautiful garden, and traveled the country speaking to couples about marriage.” Well, yes, technically those would all be true, but in very different seasons of life. That’s why all the verbs are in the past tense. If you didn’t understand that, this statement would make her out to be some sort of super woman. 

The point of this passage is to show how incredible Lady Wisdom is. Proverbs is about seeking wisdom and this passage is saying to a young man, you should desire wisdom the way you would desire this kind of wife. And wisdom is even better. In the words of Robert Jackson, “Think about how weird it would be to have a whole book about seeking wisdom that concludes with “Now go marry Wonderwoman.” This is Solomon’s last and greatest plea to embrace wisdom. True wisdom begins with principles, but ends with love. So, I want to use this passage the way it was intended to be used. I want to look at the beauty of Lady Wisdom, then see what she means for us. 

1. The beauty of wisdom

We are told a few things about the beauty of wisdom. First, we are told that wisdom is valuable. 10  4 uAn excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than vjewels. Why are jewels precious? Because you can buy things with them. You can gain security through them. Jewels can give you houses, vacations, and good clothes. Imagine a spouse so great that you wouldn’t trade all the jewels in the world for her. That’s how great Lady Wisdom is. 

And when you have wisdom, you can use it to purchase things in this life and the next that no earthly jewel could ever purchase. You can purchase emotional and spiritual security that jewels can’t purchase. You can purchase decision making skills that will bless you and those around you. You can purchase praise from those who know you. You can purchase the ability to be a good father or a good mother. Verse 11 says that you can purchase a spouse who trusts you. Verse 12 says you can purchase the ability to do good to those around you and not harm them. You see people with this long line of collateral damage in their life. Wisdom can purchase you the ability to not live that kind of life. You can purchase the ability to sober up. You can purchase the ability to forgive and love more deeply. You can purchase the ability to sleep with a clean conscience at night. Jewels cannot do any of those things which makes wisdom so much more valuable. 

Second, wisdom blesses her household. Verses 13-18 talk about how Lady Wisdom blesses a family financially. She works hard, but she also works willingly. She makes things the family can sell. She brings in expensive and exotic food from far off. Getting food from other countries used to be a big deal. I know it’s lost on us when we can hit a few buttons on our phone and have food from anywhere in the world show up at our door. But imagine living in ancient Israel and your wife shows up with Egyptian food.  That’s something!

Lady Wisdom rises early in the morning and blesses you before you even get up. She works during the day buying and selling things. She buys a field and then plants that field herself and makes money off that field. She has servants, but still does manual labor! Imagine your wife coming to you and saying, “Hey, just so you know. I bought a corporation today and reorganized it and it’s now making us $10,000 a month... What did you do today sweety?” 

Verse 17 says she dresses herself in strength. She isn’t taken advantage of and will protect you in every way. Then, at night once you go to sleep, she keeps on working and making money for you all night long. Verse 18 says her lamp does not go out at night. You have to sleep. You need breaks, but she doesn’t. Lady Wisdom puts the well being of her household ahead of herself. The point is that wisdom blesses you when you wake up, as you work, when you go to bed, and as you sleep.

Not only does Lady Wisdom bless her household, she blesses her community. Verse 20 says she helps the poor and needy in the community. People don’t hurt or lack when she is there. We have already seen that she protects those in her household from the danger of other people, now in verse 21 we see that she offers protection from the cold weather and the snow because of the quality of the clothing she has made. 

Lady Wisdom brings honor to those who embrace her. That’s why verse 23 says 23  Her husband is known in gthe gates when he sits among the elders of the land. Just knowing her and being in a relationship with her makes this man known in the gates where the most important discussions take place. Anyone who embraces her can’t help but grow in esteem in your city. 

Verse 26 says she is kind and caring 26  She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She only wants the best for those around her and she works to lift them up and restore them. Can you think of a more attractive person than Lady Wisdom? If it’s weird for you women to think of Lady Wisdom as attractive, think of her as Sir Wisdom. Take all the great qualities and personify them in the perfect man. So, how can we have this person? Once we understand that Lady Wisdom is not a real wife, we can ask where does wisdom find its fullest expression? Jesus! Who works for you around the clock while you are asleep? Jesus. Who offers you something more valuable than jewels? Jesus. Who works hard that you might be blessed? Jesus. Who changes the way we think and the things we desire? Jesus. Who takes on a burden that you might be praised in the gate? Jesus. 

Lady Wisdom points us to the truest manifestation of wisdom: Jesus. Only in Jesus are we blessed in every possible way. Wisdom brings flourishing to every part of life. Financial flourishing because of prudence, hard work, and integrity. Emotional flourishing because of a clear conscience. Spiritual flourishing because in Jesus, we have been reunited with the God we were created for. Jesus took on the shame of God’s wrath on the cross that we might be praised by God at the eternal gates. Only Jesus restores us where we need it the most. 

All the blessings of this Lady Wisdom are offered to us in Jesus Christ. What we must do is accept him. Give him our life, give him our heart, give him our trust and let him bless us the way he wants to. And when we do, the tone of Proverbs 31 shifts dramatically from do more to look what I have done for you. 

This is the climactic ending to the book. Solomon’s great plea to embrace wisdom. That is the main point. Will you embrace Lady Wisdom in Jesus Christ? Now that that is clear, what does Lady Wisdom mean for us? 

1. What she means for us. 

First, it does inform earthly marriage. We should be wise in who we choose to marry. Angela and I were at a Weekend to Remember marriage conference last weekend and we both talked to people who were not wise in who they chose to marry and that has created significant issues down the road. Now they are working to apply wisdom to an unwise marriage. 

Second, it shows us the power for wisdom. What makes this Lady Wisdom so desirable? The reason she is so desirable isn’t because she is kind, strong, valuable, and industrious. She is desirable because she fears the Lord. That is the source of her power. Verse 30, 30  lCharm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fearing God means loving him enough to fully submit to his will for our lives and no one has ever done this more than Jesus. So, fearing the Lord for us means repenting of our sin and running to Jesus. And when we do, the result is that we are filled with the Holy Spirit. 

When Ivey was in kindergarten, I was asked to come to her chapel service at school and teach about the Holy Spirit. So, I got there early and tied apples and oranges to a tree outside. I took them all out there and showed them that they had an apple/orange tree growing out there. They all told me I was wrong because they don’t grow apples or oranges in Mississippi and they certainly don’t grow on the same tree. But, I said, “Well, this tree has both. How can it not be a real apple/orange tree?” And one brilliant young kindergartener said, “Because the fruit is not connected to the source.” Well, I couldn’t have set this talk up better. Exactly! We can try and act like we are patient or gentle, but if we aren’t connected to the source, it won’t be real. The fruit will die and we will be tired and joyless. But, when we are connected to the source, the Holy Spirit, we will be a tree that will naturally grow love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control. That is our power for wisdom and it comes from fearing the Lord. 

Now, bringing the last two ideas together, when I was in college ministry, I was often asked by men and women, what they should look for in a spouse. Another way to ask this is how does wisdom lead you to make a good decision in that area of life? Well, in Proverbs 31, we see the prioritizing of three qualities: charm, beauty, and fear of the Lord. Charm isn’t a bad thing, but if someone is charming enough, that charm could prevent you from seeing that he or she doesn’t have the most important thing. That’s why this verse says that charm is deceitful. Beauty is fine, but whatever beauty any of us have in our youth, it’s going away. That’s what this word ‘vain’ means. Beauty is futile. Some translations say beauty is fleeting because the best case scenario is that you grow old together with your wrinkly skin, fake teeth, and redistribution of hair growth. There has to be something more substantive than beauty and charm to build a marriage. Marriage has to have a stronger foundation than that. And that is why the verse contrasts those qualities with something far better: The fear of the Lord. That’s what you're looking for. If you get the other two, then that’s icing on the cake, but charm and beauty alone will not make for a lasting marriage. 

Third, we can see the marriage that we will all take part in.  Marriage is a main theme throughout the Bible. There is a marriage at the beginning of the Bible and there is a marriage at the end of the Bible. God actually uses marital language often to talk about His relationship to His people. You could rightly say that the Bible is a book about marriage. That’s why Solomon personifies wisdom as an incredible woman, tells you to seek her, and concludes with saying, “Don’t just take her for a time, wife that woman.” Marriage displays the sort of permanent lifelong all-in kind of commitment that God offers His people and desires from his people. 

I believe that much of the backlash the church is getting about the confusion of sexual identities is at least partly our fault. We in the church have elevated earthly marriage to the pinnacle of importance when it is not. And now that we have elevated marriage as high as it is, well, then it has become a basic human right. And when it is a right, it is an identity issue. Who we marry in this life is not an identity issue. But, what that marriage points us to, as Paul has already said, is an identity issue. 

If you look at the end of the Bible story, you see in Revelation 19 the wedding of all weddings. The marriage of all marriages. Jesus’ marriage to his great love, his treasured possession, his Bride: the church. I say this in almost every wedding I perform…you could say that God’s purpose in this world is to bring His wayward church to a wedding so rich and so intimate that the only way to describe it is to point to the love of a Bride and Groom on their wedding night and say...there...something like that!... is the way Jesus loves His church. 

Lady Wisdom is calling us to that wedding. Lady Wisdom is calling us to Jesus. This call is what caused Paul to overflow in worship of God in Romans 11. Paul was overwhelmed that God allowed the Jews to be saved in spite of their conventional wisdom that made them think they could be saved by their law keeping. Paul was also overwhelmed that God allowed the gentiles to be saved in spite of their pursuit of worldly wisdom. Both groups put their faith in Christ who is the wisdom of God. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now5 receive mercy. 32 For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! - Rom 11:30b-33

None of us deserve this, but we are still invited. The invitation isn’t to live up to this Proverb 31 standard, but to delight in wisdom and to delight in Jesus and this is exactly what we are going to see in Ruth. In the original Hebrew order of the Bible, you would finish Proverbs 31 and turn the page to Ruth. And you will see the exact same words. You’ll see the same word for Lady Folly and the same words for Lady Wisdom. Solomon knew what he was doing and that is what we are going to see in Ruth. But you’ll have to come back to see how:) 

The point is that none of us deserve Lady Wisdom. None of us will find her or become her on our own. But if we see who she points to, we will find a love greater than any spouse could ever give us. And He will give honor to all who embrace Him. None of us deserve Him, but we are still invited. True wisdom begins with principles and ends with love.