Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Hot there and we’ll move pretty quickly through this. It’ll be mostly an overview of what I’m going to say this morning. I wanted to start with courses for the godly wife from Titus 2:3-5. And you’ll notice when we read there that the aged women are to translate or transfer as it were godliness in terms of attitudes and also in terms of actions to the next generation of young women. Now that’s a pretty important verse to think about.

We’re going to talk beginning next week about some limitations on the family. We’re going to talk next week about children. Can we raise godly children? How many children should we have? And some limitations that are inherent in the family’s ability to raise godly children. And several weeks, we’ll go through a couple of other messages prior to the next talk on the family. And that talk will be dealing at the limitation of divorce.

And we’ll talk about the biblical principles relative to divorce. And then finally, we’ll talk about the limitations of the family and relationship to the church. And I bring that up now because this verse really, we’ll talk about it again there. But it’s interesting that what you’ve got is women in the church who aren’t necessarily mothers to these young women, growing up, transferring the faith to them as it were.

And remember Paul told Timothy to take the things that he had taught Timothy to entrust them to faithful men who would entrust them to other men. And so the transmission belt as it were is from Christian to Christian and not always from mother to daughter. Now it’s best we can have both those combined. Of course, if some of these older women in this particular church and Titus was going to minister in were probably related to the younger women as well.

But my point is that the scriptures go out of their way here to say that one of the responsibilities of older women in congregations is to take it upon themselves to teach the younger women what being a wife and a godly woman is all about. And so we can look at these just real briefly as courses of instruction. And if at a church we have older women who are going to teach the younger women, they could go right through the things that I’ve listed out in your outline and have a course of instruction for those women.

First, they’d want to teach the wife to love their family. And there’s two things involved there. One, to love their husbands and the second to love their children. And the list starts with love of family. It may not seem to start with love of family, but when it says there in the King James version that they teach the young women to be sober, that being sober is part of the teaching process. We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes, but the root of that is to have a sound mind.

And the idea is the older women are to teach the younger women to have a sound mind and be under the control of the scriptures. And then it goes out and lists the things that exhibit that sound mindedness. And the first thing is the love of husbands and the love of children. And this is a command to wives as well as to husbands to love each other. It’s not something that occurs naturally. Now, sometimes it may be seen as natural when we forget what biblical love is, but remember 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is action.

Most of the things in 1 Corinthians 13 are actions that we exhibit one toward the other. And so, love is to be seen as a series of commitments involving your will, your volition to another person for their well-being. The scriptures tell us also in the New Testament that love is the fulfilling of the law. And so, if you’re going to love your neighbor, you have to understand what the law says about how you’re supposed to relate to your neighbor.

And that finds your love. And so there are volitional acts of the will that we have to perform in terms of our mate. Here specifically the wife is to love her husband. Love is important because love is the foundation of everything else. Remember Paul said that if I can speak with the tongue of angels but I don’t have love I don’t have anything. Okay? I’m a clanging cymbal. And so love is important to be the starting place of the husband wife relationship.

And the wife must be committed to the husband and must be committed to the children, covenantally bound to them and covenantally pledging herself for their well-being and to help them as much as possible. And that love should take place not just in words, but it all should take place in examples. And so we’ll see in a couple of minutes here that one way to love your daughters, to love your children, is for a godly wife to teach her child, her daughter.

Proverbs 31:10-31 to teach her what that means. It’s certainly not love for a child to give her a lot of affection and yet not teach her what the word of God says will do her, will make her into a godly wife when she grows up to maturity. And so part of that is by instruction and part of that is also by example. The wife should exhibit the characteristics of Proverbs 31:10-31 to her children.

Okay. So love of children is a course that should be taught to young wives by older women in the church.

Second is soundness of mind. And as we said before that’s kind of the root of the whole training process. What it means is to be discreet. That’s what it says in the King James version, to be discreet. That word we’ve talked about in weeks past comes from two words: being sound of mind, sound-minded, and it has the idea of controlling everything. You know, your mind is supposed to be sensible. So, you have to put a control upon what you are. Discretion is a good way to think of this term—it means to be discreet, to have discretion relative to whatever affairs you’re involved with and be under the control of God. To bridle yourself. So, the older women are to teach the younger women to bridle themselves in terms of the relationship to their family to come under the yoke as it were of that particular responsibility that God has called them into.

Thomas Taylor who was a Puritan who wrote in 1619 said of this particular course of training that discretion is the watchman and the moderator of the mind keeping and guarding it from unlawful pleasures and in lawful pleasures curbing and cutting off abuses and excesses. Okay, that’s being sound minded. Taylor said it was that discretion was the watcher over the affections of the heart and over the affairs of the life.

And that’s a good thing to keep in mind. It’s kind of a term that describes her relationship to all of her life. She [is] strong minded. Proverbs 16:32 says that he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he who captures a city. To rule your spirit is to have discretion. Okay? To have a check and a guard against affections or against your actions as well. And the result of that is that you’re more—it’s you’re better than the one who captures a city.

If we’re going to talk about taking dominion and wanting to rule the world for God’s purposes, we must start with ruling ourselves under the auspices of the Holy Spirit. So discretion is something that the godly wife has to have.

Third, she needs of course purity of life. It’s said by some commentators if you take the first three things we’ve talked about—the love of husbands, the love of children and you add moderation—what we end up with then is chastity. Okay, moral chastity, moral uprightness, moral cleanness is what’s being talked about here. James 3:17 says that the wisdom that cometh from above is first pure. And that’s the same word here, chaste. Okay. And that’s important to recognize because again it ties into Proverbs 31. Proverbs 31 will describe the wise wife and the wise wife starts with chastity and purity and wisdom from God has that element to it.

So she needs a course in purity of life. She also needs a course in home economics. The next phrase says that the older women are to teach the younger women to be keepers at home. Okay, that’s real important. Taylor again said that homekeeping is chastity’s best keeper. Okay. So to keep to one’s home is a good help to becoming and staying chaste in one’s life as well. Now this is important little verse because many people will look at Proverbs 31 which we’re going to look at in a couple of minutes and say well that was a particular cultural manifestation of the godly wife.

The fact that she worked out of her home primarily and they say that today with our new technology and everything wives should be working outside of the home. But see this passage says specifically in the new Testament context of a society in which many wives did work outside the home. Okay, it says specifically that the wife should be a keeper at home. She should be domesticated in that sense. The home is her realm.

And we’ll see that develop very well in Proverbs 31. But it’s important to recognize that God says here that older women should teach younger women a very important course that they should be keepers at home. That’s where they’re primarily supposed to be involved with is their home, the place of their family. The home is the place of the wife’s domain. And as I said, this will get more obvious when we get to Proverbs 31.

It said that the road away from home is the highway that leads to being a busybody. For instance, 1 Timothy 5:13, it says that women learn to be idle. So they go about from house to house and not merely idle, but gossip and busybodies, talking about things that are not proper to mention. And so 1 Timothy 5:13 says, “If a woman isn’t homeminded, as it were, and goes about house to house, one of the sins she easily falls into is idleness and the other one is being a busybody.”

Taylor again said that those who are most idle in their own duties are most busy in other men’s. Women that don’t stay close to home as it were. Women that continually go about and visit other women and don’t stay busy with what they’re doing in their home sphere frequently have open ears, not in the proper sense of circumcised ears to God’s word, but open ears to hear gossip and then loose tongues to spread that gossip around.

Proverbs 7:11 says that the woman who does not remain at home is a description of the harlot who is described as boisterous and rebellious. Now that’s the word of God and the word of God says specifically that the woman is to be characterized as being somebody who keeps to home primarily. That’s where her focus of attention is.

The next course that’s to be taught to the godly younger women is kindness. And it’s important to add kindness into all these other virtues that have been talked about so far. From this passage love of husband, love of children, doing their wanting the best for them, moderating that with discretion and then with chastity and keeping it home. You want to be sure you add on the virtue of kindness there. It says goodness in the King James version. The proper more proper translation for that particular word is kindness.

And to add kindness onto all these other attributes so that she may be kind in her attitudes to her household and to the other relationships she has. Ephesians 5:9 says that kindness is specifically a fruit of the spirit. And that’s important to remember as well. Love for the family—remember that our love is the love that the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our heart. You can’t love your family unless you’ve experienced the love of the Holy Spirit in your life.

He sheds that love abroad in your heart so that you can then translate it to others. To have discretion, to be under control is the specific work of the Holy Spirit. Remember, we’re not to be controlled by wine, for instance, by our own passions. We’re to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. We’re to be discreet in terms of being gifted by the Holy Spirit for that discretion. And chastity comes from above.

We just read that from James. So all these characteristics, these courses have a reliance upon the Holy Spirit. And we’re going to emphasize that again toward the end of the message.

And then finally, there’s a course necessary for the wife to understand, and that is submission to the authority that God has in his providence placed over her. And I won’t belabor the point, but we said we’ve talked about that a lot over the last couple of weeks.

And we said that we’re all people under authority, as it were. We all have people that we that we report to. And that those spheres of authority are laid out by God and his providence to order the world. And so when we yield to the authorities that are over us, unless he would of course cause us to obey, disobey a command of God’s. But when we properly yield obedience to the authorities over us, we’re yielding submission to God ultimately.

Remember that in 1 Peter a slave was yielding submission as Jesus had yielded submission, which was ultimately to God, the just judge of all people, the God who judges justly and who cares for us. So submission to authority is based upon submission to God and his providence in the affairs of men. Okay. Those are the courses, a set of intellectual courses we could lay out for the older women to teach the younger women.

And now we’re going to look at a picture of what the effect of all that would have be. And that picture is found in Proverbs 31:10-31. This is the second part then of our talk. And it’s a portrait of a godly wife.

Now, Proverbs 31:10-31 is laid out with each verse beginning with a letter from the Hebrew alphabet so that the entire alphabet is spelled out. Now, that’s kind important to keep in mind. And I think one of the reasons that’s important to keep in mind is because that means that this probably was written in this fashion.

One reason God did this was so that it could be easily memorized. Proverbs 31:10-31 were words taught to Lemuel by his mother. Now, we don’t know who Lemuel is. The word in the Hebrew has the connotations of being dedicated to God. We don’t know if it’s a specific personage. Maybe yes, maybe no. Some people think it was another word for another reference to Solomon. It’s really speculative to go much beyond what we have in the scriptures here.

But the point is that this was taught from his mother. Okay? And so it’s probably taught through memorization. I guess what I’m saying here is that again, I’d stress that one of the things you really ought to consider strongly if you’re a mother of a daughter is to have that daughter memorize Proverbs 31:10-31. Now, we have Greek, we don’t know Hebrew, of course, and so the alphabetic structure of it doesn’t help us much, but I found out this morning that Patty [P.] has a copy of these verses that somebody has paraphrased a little bit so that each verse starts with the first letter of the English alphabet A B C etc.

And so that’s a useful memorization device and I’m sure if you ask Patty she can give you a copy of that.

Okay so Proverbs 31:10-31 is an important passage of scripture. Really gives the picture of the godly wife. It’s specifically given for a parent to have their children understand what’s required of a godly wife, okay? To a man who would seek a wife eventually, and also of course to the women that are going to be those wives.

They should understand these characteristics. In passing, I’d note that maybe Job 29 would be a similar chapter that you might want to teach your young men as they grow up. Job 29 for a picture of the godly man and his influence on society. Okay, we’re just going to go through Proverbs 31:10-31 through each set of verses here in couplets and we’ll talk about a little bit, then we’ll draw some conclusions at the end of this process.

First verse 10, who can find a virtuous woman for her price is far above rubies. We’re going to talk more about the virtuous woman at the end of the talk. I think it’s a key to this entire picture, but we’ll leave it to the end to kind of wrap it all up. But suffice it to say that you cannot find a virtuous woman if you don’t look for one. Okay? And so, the important thing to remember here for single men and for young men growing up is you’re to look for this kind of wife.

Otherwise, you’re not going to find this kind of wife. The fact that her price is far above rubies should bring to mind for most of us who’ve been here the last couple of weeks, 1 Peter 3, remember that it said there the woman who was submissive with the meek and quiet heart before God that her she had great she would that these gifts of God were of great price in God’s sight. And remember we contrasted that last week with 1 Timothy where it talked of 1 Timothy 2 where it talks about the costly adornments of a woman being of dubious value in the sight of God.

But contrasted to the apparel that might cost a lot of money. The same Greek term is used when it says that God places high value on the woman who is submissive and has the quiet and meek spirit. Okay. So, that should bring to mind that should be brought to mind at this particular verse because again God is saying her price is far above rubies and this is God’s system of valuation is what we’re talking about here.

And as we go through these characteristics, if you’re a man, you should be conforming your value system of your wife, or of a future mate for yourself according to this picture. Okay, again this is God’s value system we’re supposed to be conforming ourselves to.

Verse 11, the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her so that he shall have no need of spoil. In verse 12, she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

This speaks of course to the wife’s relationship to her husband. Now it says in verse 11 that the husband doth safely trust in her. This is pretty fascinating verse. It may not seem to be at first, but the word for trust here is a very strong term. It doesn’t mean belief in the sense of trying to believe something about someone. It more is a natural sort of trusting based upon that person’s constancy in doing what’s correct.

The root word of this word trust has the idea of firmness or solidity. There are other words that could have been used here that would have been a little bit more tenuous in their application. But the husband who has the godly wife has complete and total trust in that wife. That’s the point of this verse. Okay? It infers a sense of well-being and security on the part of the husband as a result of having someone to place total confidence in.

It’s not volitional is what I’m saying here. It comes as a matter of course because of the constancy of the person that you’re putting the trust in. It shouldn’t require work is what I’m saying for the husband to trust in his wife. If she is this godly Proverbs wife, he will trust in her.

He trusts in her and so he has no need of spoil. He has no need to seek other sorts of value because he has a wife there whose value is far above the price of rubies and so he can trust in that wife and not need to go look elsewhere for value.

Now the reason I say this is an incredible passage because this is the only place I believe in the Old Testament where trust in a person is actually commended by God. Usually when this specific Hebrew word is used. It’s contrasting putting your trust in things other than God to putting your trust in God. Okay? So, don’t trust in horses, trust in God. Don’t trust in your might, trust in God. Don’t trust another man.

They’re going to disappoint you. Trust in God. This is the only verse where it’s used in relationship for one person, trusting another person in a positive and commendatory sense. You see how important the wife is to the husband. That’s the point of this verse. The husband can and should be able to have this kind of total trust in his wife. She’s his complement. Remember we talked about that when we started this whole series out that Eve was the complement to Adam, the thing that makes him whole as it were, a helpmate, but more than that, the complement to him.

And she is vitally important to his well-being. And when he has a good helpmate, the perfect fit as it were, what the Hebrew words imply in Genesis, the perfect fit, then he can trust in that fit. Okay? Because it’s part of him now. He can trust in her to do right because of her constancy and well-being.

The wife is absolutely vital for the husband’s well-being and that’s going to be developed as we go through here as well.

I thought about this last week that a couple of examples came up that I can’t share with you because they’re personal and involve people in the church that maybe wouldn’t want me to use this example. But the point was in both these examples the husband had received advice from the wife and the husband had kind of not listened to the advice. Supposedly, the wife thought that she wasn’t going to listen to him.

But then, as I found out later, the husband did actually take his wife’s advice and repeated that to other people that he was going to do this particular sort of thing. I’m one of these husbands, by the way. So, I guess I can’t tell you about my particular case.

The point is this. The wife may frequently give the husband advice. The wife may not realize the husband’s going to take that advice, but you should—you should I’m guess I’m just urging constancy on the part of the wife here to continue to give her husband godly instruction. He may well receive that instruction at a later time.

With myself, a lot of times my personal pride says, uh I think I gave my wife for instance an editorial to read that I wrote and she always marks them up pretty good and I always say well that’s silly. Everybody knows what this means and but then when she goes away I change it you know and pride flares up first but then sensibility and the spirit of God by God’s grace returns to me and I realize that she’s there for a purpose.

And husbands realize that she’s there to help you in what you’re doing. You can trust her because she’s God’s selection for your helpmate. You’re fit. Okay? And it’s important that you recognize that you’re not independent. You’re dependent upon your wife. And this husband is dependent on his wife. And so he must trust in her. Okay?

The wife rules, and we’ll see this continue as we go through this proverb. The wife rules the household when the husband isn’t there. It’s a beautiful picture in this proverb of a faithful wife and a confiding husband.

This reminded me also of our return from California last month and what a beautiful thing it was to come back and to see all the wives there at the airport and the reconciliation of the families after we’ve been gone for four or five days. And it really it’s kind of I never really have taken the opportunity publicly to thank all the wives that came out for welcoming the husbands back in California, but it was a it was a very good thing for you to do.

I know many of you had to take some make some personal sacrifices to come out and greet us. But it really was encouraging to all of us, I’m sure, to come back and see our faithful wives there with our children that they had taken care of in our absence. And that faithfulness means that the men that went knew they could come back and trust that their household had been run well during the four or five days of their absence because they have faithful wives who are exercising dominion in the household.

That’s the sort of picture here. The husband trusts in his wife and she does that because she does him good and not evil always all the days of her life. Okay.

Verse 13. She seeks wool and flax and works willingly with her hands. There’s an old Arabic proverb that a clever woman is never without wool. The idea wasn’t that she would always find wool. The idea was that she had wool and she’d never be without it. She’d always be working on it wherever she was. Okay? And so this wife is seen as diligently working with her hands flax and wool. It reminded me of, you know, some of us in our bathrooms have reading material. Okay? I suppose maybe I shouldn’t bring that as an example up, but it’s a good one because you want to make the most of your time and whatever you’re going to be doing, you want to be able to read and improve yourself in whatever you’re doing.

And so, the godly wife is seen as always working willingly with her hands, wool, and flax, always occupied for God. Okay? Resting in the work that he’s given her to do. This verse really talks about two things. The first is initiative. You notice it says she seeks wool and flax. She doesn’t wait for somebody to bring wool and flax toward her. If the husband doesn’t provide it, she doesn’t say, “Well, I guess I can’t do anything.

He doesn’t provide me wool and flax.” She goes out and actively seeks wool and flax. She has initiative. Okay? When Abraham sent his servant to look for a wife for Isaac, remember the servant prayed to God and said, “Well, now here’s the sign I’d like to have happen. When I asked for a drink of water, may the wife that is Isaac’s wife, may she say, ‘Well, I’ll give you water and I’ll also give your camels water as well.’” See, he wanted a sign from God that was the right woman, but he used a sign that showed initiative on the part of the woman.

He asked for a drink of water and she said, “Well, I’ll give you water your camels, too.” Politeness and initiative was shown by her. And that’s the kind of wife that the Proverbs woman is. She goes out of her way. She seeks wool and flax. I’ll use another song reference here, but I’ll use a little tamer one. My kids have a videotape of Dumbo and it’s a Disney presentation. In this particular presentation, there’s several cartoons.

One is Amber at the sheepish line, which I’ve talked about before, which is a kind of an interesting picture of the church, I think, the sheepish line, and then finally wakes up. But anyway, to introduce these couple of cartoons, there’s a song that says, “It’s what you do with what you’ve got, that pays off in the end.” And Dumbo had ears, which were a bad thing, but he finally saw they were a good thing because he could fly with them.

And there’s truth to that, of course, but this woman doesn’t wait, doesn’t use just what she has. She goes out and seeks things to make clothing and garments out of. Okay, so she has initiative and secondly she has industry as well. It says that she willingly she works willingly with her hands. And the word here willingly means to delight in doing this work. She doesn’t do the work because she has to get the thing done for her family by the end of that day.

She works because she wants to. She has delight in doing work with her hands that God has given her to do. And you know what she’s doing here? She’s taking raw materials and she’s making something out of them. The way that God shows us that’s what we’re to do with life. We’re to take, for instance, Adam was to take the garden. And he was to cultivate it, nourish it. And so, she was to take raw materials and make something out of it, beautify it, heavenize it.

Okay? We’ve talked about that idea throughout the scriptures. That’s what we’re here for in large sense. To take what God has given to us and to develop it for his glory. Okay? There’s potentiality in things. We’re to develop that potentiality. And she sees that. She understands that. And so, she delights in that task in taking the wool and flax and making beautiful things out of them. Okay, she knows it’s God’s work and that it’s recreative work after God’s creative work of providing the wool and the flax and it’s a good thing and she delights in that.

Nehemiah 1:11 says that the one who delights in revering God’s name is the one who gets his prayers answered. Okay, there you delight in doing what brings praise to God’s name. Yeah, I didn’t read that last part of the verse from Titus, but the end of that course of instruction was that the wife wouldn’t blaspheme God. Okay? That God would not be blasphemed by her in inactivity in these particular courses that we talked about earlier.

You see, there’s a connection here between doing this work with one’s hands and bringing glory to God’s name, making sure that it’s not blasphemed.

Verse 14, she’s like the merchant ship. She brings her food from afar. This verse is a little bit problematic. Various people have different interpretations of it. The best I could come up with, and you have a better one, please tell me during the question and answer time.

But the best I can come up with in this is that the merchant ships brings to one shore what’s lacking in that particular country. Okay? If you have it there, you don’t need the merchant ship to bring it toward you. Well, the wife here is said to bring her food from afar. So, whatever is lacking in terms of what she grows for her household in their garden and whatever is lacking in terms of what’s necessary to feed her household good things from God, she goes out and gets them through the work.

The work that’s being talked about here is productive work, and it results in increase to her and she uses that increase to obtain food from her family. And so she’s compared to a merchant ship that makes up what’s lacking with her own industry. Okay? And so she brings her family’s food from afar.

Verse 15, she riseth also while there’s yet night and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens.

Now, before you get too scared here, wives, realize that from what I understand in this particular part of the world where this these things apply to specifically in the context was Israel in that area of course that in that particular part of the world the day and the night are about equal length about 12 hours okay and so this doesn’t mean that she gets up in the middle of the night necessarily probably 5:00 would have suffice to say she got up while it was yet night and got working you know there’s the old proverb early to bed early to rise makes a men healthy wealthy and wise and so she is that she gets up she’s diligent to get up and not to lay in bed late into the morning she gets up and does things and providing for her household.

She does specifically two things. First, she feeds she feeds the household proper. And by that, I mean that she’s probably talking about her husband and the children. And then she gives the portion to the maidens. And this specific the second half of that, the portion to the maidens probably indicates portioning out them their daily duties for the day. She gives them the portion of what they’re to do for the day.

It could mean that she gives food to them as well. And both of these pictures, the one of the provident wife or the one of the managerial wife, are both supported by other pictures from this portrait. So, I’m not too concerned which way you look at that. But the point is that she is provident. She provides for her household and she’s also managerial.

She portions out tasks to her servants. Now she would, it says she gets up early before while it’s yet night. But recognize of course that God gives the righteous blessing even while he sleeps. That’s from the Psalms, of course, Psalm 127, 128. And so, the indication isn’t here that she never sleeps and she’s always working. There’s another verse that might you might think that’s the case. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes, but it’s not really what’s being said here.

What’s being stressed is she gets up early to do the day’s work to get going on that day’s tasks. She would probably sleep very well because the scriptures say that the man who is wise and obeys God’s law has blessed sleep from him.

Charles Spurgeon—whose dates were 1834 to 1892—wrote a commentary in the book of Proverbs that Spurgeon said was his favorite commentary on Proverbs and he made a good observation of this particular verse when he said that she goes before her servants in diligence no less than in dignity. It’s a good principle to follow. She goes before her servants in diligence no less than dignity. And that’s a good verse also for us husbands to remember, isn’t it? If we expect to have dignity received that we receive from our wives, we should go before our wives in diligence. And the same thing at the wives in terms of the children. She leads the pack as it were. They go into the day’s work. She prepares them.

She manages them. And she takes them into the day.

Verses 16 and 17. She considers a field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength and strengthens her arms. She considereth a field. And the word here means to plan, to uh have discretion in terms of purchases here is implied. She’s no impulse shopper. Okay, she plans very carefully the purchase of this field.

The picture is one of careful planning and consideration. In other words, the wife is a wise steward of the money that she is going to spend. Whether that money is her own money or is provided by her husband or as a result of her labors is not important for us. What’s important is and stressed here is that she wisely handles that money. She doesn’t rush into purchases. She has intelligence and wisdom to Consider these things.

Proverbs the first eight proverbs talk about the importance of discretion in terms of wisdom. Discretion is one of the key terms used for wisdom in the first eight chapters of the proverbs. And that’s what she has here. She has discretion relative to purchases and relative to the field. Being smart is a good thing here. In other words, being wise and having discretion.

Our family were we just bought one of these I think it’s called the yearly Bible. They have the Bible laid out so that every day you turn like to March 20th and it has the portion of scripture you read from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. So you’ll get through the entire Bible in one year. It’s a really useful device as opposed to the charts you’ve got to look up, you know, where you’re supposed to be at that day. Just lays it right out. It’s very useful.

Well, anyway, this last week, we were reading about Zelophehad’s daughters and it reminded me of Sarah. Zelophehad’s daughters, remember, he had no sons that survived and they didn’t have any inheritance of the land. They approached to Moses at the distribution of the land and said, you know, just because he didn’t have any sons and they died off the sons that he did have, we he his name shouldn’t die out in Israel. We want a portion of the land. And so Moses doesn’t know exactly how to handle that. So he’s goes to God and he prays about it.

And God tells Moses what God told Abraham when he was concerned about Sarah, Sarah’s relationship to Hagar. In both situations, God says, “Listen to them.” And God told Moses, “Listen to those daughters. They’re right. They should have a piece of the land. I just bring that up again to remind us that if we’re going to have wives that are have the ability to consider fields and have discretion and wisdom and intelligence when it comes to purchases that we should trust that wife in that area as well.

We should seek her counsel and oftenimes we should obey that counsel. God specifically tells that to Moses and he tells it to Abraham and those are great pictures or examples of godly men in the scriptures and we should try to emulate them in that as well.

The wife is seen in these verses also as taking what’s given and improving it. Kind of like the wool and the flax idea. She takes a field, she buys it. With the fruit of her hand, she plants a vineyard. She improves the field. See, she’s taking dominion. And that should be a picture of all of us as well. No matter what we have that God puts us in stewardship over, whether it’s a rental property or a home we own or if you’re a child, if it’s a bike you’ve been given or if it’s whatever, you should try to the best of your ability. Take whatever you’ve been given stewardship over and improve it.

Okay? Improve it. That’s what we’re here for. That’s really the essence of the Christian life is walking in the spirit and improving what God brings into our path as we walk through the week. And that’s what she does. She takes the field and improves upon it. With the increase that she has here, she reinvests the profits into another pursuit. She’s the wise steward, letting her assets not go idle, but rather putting her assets to work.

She doesn’t spend her assets on vanities, nor should she let it sit idle, but instead she invests it, as it were, in productive activities.

I think it’s interesting, too, that it says that she plants a vineyard. You know, vineyards grow grapes, and grapes are used to make wine, and wine is a good thing. The scriptures say repeatedly about a wine is given to make man’s heart glad. Now, the fact that people abuse it in our nation is a terrible thing, and it’s a great sin, but it shouldn’t cause us to forget that she planted his vineyard for a good reason.

She’s going to rejoice before God at the fruit of her hands here, okay? And she’s going to cause her household to rejoice as well. The Proverbs woman is a diligent, hard-working, smart, intelligent, career wife in that sense of the term, having her base of operations in her home where it should be. But she also is a rejoicing wife. She doesn’t work her fingers to the bone. She works her fingers and as a result is blessed by God and receives blessing and receives rejoicing as well from the fruit of her own hands.

Verse 18, she perceives that her merchandise is good. Her candle goth out not by night perceive here is the word for taste to taste something and to evaluate it in other words and so part of the godly wife is an evaluation process of the works of her hands she evaluates her merchandise what she’s produced okay and she says it’s good evaluation is an important part of the Christian life I’ve said before that a good thing to get into a habit of doing with your kids is or yourself at the end of the day is to evaluate the day see where you failed see where you did well agree with God’s evaluation from the scriptures at the end of that day evaluate herself according to his word and the godly wife evaluates herself and conforms to God’s evaluation as well.

I think God’s evaluation is really in mind here. The second half of this verse, the fact that her candle goeth out not by night, I don’t think this is a picture of her burning the candle at both ends, you know, getting up before night, lighting the lamp and letting the lamp go deep into the night. I don’t think it means she’s burning the candle at both ends. First place, there isn’t a candle really. The actual thing here is an oil lamp.

But the reason I say that is that I think what’s really in mind here is God’s blessing upon her. Now the reason I think this is several. First of all, you’ll notice that these verses are all little couplets and we read them responsively earlier to get that idea across to you. These things are written in couplets. They’re it’s a memorization device. Plus, it’s a idea to get us to understand that our life is a response to God.

And so, there has to be a correlation between the second one and the first one. Now it could be a correlation of industry, but he’s made that point. And the first half of the verse says specifically talks about evaluation. In the second half of the verse, then we’d expect to see a verse dealing with the evaluation. And sure enough, you’ll find in other portions of scripture, the candle or the lamp, which is the word here, is used as a symbol of God’s blessing upon a people.

In 2 Samuel 21:17, for instance, David is urged not to go out to war anymore. Okay? Because if he dies, the lamp of Israel may not may go out then if he dies. Okay? So they don’t want the lamp of Israel to go out. They don’t want God’s blessing upon the nation to cease. So they don’t they don’t want David to go out into war anymore. The lamp of Israel not going out is a sign of blessing. The lamp going out is a sign of cursing.

Proverbs 20:20 says that he who curses father or mother, his lamp will go out in time of darkness. You see it’s a curse from God. You curse your parents the symbol of authority, God’s authority in your family. And God then curses you by putting your candle or your lamp out in the darkness. And so God is blessing this Proverbs wife by her candle not going out by night.

So I think although the idea of being up into the night may be here, the primary idea is that God has evaluated her works as well. He sees them as well as good works, as fruitful works for him. He blesses her and the symbol of the blessing is this candle burning bright into the nighttime. And you know, we may not think much of a incandescent light bulb burning these days in night time. But believe me, when you didn’t have a switch you threw, when you had to have oil in the lamp all the time and when the your world was characterized by darkness and not bright fluorescent and neon lights everywhere, light was a great symbol of blessing from God, light in the darkness.

And so that’s what this is as well. I believe she’s blessed and she evaluates her work on the basis of God’s blessing and she knows that she is blessed in her work.

Verse 19, she lays her hands to the spindle and her hands fold the disc staff. Now, this is a really beautiful picture of diligence and of persevering in work. This isn’t the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel was not invented till the 16th century.

This is a fairly simple device for making fabric. At least that’s what all the commentators say, and I tend to believe them. The first part, apparently, the spindle, or what Luther called the rock in his translation of this verse, is probably the piece that held the raw material. Okay, that’s going to be spun into thread and then the disc staff is what receives the wound thread. That’s the idea of most commentators.

So, you got a two-part device here and she’s making thread. She’s doing this recreative process I talked about earlier taking raw materials, making them into useful and beautiful things for God. And it’s a symbol of her whole life really, this staff and this spindle. Godly women don’t shun work. We talked before about Sarah. We didn’t enlarge upon it, but you know, Sarah was an important woman. And yet, she was called upon to dress a kid by Abraham.

Okay, it may not seem make a big deal again. But, you know, to go out and to cut the kid up and to make it into a meal is not easy work. It’s hard work. And yet, it’s something that godly women should know how to do. This woman had servants. Remember the Proverbs 31 woman has servants. She has extended household as it were in the form of servants. She’s a she is the wife of a king. Lemuel’s wife. Remember, she’s a queen.

And yet, she one of her symbols here is a sign of virtue and the sign of diligence. This spinning device. There was a commentator that I really enjoyed this last week reading. His name was William Arnot. He wrote in 1884 a commentary on Proverbs. The name of this commentary is called Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth. That’s a good name, isn’t it? Laws from heaven for life on earth. And he talked about how when he was a boy and he wrote in 1884, so would have been mid 1800s that it was a custom where he was raised and I’m not sure where he was raised, but it was a custom that whenever the couple would get married, the night before the marriage, the wife’s the pending wife, the groom, the bride, her possessions would be taken in a procession of carts over to her new domicile to the husband’s place.

And that the last cart, this was always a tradition where he was, the last cart would have put on top of it a spinning wheel, fully loaded with stuff and ready to go to work. And this was a sign, a symbol, was a little tradition they had the last car as she goes over to her husband’s new husband’s home that I before the marriage had this spinning wheel sitting on top fully loaded and when the procession would go by the crowd who would gather to watch this procession when the spinning wheel went past everybody would let a big hurrah because it was a sign of her diligence her workingness her ability to do good work I think that’s a great little symbol for us today also remembered that his own mother would spin every afternoon and that what she would do is she’d take the Bible and she put it in the stock of the spinning wheel so that while her hands were busy with the spinning every afternoon she could be reading the word of God.

She could be feeding her soul while she was providing clothing for her household. Arnot also commented on the progress of art and by that he means craft which he saw as a good thing, a progression of craft in the world that has replaced the spinning wheel. But he said that progress of art is a declension in happiness if the space left with a spinning wheel is not filled with another tool of industry.

That’s a good quote, isn’t it? I’ll read it again. The progress of art is a declension in happiness if the space left by the spinning wheel is not filled with another tool of industry. You understand the point of that? We don’t need spinning wheels anymore. We’ve been freed from doing that toil and that work that industry. But we should replace it with another tool of industry. That’s what we’re here for to be productive people for God.

Not just to sit around all day and to have a great deal of leisure time. Sunday’s a day of leisure. Sunday’s a day of rest in the Lord. But the rest other six days are days of work. And that’s to characterize them. We’re doing a little talk in Seattle on the church and we based our talk for the church said idle churches are the devil’s tools and we based that upon the old proverb that idle hands the devil’s workshop and so the spinning wheel is an important thing to see that it keeps hands from being idle and it keeps the devil away.

Verse 20 she stretches out her hand to the poor yay she reaches forth her hands to the needy the proverbs wife as we said a queen recognized that she was a recipient of grace in spite of all the many and good works that she said to have done in this chapter.

She was an industrious woman, but she realized that her blessings were gracious blessings from God. We’ve talked about this before, the idea that charity is an extension of grace that we’ve received from God. But this picture brings it out again. It says specifically, she stretches out her hand to the poor. She reacheth forth her hands to the needy. You know, remember we read I think it’s in our ten commandments read during the communion service that God brought us forth from Egypt with a stretched forth hand.

Many places in scripture talks about God’s hand being stretched forth to aid us. And this Proverbs woman has specifically said to emulate God in that fashion by stretching forth her hand that has produced all this good stuff graciously to the poor and to the needy of the land. Remember, we’ve talked about that as the royal virtue. Here was a royal woman, a queen, recognizing that her gifts were gifts from God, that he had been gracious in stretching forth his hand to her.

So, she turns around then and demonstrates that and proves it to God and to man and to herself by stretching forth her hand and grace to other people.