Good morning. Whoa. I'm very, very happy to be here with you all. So good to see all of your faces again this year. And yes, I do have a podcast. It's very much on hiatus because I don't have a podcast editor or producer anymore. So maybe one day we'll be back. But right now, it's just hanging out, waiting for more to be done. Well, actually, Alice asked me to introduce Rose, and I was very excited about that because Rose and I have been friends for, we were calculating like 30-ish years, I think, about that. And when she moved back from Chicago, we became better friends. I found a letter a few years ago. that she had written to me when she lived in Chicago. And it was just fun to have that memory. But Rose is one of the least idle people that I know. She is a genuine example of a Proverbs 31 woman. I joked with her last night that the only thing I don't like about her is that she makes everything look easy. But what I mean by that is that she really does accomplish what she puts her hands to. And she is an encouragement to everyone to get going and trust God. with the results. I think that the secret is not Rose's many, many talents, but really is the secret is Christ in her. And so I'm very thankful for the gift that she is to the body of Christ here at RCC and the faithful friend that she is to her friends near and far. So please join me in welcoming Rose Spears. All right, well, thank you. Thank you for introducing me, Bethany. I'm really happy to be here with you all today, and I've been enjoying the lovely singing, enjoying Becca's talk last night, and my task is to dig into the scripture verse that is the theme of our conference. So I'm gonna be digging into Proverbs 31 today. So if you wanna follow along, I'm actually gonna start with reading the passage. I believe it's on page 10. of your workbook. All right, Proverbs 31, 10 through 31. Who can find a virtuous wife, for her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her, so he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax and willingly works with her hands. She is like the merchant ships. She brings her food from afar. She also rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and a portion for her maidservants. She considers a field and buys it. From her profits, she plants a vineyard. She girds herself with strength and strengthens her arms. She perceives that her merchandise is good, and her lamp does not go out by night. She stretches out her hands to the distaff, and her hand holds the spindle. She extends her hand to the poor. Yes, she reaches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household is clothed with scarlet. She makes tapestry for herself. Her clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies sashes for the merchants. Strength and honor are her clothing. She shall rejoice in time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue is the law of kindness. She watches over the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates. Let's go ahead and pray that our session will be blessed today. Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all these women and the different places that they've come from. Bless us today as we learn more about your word. Send your spirit to illuminate it to us so that we can learn things that will be edifying to us and things we can edify others with. In your son's name, amen. All right, well, so the theme of our conference is strength and dignity or strength and honor. I'm using the word honor more in my talk, but honor and dignity, same thing that we're doing here. And I wanted to start today with looking a little bit about what those look like in our culture today. So kind of tying in some of the themes that Becca was talking about. What do those look like in our culture? What is strength portrayed as? What is honor portrayed as? Where do we think strength comes from, where do we think honor comes from? And then I want to explore those same themes in scripture. Where do they really come from? And how do we go about getting them in the right way? And then where does that ultimately lead us when we do that? So what does strength and honor look like in our culture? I like to look at the entertainment industry because I think it gives a really good window into what we value as a culture, but then it also is what the culture is trying to get us to value. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to look at the movie first that was the most popular movie on Netflix last year at this time. I don't know if you guys can guess what it is. It was this movie called Damsel. So the tagline of the movie gives you a pretty good idea of what the movie was about. It says, there are many stories of chivalry where the heroic knight saves the damsel in distress. This is not one of them. So I don't know if anybody saw this movie. It's OK if you didn't. But in this movie, a young girl finds out that she is betrothed to a prince, but it's really a sham, and that her father made a deal with a neighboring kingdom to kind of sell her to them so they could sacrifice her to a dragon to settle an old blood feud. And so instead of just dying like most princesses would have, because no knight comes to save her, she gets the emotional resolve and the upper body strength to scale her way out of the dragon cave. She gets out through a labyrinth and then she kind of wreaks her revenge on the people who did this to her. And one of the things that I was reading about this movie is it's very neat, they thought, how she uses the very items that were used to control her, which was her overly elaborate dress and corset, as tools to help her fight against kind of the patriarchy in the movie. So this was the most popular movie on Netflix, you may recognize the heroine as, it's the same gal Millie, Millie Bobby Brown, who played Enola Holmes in that show on Netflix, which I know a lot of people are like, oh, it's PG, we can let our kids watch that one. So, all right, so she shows that for a woman to have strength, you kind of have to seize that strength for yourself, and then you can get a hold of the honor that you deserve after you kind of have a wake of enemies behind you. All right, another entertainment phenomenon that came up that you may have heard about is this thing called Bridgerton. So this was another Netflix thing that they have different seasons of, and it has a huge following. It's based on a series of books that, if you haven't read, that's okay. You don't need to read these. But it's basically a show where they have 21st century women in Jane Austen costumes trying to liberate themselves from the constraints of their imaginary era. So I looked online again and I read some quotes about what were the best things about the women in this show. Doesn't appear to care what people think of her. Okay, so that's a compliment that's given to this show. Rejects the idea that women are simply consumable goods whose existence entirely relies on a man willing to marry them. Has earned the right to do whatever she pleases Whenever she pleases, however she pleases to do it. Here's another thing. Shatters centuries-old customs and never looks back. Is significantly less conservative than her wealthier counterparts, given that she consensually engages in a love affair. This is a compliment to the show. And then finally, this was kind of the character in the show who is kind of the central character the seasons have been following, believes that women have no choice but to usurp control over their own lives by any means necessary, and she does so with incredible willpower. So, this is the kind of strength that is celebrated in our culture. To be praiseworthy, to get honor, you have to usurp control, you have to seize it, and you have to empower yourself. So when we see these ideas in our culture, sometimes it's easy for us to take those ideas and then say, this is what strength is, this is what honor is, and then we can read a passage like Proverbs 31, which is saying strength and honor is her clothing, and we can think, okay, so that's what it is. This is the kind of strength that we need to be like if we're the Proverbs 31 woman. And that's, when we do that, we're doing something called eisegesis, okay? So eisegesis is when you're reading the Bible and you're taking things that you already believe and you're reading them into the scripture. In the Greek, the word eis means into, all right? So you're reading into the scripture what you kind of want the scripture to say based on what you already know. But what we really want to do when we read the Bible is we want to do exegesis. So ex means out of. So we want to read things out of the scripture instead of bringing preconceived notions that we already have into the scripture. So what we don't want to do is say, what does Damsel say about strength? That's gotta be what the Proverbs 31 woman is. What does Bridgerton say about it? We want to say, what does strength mean in the Bible? How can we look at all the different things about where strength comes from and how we get it? That's what we wanna do. So we wanna do exegesis. All right, so we're gonna answer that question today. What does the scripture tell us about strength and honor? But before we do that, we're gonna back up and try to get a little bit more of a bird's eye view of the whole book of Proverbs and then the passage itself, and then we'll come back to this verse. So looking at Proverbs 31 and its context in the Book of Proverbs, we're gonna try to figure out how is wisdom related to the virtuous woman first. As you probably know, the Book of Proverbs is written mostly by Solomon. There may be a few things by other people in there. And chapter 30 I believe is written by somebody else. But chapter 31 says that is the words of King Lemuel an oracle that his mother taught him. There's no other mention of a King Lemuel in the Bible. And so a lot of people think that this is a pseudonym of Solomon and that this is probably Solomon. And so this poem about the virtuous one was likely a saying that was taught to Solomon by his mother. And even though it feels a little bit distinct from the rest of the Book of Proverbs, the structure of the whole book shows us that it's not just this extra thing that he tacked there on to the end of the book, just because we didn't have anywhere else to put that in the Bible, so we'll just stick it there, okay? There's actually a structure to the Book of Proverbs, and there's something about this poem that makes it really fitting to end the book on, that makes it the culmination of the whole book. So if you cast your mind back to kind of the beginning of Proverbs, the book of Proverbs in the beginning talks about how your goal is to get wisdom. It starts with a father telling his son that wisdom is founded on the fear of the Lord and that the world is made through wisdom from the very beginning. that wisdom is calling aloud in the streets, that we need to answer wisdom instead of folly, because they're both calling out to us. There's a couple paths we can go. And it goes through all of these different lists of, do this, not that, my son. Listen to this, not that. It goes through the book. And throughout the book, Wisdom is compared to something. One of the reasons I chose to do a slideshow today is because we have a lot of Bible verses, and I just thought it would be easier for us if I could pop them up there on the screen than having to just listen to me. You can see them too. So throughout the book, wisdom is compared to treasure, Listen to this, happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding. For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her. So we have this word rubies, which can also just be translated jewels, but it shows up here in Proverbs 3. And then again in the book. We have that thought emphasized. Receive my instruction in not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her. All right, so we know what wisdom is like. But then the virtuous woman comes at the end, and it says, who can find a virtuous wife, for her worth is far above rubies? So there's something about this virtuous woman who is the same as Lady Wisdom, okay? They're being correlated and we see that because of that rubies comparison that keeps coming up throughout the book. All right, and notice with both of them, the worth of them is immeasurable. Happy is the man who finds wisdom, happy is the man who finds the virtuous wife. There's this correlation, and they bookend all of those little proverbs in the middle, okay? Wisdom and the virtuous woman. If we start to zoom in now, okay, so that's the whole book. Now we're gonna look at the poem in the chapter about the virtuous woman. Do you guys know what structure this is? All right, so this is a chiasm, and as we read it, I don't know if you were thinking, oh, I wonder if this is a chiasm, but it is. And so we started out by talking about how the virtuous woman is like rubies here, okay, better than rubies here, and then the chapter's gonna end with talking about how valuable this woman is. She does her husband good. Her husband and her children praise her. Those two sections match up, all right? And then there's a whole list of verses that we read through of all of the industrious work that she does. She is a diligent woman, all right? Her lamp does not go out. She does all of these industrious things. Oh, and there's some more industrious work that she talks about here. She is kind to the poor and the needy, and the law of kindness is on her tongue. And then here, it says she's not afraid of the snow, and she's not afraid of the days to come. Okay, so we've got a couple things about fear going on. And we have a couple things about clothing that are paralleled. And in the middle, we have her husband's renowned respect. I copied this from somebody else's chiastic outline. I could have just said, her husband is known in the gates, because that's what the verse says. But whoever made this chiasm said, her husband's renowned respect is in the middle. So that's the center somehow in there. Now, our modern day culture would look at this and be like, well, that figures, right? Patriarchy, all about her husband, this is terrible. So it's not even really about the woman at all. But there's a reason that's the middle of the chiasm. So we can zoom in here. So she's fearless. She's not afraid of snow. Her household is closed with scarlet. She makes tapestry for herself. Her clothing is fine linen and purple. All right, now we're gonna talk about this first during our workshop today, okay? And hint, it's not gonna be about everybody in your house has red snowsuits. That's not what we're gonna say in the workshop today. But if you notice these words, we've got scarlet, tapestry, purple, linen. This is pointing us to some other things that are going on in scripture that are giving us clues what's going on here. The middle, her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. And then we have our verse starts in here with the linen garments and the sashes for the merchants, the strength and honor are her clothing, which makes her not afraid of the future. This could be translated, she shall laugh in the days to come or she shall rejoice in time to come. All right, so all of these things need to be kind of mulled over and considered together as we start to talk about this, not just our single verse, okay? We don't wanna just pull this verse out of the Bible, strengthen on her are her clothing, she shall rejoice in the time to come, and just talk about that by itself, because it's part of this chiasm where the husband is interestingly in the middle here, okay, as we're trying to interpret this. Okay, we're gonna come back to that. So hang that thought on a hook there. Some people don't like the passage of Proverbs 31. I remember when I was a teenager, I think some of the moms were discussing whether they should study Proverbs 31, and someone said, oh, that always just makes me so depressed. All right. Proverbs 31 makes me depressed. I don't want to do it. And I think that the reason that some people feel like that is because they read through the things that are happening in Proverbs 31 as if it were a to-do list. Okay? So it's a to-do list. We need to translate it somehow over into our culture because we don't live in the Hebrew times, so we gotta figure out how it correlates, that we gotta check off the things on the list to see if our Proverbs 31-y enough, all right? And so we think, okay, weave, wool, and flax, gotta make my own textiles, all right? We have to get up while it's still dark. We have to stay up late still because her light doesn't go out by night. When do we ever sleep? So that starts to make you nervous. You're like, we have to bring food from afar. All right, what do we have to do? We have to drive really far. It's cheaper here, so we're going to go there. What does that mean? Are we going to sell merch? She sells things in there. So are we going to have an Etsy shop? I don't know. We have to help the poor. All right, she reaches out her hand to the poor and needy. Keep going. All right, well, there we go. She makes everybody ready for snow. She sews her own clothes. She makes her own wall hangings. All right, we're like, does that wallpapering, do we actually have to make the hangings? She makes extra clothes, sews those. She buys real estate. We're starting to wonder, can we get all these things done? And then it starts talking about these character qualities that she opens her mouth and it's always wisdom coming out. And on her tongue is a lot of kindness. And we think, well, we just can't do that. This makes me depressed. I can't be the ideal woman. Oh, and I have to make... I have to make my own bread too, okay? All right, so that makes us nervous. And then we think, okay, if we get all this checked off, then we should know it's checked off, because our husband should praise us and the gates and our children should rise up and call us blessed. Like, is that happening? All right, so you're kind of like, am I getting the shout out that I need to be the picture of the virtuous woman? Okay? So this can make you think you're not measuring up because you're not hitting the Proverbs 31 checklist. And this is a little bit similar to what Becca was talking about last night, where we turn homemaking into a checklist. Okay? We can turn Proverbs 31 into a checklist that we have to do. But really, that is not what is going on in this passage. Okay? We're not supposed to start out with this with, What am I supposed to do? We're supposed to start out with who am I? And this is honestly the way that we're supposed to start out in almost every scripture passage, right? Who am I? We'll figure out what we have to do after that because what we do flows from who we are. So I'm going to give you an example. of not what do I have to do, but who are we? And let's look at Ephesians, okay? So when you read the book of Ephesians, it does not start chapter one with children, obey your parents and the Lord. It does not start wives, submit to your husbands, okay? It starts by telling us you are chosen in him, before the foundation of the world, okay? You're chosen that you should be holy and without blame before him in love. It tells you that you are predestined to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will. You are made alive who once were dead in trespasses and sins. That is who you are, okay? And so you learn this first in scripture. Who are you? And only then does Paul in the book of Ephesians talk about what do you have to do, okay? Once you know who you are, then you want to walk worthy of the calling to which you were called. Okay, you don't earn the calling, you walk worthy of the calling. And so, then we get these commands. What does it mean to live in gratitude for someone who has adopted us as sons? What does it mean to you know, kind of honor him back for the honor that he's already bestowed on us. Well, wives, submit to your husbands. Children, obey your parents and lords. Servants, obey your masters. He gives us the list of things that we can do because of who we are. So Proverbs 31 is a passage that we want to examine in the same way. And so before you get all hung up on whether you have the bandwidth to make your own bread or sew your own clothes, okay, you should first examine who does the passage say that we are. This quote is important. It's from Peter Lightheart, and he's talking about how the Proverbs 31 passage is not first and foremost about you as an individual. One of the important typological dimensions of this description is an implicit link between the bride of this song and the bride of Yahweh, the bride of Christ, the church. Like this woman, the bride of Christ is a jeweled bride, sparkling with the glory of her Lord as she descends from heaven. So think of Revelation, right? Okay, what does she look like when the bride is descending from heaven? She has jewels. This woman gathers materials for clothing, as Israel gathered wool and linen and other materials for the tabernacle. Okay, those clues in there about purple and scarlet, those were supposed to make you think about where else those showed up in the Bible, not red snowsuits, okay? The woman feeds her family as the church spreads Christ's table before his family. So this is what the passage is geared towards, okay? It's making us think about the typological dimensions of the bride of Christ and the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31. Okay, so keeping that in mind, all right, as we're thinking of this as a picture of the Bride of Christ, we don't wanna look at it as a to-do list, but we do wanna find out now what is the source of strength for this woman, the Bride of Christ, as we look at the passage here, okay? Strength and honor are her clothing. She shall rejoice in time to come. Where does that strength come from? As I was looking at this word, the word strength, and where it shows up in the Bible, I kept seeing references to God, okay? So it's not something that people are trying to find on their own. Exodus 15, we have the song of the Red Sea. I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. Horse and rider, he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation. And then notice we have Hannah's song. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces. Out of heaven he shall thunder upon them. The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth and he shall give strength unto his king and exalt the horn of his anointed, okay? So God has strength and it's something that he gives to people. Again here, I think this is with the temple. This might be when David brings the ark in for the tabernacle, but one of those scenes, they have a psalm where they're saying, seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face continually. Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and gladness are in his place. Give to the Lord, oh families of the peoples, give to the Lord glory and strength, okay? So we are seeing his strength And we are saying, this is what we ascribe to you. We ascribe to you strength, O Lord. I looked at strength in the Psalms, and that word showed up 43 times. And every single one of the times that it showed up, it was either about God's strength, or him giving that strength to somebody else, okay? Seek the Lord in his strength, seek his face evermore. In the day when I cried out, you answered me and made me bold with strength in my soul. So this strength that the virtuous woman has is not something that she has to kind of gin up from within her, okay? She has to find it by digging deep into herself. It is something that comes from the Lord, and so she doesn't need to get it by getting the upper body strength to climb out of a dragon cave, okay? She has to receive it from him. Even with the fact that it is from the Lord, it doesn't mean though that it's not real strength. One of the reasons that Damsel and Bridgerton resonate with people is because we know that we were not made to just kind of be like a Precious Moments figurine sitting on a mantelpiece trying not to get broken, okay? That's not what a woman is when somebody says, what is a woman, all right? That's not what a woman is, okay? It's the Victorian ideal of a woman who is supposed to be kind of just delicate and not do anything. So we know that that's not what a woman is, and that's kind of why that damsel, Bridgerton, somebody who can do things, Okay, that appeals to us in some way. Our word virtue, you know, with the virtuous woman, that comes from the word vir in Latin, which means man, okay? So virtue is kind of manliness. The Proverbs 31 woman could be thought of instead of the virtuous woman, you can think of her as the valorous bride. Right? And many of these verses in Proverbs 31 are filled with warlike imagery. When it says she girds herself with strength, that's the same word as if you would be putting on your battle harness. She girds herself. When it says she, you know how she brings food for her household from afar? That word for food is actually prey. She's like a lioness, and she's out there getting prey for her household. In our key verse, the one we're studying, it says, she shall rejoice in time to come. If you look up the word rejoice, it's not the normal word for rejoice that they use in the Bible. It's the word for when someone's like, ah! And they like laugh. And that's the same word that David and Saul would do when they like triumph over the Philistines, okay? So she has this kind of battle-like rejoicing over people. So she's truly strong, but she knows where the strength comes from, and she knows who the strength should be in service to. She doesn't have to worry about, you know, running out of strength, because she knows the source of strength is infinite, where it's coming from. And I think one of the words that we should always connect to strength when we think of it is meek. Does that sound weird? We connect the word meek to strength. What does meek mean? Well, if you are in kind of the Bridgerton world, that would be the opposite of being strong. To be meek would be the absolutely worst thing somebody could be. you would be a doormat, you would have no agency, and you wouldn't be able to usurp control from the patriarchy, okay? So in worldly terms, meek means weak. But in biblical terms, meek does not mean weak. Meek can be thought of as broken to harness. It's the idea that you have a very powerful horse who can be controlled by a bit in its mouth by a writer, okay? So it can be turned in different ways because its writer can move it around. I love this quote by R.J. Rush Juney. He's talking about the Sermon on the Mount here, about the meek shall inherit the earth. And he says, we are made meek by the spirit and broken to harness in order to be usable by him and to rule in him. Okay? So when you're made meek by the spirit, it doesn't mean now that you are a weakling. It means that now you are usable by God because you can be guided by Him, okay? You have submitted your strength to Him. And, you know, it's interesting, the word for the meek shall inherit the earth in the Sermon on the Mount, rather than taking the world's definition of meek and importing it, we can look at it here, and we can also look at it in 1 Peter, because 1 Peter talks about how women should beautify themselves with a meek and quiet spirit. All right, so does that mean she can never say anything about anything? She's got to be a doormat. No. All right. This is this is a woman who is made meek by the Spirit, broken to harness, so she is of service to him with the strength that she has, okay? So it's not the opposite of being a Proverbs 31 woman, okay? We don't have to say, well, the New Testament says this, we gotta have the meek and gentle spirit, and then the Old Testament seemed more like a warlike bride, and they're at odds, but we better go with the New Testament, right, okay? They're not at odds with each other, what's going on there. So those who know where their strength comes from and those who submit to that strength are the ones who are going to inherit the earth. They're the ones who are going to laugh with exultant joy after winning the battle. All right? Those things can be connected together. So those are some biblical ways that we should be thinking about strength, instead of interpreting it according to the world's definitions of what strength is. So let's look at our other word, which is honor or dignity. What is the source of our honor? And when you see the source of strength, you probably know where I'm going with where the source of honor is. But our culture says that you have to stand up for yourself to make sure you get the honor that you deserve. If you scroll through social media, people are like, you deserve it. Make sure you get what you deserve, OK? So it's all about grabbing and getting that thing that you think you deserve. And that's, you know, it's a very feminist mindset there. But it's essentially not a new thing. It's the same thing that happened in the garden. Adam and Eve wanted to grab something that was not given to them, all right? They wanted to take something that wasn't bestowed. They weren't patient to wait for that honor to come to them. And throughout Jesus's ministry, we see him continually correcting that impulse in his disciples. They ask him questions like, so who's gonna be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And he's like, yeah, that's not what you should be thinking about. And then they say, who's going to sit down next to you at your right hand? He's like, the greatest of all is a servant. So he keeps correcting that impulse where they want to take honor. And he says, no, that's not how we do it. I love this parable that he tells in Luke 14. He told a parable to those who were invited when he noted how they chose the best places, okay? So the people that they're with here, it's not just the disciples. They want to get there and they immediately want to find the best place at the feast. And he says, when you were invited by anyone to a wedding feast, "'Do not sit down in the best place, "'lest one more honorable than you be invited by him. "'And he who invited you in him come and say to you, "'Give your place to this man, "'and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. "'But when you are invited, "'go and sit down in the lowest place, "'so that when he who invited you comes, "'he may say to you, Friend, go up higher. "'Then you will have glory in the presence of those "'who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. So this parable illustrates that truth really well. The valorous bride is going to be somebody who is clothed with honor, not because she exalts herself, but because the master of the feast is gonna say, go up higher. All right, and she is in this, is following the example of the bridegroom. So the bride knows that she doesn't have to grab after honor because he didn't grab after honor, all right? So you are all familiar with this passage in Philippians. And Brooke, did you know we were gonna do this Philippians passage? You just picked out that song just for funsies. Okay, well, great. We were singing that, and I was thinking, that's perfect, okay, because that's exactly what we're talking about here. This is a very familiar verse to most people, but I'm gonna read it anyway, because it's so good. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. So this is the pattern Jesus sets that the valorous bride needs to follow, right? Okay? Exaltation, honor, dignity. comes after humbling yourself, all right? And the exaltation isn't something you're gonna do for yourself. Someone's going to tell you, go up higher, all right? Okay, so Jesus is gonna be told, go up higher. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and every tongue should confess Jesus Christ is Lord. All right, so he is given this name by somebody else. This is very counter-cultural to our world, but it was also very counter-cultural to the world that Jesus came in, okay? The Romans found this to be very odd, and they used to try to get as many honors as they possibly could in the Roman society, and Jesus kind of turns all of that on its head. It's interesting when you read the story of kind of the passion of Christ, It's kind of a Roman triumph gone wrong is what's going there with that, all right? So like a Roman triumph, you've got Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, one of those, they're coming in and they're grabbing honors, okay? That's what they wanna do. This is what would happen in a Roman triumph. This is a description of it. The Praetorian guards gather early in the morning to proclaim the triumphator. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. The guy who's getting the triumph. He is dressed in triumphal garb and a crown of laurel is placed on his head. The soldiers shout an acclamation of his lordship and perform acts of homage to him. They accompany him from their camp through the streets of the city. And then kind of trailing behind him, the sacrificial victim is there in the procession because they're gonna sacrifice something to celebrate his triumph, okay? The sacrificial victim is there beside him and walks with him to the place where the sacrifice is supposed to take place. The triumphator, the guy getting the triumph, okay, he is offered the ceremonial wine. He does not drink it, but pours it out on the altar at the moment of the sacrifice. Then, at the moment of him being lifted up on their shoulders before the people, at that moment he is acclaimed as Lord and those around him confirm his glory. Following the lead of the soldiers, the people together with their leaders shout out an acclamation, truly this man is the son of God. All right, that's what a Roman triumph looks like. Do you see how kind of the elements of Jesus's triumph are very opposite of that, right? Instead of that crown of laurel, he's getting a crown of thorns. And instead of the procession cheering him, They're mocking him, they're yelling things at him. Instead of him being the one who gets to offer the sacrifice, okay, maybe we're gonna kill a goat or something like that, he is the sacrifice, he is the one that's poured out. And the other guy's gonna be lifted up kind of on their shoulders or up on a dais. He's lifted up on the cross to receive blame instead of acclaim. And then paradoxically, that is the beginning of his exaltation in the scriptures, right? He is lifted up to draw all peoples to himself. And then because he does not take honor, the honor is bestowed. Because he doesn't parade himself to the head of the table, the master of the feast now says, friend, go up higher, all right? And so what does that look like? Friend, go up higher. After his crucifixion, comes his resurrection, his vindication, and then comes his ascension. And so Daniel shows us what that looks like when he gets to go up higher at the wedding feast. I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him, and it's an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, okay? So he's given this honor after he humbles himself here. So in this bridegroom here is the model for the bride. Instead of being like the first Eve, right? The first Eve takes something that wasn't given to her, right? She has to imitate her husband and her Lord, and she has to wait to be given glory. And I think it's interesting in our passages about the clothing, it doesn't say she clothes herself. with strength and honor, or she clothes herself with scarlet. It says she is clothed with scarlet, okay? She is clothed. So there's something very comforting about this, this she is closed. And I think that helps with an anxiety that we can have when we look at Proverbs 31 as a to-do list. That's when Proverbs 31 looks depressing. You're like, I don't want us to do that for a Bible study. Proverbs 31 is depressing. Because we can look at it like this instead. he presents her to himself as a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or blemish, she will be holy and without fault. We don't have to say we have to do these to-do lists to be holy and without fault. He takes care of the clothing parts and of presenting the bride to himself without spot or wrinkle or blemish. So there's a joy and there's a security in knowing that you don't clothe yourself. I was thinking about how that word rejoice kind of meant laugh set. She will laugh at the days to come, aha. And I thought about Isaac in the Bible and how his name means laughter. And it's, we can have laughter because the Lord will provide, right? Remember when Isaac goes to the mountain, they need a ram, they need somebody to die in Isaac's place. The Lord will provide, so therefore we can laugh at the days to come. All right, we don't have to scramble for fig leaves like Adam and Eve did, because we actually get the tunic that the Lord gives, which is glorious. All right, so if we approach our life like I was talking about at the beginning with the to-do list, you'd never really know if you've made enough clothes. and you never really know if you've baked enough bread, and you never really know, you're like, do I need to change my email address, like Proverbs 31 mama, what do I need to do, okay? All right? You never really know. But instead of doing that, we can kind of rest without the anxiety In Him, if we trust strength and honor coming from Him, we are clothed, okay? So I think that's a real blessing that comes out of this passage when you look at it this way. Now, okay, I heard somebody else say once, Proverbs 31 is about the church. So that means we don't have to do anything. Okay, that makes sense, right? Proverbs 31 is an allegory, it's about the church, so that means we don't have to do anything, so yay, we can study it and just be happy. But that's not actually the point of it either. It's not that since it's typological, we are off the hook for doing any actions in our lives. What, once we know who we are, then we know what we should do, okay? All right? Since we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, we should walk in them. So it actually is a valuable exercise to look at Proverbs 31 and say, This is who I am as the bride of Christ. Now how can I work on being the person who I already am? How can I translate what this example of perfect domesticity would be into our culture today? So it's valuable to meditate on that. And some of the things I was thinking about is Because you already are this virtuous woman in Christ, this is who you already are, why wouldn't you shake off dull sloth and get up early when you have things to do? Why wouldn't you get your grocery shopping done? Make sure you can fit in praying for your grandkids. Why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you stay up late if you need to on Saturday to make sure you're ready for Sunday? Okay? All right? This is application now. You already are this person in Jesus. Why not do it? Okay? Why wouldn't you think ahead? Why wouldn't you meal plan so that you don't get in the trap of spending all your grocery money on takeouts? Why wouldn't you plan ahead what clothing your kids are going to wear next season? Okay? There's an example of that. You know, their clothes. She plans ahead for that. Why wouldn't you help out with a First Image fundraiser that they're doing? Why wouldn't you stop eating the bread of idleness by stop scrolling Instagram a dozen times a day for an hour, you know? That's a lot of hours. Dozen times a day for an hour. Okay. Why wouldn't you look well to the ways of your household? And obviously that looks different than what the household looks like back then. Right? They're doing wool and flax. We might not be doing that. But look well to the ways of your household. Why wouldn't you develop your talents to be a creator of things? All right? She's making tapestries and sashes. What are talents you could develop? And then why wouldn't you just kind of let it roll off your back if you don't get the recognition that you think you deserve, right? Because it's not about you getting the glory and honor. So why wouldn't you just say, let the praise go to Jesus? It doesn't matter if I don't get the praise I think I should get. Why wouldn't you be so trustworthy that your siblings, your parents, your teachers, your friends, everybody can trust you? Why wouldn't you want to be that kind of trustworthy person? Why wouldn't you speak only good of your husband in front of other people? Why wouldn't you stop making jokes about being addicted to wine and day drinking? Okay? All right. That's a thing on Facebook where, you know, you're like, oh, I can't wait for wine. And it literally says in Titus 2 that that's not what you're supposed to do. Okay? Why wouldn't you want to consider your words so carefully that you only say things that are wise and discreet? Okay, why wouldn't you try to always have the law of kindness on your tongue instead of the law of the latest tasty morsel about somebody, okay? Why wouldn't you? Because this is already who you are in Jesus, and so now you wanna walk worthy of the calling that you have. So those are just some little things I was thinking as I was meditating on the what should I do now because of all of this. But kind of bigger picture things that we can glean from this are that whenever we're digging into Bible study, we want to start with the Bible's categories instead of starting with the world's categories, okay? So whenever you're doing Bible study in any way, you wanna look first at what does the Bible mean when it says this, not what does the world mean, and I'm gonna put it into the Bible. Don't start with a to-do list. Recognize you already are part of the valorous bride. Know the source of your strength, and if you missed that part, that's my hint for you, okay? Don't grab to get honor. Wait for it to be bestowed. And then, do you remember what I said the middle of the chiasm was? Her husband is known in the gates. Okay, be more concerned with the renown and fame of our bridegroom than with your own dignity. That's the whole point of this is that we wanna do these things as a virtuous woman so that his name will be glorified and he will be known, all right? And then we can rest in being clothed by him instead of trying to clothe ourselves, okay? Constantly scrambling for fig leaves, you can rest. and that lets you rejoice in the days to come instead of having anxiety. I have a verse from Ecclesiastes I'm gonna share to close with, and this is one of my favorite verses. Go eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine, but not too much wine, with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Okay? God has already approved what you do. And so I think the message of Proverbs 31 is that you can live your life with joy as you gratefully learn to be the woman who in Christ you actually already are. So, thank you.