CHS Downtown sermon | Tim Henderson+

We've been doing a series in the book of Proverbs for the last few weeks, and we're gonna finish it up tonight. If you know the book of Proverbs and we're at the very end, where do you imagine we're gonna be this evening? At the end. But what is the end, you guys? What's the end of Proverbs? Proverbs 31.

If you know Proverbs 31 at all, then you might think we're going to do a topical study on wives and women. And honestly, Proverbs 31 tends to be a very well-known passage, especially to women. I'd be surprised if there are many women that have been in a Christian community very long that have not heard teaching on Proverbs 31.

But we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna address this topically because I think if we did, for one, you'd miss out on something really important and needful. And then I think that I would deepen a misunderstanding. And if there's anything that I hate to do, it is to deepen misunderstandings.

So in order to end well, we need to kind of come back to the beginning of Proverbs and turn the kaleidoscope a little bit and look at the book through a different lens than one that you might be accustomed to seeing it through. And if we do that, I think Proverbs 31 is gonna come to say something different from what you're used to.

Proverbs as Narrative

The specific change that I wanna make as we run through a kind of a recap of Proverbs is I wanna lay a narrative grid over the book. I want you to see Proverbs as a story, as an ongoing story. Much of the book admittedly seems somewhat disjointed. It's hard to see how this would be a story from basically chapter nine or ten on. But there is a story, and I wanna walk you through how that works, and then we're gonna land in chapter 31.

Here's how Proverbs goes. As the story begins, there's a young man, and his entire life, all the world lies before him. And he's getting ready to go out into it. Fortunately, he's not alone. He has a father. He has a dad, an older man who loves him, who cares for him, and who wants him to flourish, who wants him to thrive.

And so this dad exhorts him over and over again: son, there are two paths in life. Or we could actually refine that a little bit and say that there's one path in life, but it constantly forks into two different paths. Not just once, but over and over again. There's a path of wisdom and a path of folly.

The tricky thing about it—they're not being just two paths, but one path that constantly forks—is that it would be really lovely if we could just choose to get on the path of wisdom, set it on cruise control, and go. But that's just not the way it works. In real life, there's constantly a fork, constantly a decision that we get to choose between wisdom and folly over and over again.

And so the father gets down at his son's level, and he's basically saying, son, I implore you. It's crucial that you would pay attention to your mom, that you would listen to me, that you would make these right decisions. The crucial step in your life is that you would choose wisdom, and then do it again, and then do it again, and then do it again.

And as he says this, really, for the first seven, eight chapters, he just repeats this refrain over and over again. Let me give you one of them. Listen to how he frames it out:

My son, if you will accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then something good will happen. — Proverbs 2:1-11

So over and over again, search for it. This is the thing that you long for.

If I were listening to this speech, I think he's about to say something like, then you'll be rich. Then you'll be successful. Or at the very least, then you'll be happy. There's some payout, some benefit, some good thing that comes with it. Look what he actually says. If you do all these things, if you search for silver and hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord. What? And you will find the knowledge of God.

That ending makes my record skip. If I was listening to this music, hey, if you do all these things, if you search for this, then you'll be afraid. And I'm thinking, well, then I don't wanna do that. How is that good news? Because most of the things that I fear, I fear because they're bad. We fear snakes, and we fear cancer, and we fear bankruptcy. We fear things because they're bad, which makes me cock my head when somebody says you should fear God. What probably runs through your mind is a sense of, well, why should I fear him? Is he bad? Is he like a snake? And the answer is no. He's nothing like a snake.

We don't fear God because he's bad. We fear God because we're bad, and there's something wrong with us. We are not invited to fear God the way a patient fears cancer. We fear God the way cancer fears chemo. And if that single idea falls into place, both for this young man of Proverbs and for us, then everything else begins to open up.

When we come to the recognition that this is his world, not my world, and that I have routinely violated his expectations of me, then I will come to assume a posture of contrition and softness. I will begin to thirst for grace. I will long for mercy. I will know that I am a person who needs to be forgiven. And then my heart will be filled with gratitude to find that those very things that I need most are mine in abundance. My sense of penitence before the one who rightly and justly evaluates my life, that will help me choose the proper fork when the decisions come.

So the father is saying to his son, listen, this is the crucial step. If you're gonna choose the right path, it begins—it doesn't end here. It doesn't end in fear. It begins in this proper sense for the one who has the right to evaluate you and does.

The father has this conversation with his son for like eight chapters. He keeps saying it over and over again. Fear God. Choose wisdom. Don't shipwreck your life. And then the time comes for the son to step out into the big bad world. He leaves this safe water with his father and starts making decisions. When he does, these abstractions of wisdom and folly take on a very particular and very alluring form.

The Two Women at the Crossroads

Consider that our main character is a young man. What do you think is most likely to capture a young man's attention as he's about to step out into the world, as he is coming of age? Women. And so wisdom, at this moment in the story, is personified as a woman. There is this woman, and she is beautiful. She promises happiness, and she stands at the crossroads and says, follow me. Come and follow me, and I will give you the delight of your heart, which is great news for this guy.

However, there's another woman as well. There's a second woman who appears, and she too is alluring, and she stands at the crossroads. She makes the same promise, but through a different means. She says things like:

Stolen water is sweet

To which the young man might think, it is? Because I like sweet things. She says, my husband is gone. He won't be back for a long time, and my sheets have been perfumed. At which point, I'm sure that gets his attention. He has to make a decision. What will he choose? There's this woman wisdom, and there's this woman folly, and we don't know what he's gonna do. There's dramatic tension.

And then something fascinating happens in the story. The forms of these two women disappear, and we don't see them again for a very long time, at least not in the shape of women. Instead, this young man is shown over and over again choices. Choice after choice after choice. They are still wisdom and folly. They're just not quite as obvious as they had been when he began his journey.

One of these voices invites him to speak harshly. Just say it. Get it done. And the other voice invites him to speak gently.

Harsh words stir up anger. A gentle word turns away wrath.

One voice shows him the benefit of taking advantage of the poor because, frankly, they're easy money. They're weak.

Take advantage of them, and you can profit off this. And another voice invites him to give to the poor, to never seek to take advantage of them. One voice says, hit the snooze bar. Take it easy. And the other voice says, get up, be diligent, and do the difficult work that lies before you.

And this is the point of the story where it's very easy to get lost and where it gets really hard to see that it's even still a story. Because, honestly, it's incredibly disorganized. The next 20 chapters of Proverbs defies any sense of organized principle you might lay over it. And I have often wondered about that. Why does the story descend into such absolute chaos at this point?

And if you don't mind my saying so, I think it's disorganized because our lives are so disorganized. If I were to say to you, "Listen up. You have a decision to make, and the right path is wisdom, and the left path is folly, and so make sure you get this one right," then there's a reasonably good chance that you might actually get it right because the table is set before you so clearly. You might make the right choice in a conscious moment. But the reality is that's not the way life works. We are forced to choose between wisdom and folly before we even realize there is a choice to be made.

Back to our young man—he has the ringing in his ears the explicit appeal of his father who's calling him to make the right thing. But we don't know to which woman he will unite his life. Will he choose wisdom? Will he choose folly? Will he heed his father's call to embrace lady wisdom? Or will the siren song of folly prove to be just too much, and he follows her down her path?

If you want to know how the story ends and what he chooses, all you have to do is flip to the end of the book. Because at the end of the story, in Proverbs 31, we get to read about his choice. And like all good stories, this story ends well, and the man chooses well.

The Pattern of Proverbs 31

Now remember this. If you go back to Proverbs chapter three, in these exhortations, he's told:

Whatever you do, find wisdom, for she is more precious than rubies. — Proverbs 3

And as the poem of chapter 31 begins in verse 10, it says:

An excellent wife—who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. — Proverbs 31:10

Do you hear the echo? He was told in chapter three to trust the Lord. He was told that hard work and diligent effort will bring gain. And he's told here in our poem in Proverbs 31:11 that his heart trusts and that he will have no lack of gain. That's interesting. That sounds familiar.

He was promised back in chapter 11:

The desires of the righteous end only in good. — Proverbs 11

And in Proverbs 31, this poem says that the one that he has chosen:

Does him good and not harm all the days of her life. — Proverbs 31:12

He was told that the wise are diligent, and Proverbs 31 is vividly diligent—it's one of her most striking characteristics. He'd been exhorted repeatedly that the wise look after the poor, that they lend to the poor. And the bride of Proverbs 31:

Opens her hands to the needy. — Proverbs 31:20

You guys, we could continue on this if we had the time, but every line of the Proverbs 31 poem that we've always thought was actually about this noble wife—every line of it is describing wisdom. That poem is about lady wisdom. She is not just any wife. She is not an idealized wife. She is not you, and you are not her. She is unquestionably lady wisdom.

And the end of the story is that the man of Proverbs chose well.

The Real Story of Proverbs

Proverbs is a story about a young man who's faced with a series of decisions. His father longs for him to choose the path of wisdom. And as he comes of age, two very different women make identical promises to him, but one of them is lying.

And then life comes—as dizzying as it is fast. The choices are stark, but that doesn't mean they're easy. They have very different outcomes, but they're not always easy to know what to do. Wisdom is clearly better than folly, but folly so often seems better. Have you ever noticed that? Over and over again, it seems like it is.

And so the man faces choices. What will he choose? When we flip to the end of the story, we find he chooses wisdom, and all of the incumbent blessings promised to wisdom begin to flow into his life because of that choice. That's the story of Proverbs.

Make sense? I know that was quick. We covered a lot of ground, and maybe in a little way that's discordant to what you've ever been told before, but that's what's going on in Proverbs.

But what it leads us to is the question: Is the story of Proverbs the story of you? What decisions have you made? What choices have you made?

You also have a father who loves you, who wants you to flourish, who wants you to thrive, who calls you to choose the path of wisdom, and you are confronted with big decisions on a regular basis. Will you prioritize worshiping with the people of God, or will you spend another week sleeping in, working around the house, going to the lake, doing something other than gathering with the people of God? Will you foster good relationships at work, giving your life away, serving those that you're called to serve and those with whom you serve, your clients and your colleagues? Will you be selfish and self-contained? Will you give yourself away? Will you lay up treasure in heaven, or will you spend it all on things that moth and rust destroy?

Essentially, have you married wisdom or do you share a bed perfumed though it be with folly?

A Word for the Ladies

And one final word—actually, a little bit of time for the ladies in particular. I would assume that many of you have heard Proverbs 31 taught through a different lens. Proverbs 31 taught as the obligation laid upon you to behave in a particular way. Have you heard this before? Now if you have, it's possible that has been inspiring to you. And it is also possible that it has just put you under the pile. Is there more of that? Because the risk of reading Proverbs 31—in fact, the risk of reading all of the scriptures through a moralistic lens—is that it tends to feed either an arrogant self-righteousness as you think that you've jumped through some hoop, or on the other side, just despair that you can't live up to some standard that has been put upon you.

Listen to me, ladies. You are not the woman of Proverbs 31. You're not the hero of the story. This passage is not about you. The woman of Proverbs 31 is lady wisdom, and you are not expected to be her in all of her perfections. Rather, you are exhorted to unite your life to her so that all the blessings and all the benefits of wisdom would flow into your life.

Now, the Bible does some weird things with gender. Not the same weird things that our culture is doing with gender, which I think are actually quite calamitous, but rather it plays some interesting games that you have to be comfortable with the discomfort. For instance, men and women together are portrayed as the bride of Christ. The church is his bride. He doesn't have a whole bunch of brides. He's got one bride, but that bride is comprised of men and women. And I think sometimes for the guys, they're like, so exactly how does that work that I am part of the bride? That feels odd to us.

Not only that, but men and women together are the sons of God. The text is very specific. When it speaks and calls Christians to be the sons of God, that's because the sons are the ones that get the inheritance. Men and women together are partakers of the inheritance. We are all sons of God. We're all partakers of the primogeniture of the times in which the scriptures were written. And in the exact same way, men and women together are exhorted not to be wisdom, but to unite our lives to the one who is wisdom.

I want you to hear this particularly for the ladies because I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying here, what this passage is saying, such that you either feel excluded or burdened. I don't want either one of those things. The main character of Proverbs is male. It's a son who is being exhorted to choose wisdom. And it would be very strange if in the last chapter, the illustration of all this being done right is that now we flip to having a woman who does everything right. That's not what's going on here.

This male character of the book is choosing a bride. Will he choose wisdom? Will he choose folly? But that male character represents both men and women. You women are fully included in the drama, in the storyline that's going along here. And together, just as men and women together portray or are the body of Christ, men and women together are the sons of God. Men and women together are invited to unite our lives to wisdom and to have all the benefits of it.

For male and female, for adults and for children, this is the crucial imperative of our lives: to choose wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. And so in choosing wisdom, we're necessarily choosing him. And if we reject him, we are necessarily rejecting wisdom.

In a strange way that this gender thing once again gets flipped is when wisdom actually becomes a human being. Did you know this? Wisdom became a person. That person is Jesus. It says in First Corinthians 1 that he has become for us wisdom from God. He has become our righteousness, our holiness, our redemption.

The great thing that he does—the gift above all gifts—is that he draws us to himself. Not so that we could become wisdom, but so that we could become wise, so that all the benefits of wisdom would be ours.

And that is what Proverbs is really trying to impart to us. Not to lay upon us some moralistic burden that you will never be able to bear, but to introduce you to a person who loves you and who gives all things not just for you, but to you.