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Men, Proverbs 31 is the famous chapter about the virtuous woman, that's what I'm preaching on tonight, the subject of the virtuous woman. And this passage goes from verses 10 through 31 where it describes the virtuous woman or the ideal woman or what a young man should look for in a godly woman, the kind of attributes that would be praised in a godly woman. But really the whole chapter is put together that way for a reason. And you say, well what do the first nine verses have to do with it? Well in verse number one it says the words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him, I would say that right there the first thing that we can see about the virtuous woman from the first nine verses is that she loves hard preaching. Because the virtuous woman here is preaching hard to her children about the dangers of alcohol and fornication. And so she doesn't shy away from speaking strongly against sin and this is some of the best preaching against drinking in the Bible. And it's coming from the mouth of a mother to her child. So that's the first lesson we can get right there. But starting in verse number 10 it says who can find a virtuous woman for her price is far above rubies. And what the Bible is telling us is that the virtuous woman is a rare find. This is not something that exemplifies most women as we read this description. This is not your average woman. This is something that you would have to diligently look for. Or as a woman it's something that you would really have to put forth a lot of effort to strive to be because you're not just going to go the way of this world and live your life the way that everybody else does and just end up being this rare virtuous woman whose price is far above rubies. It's going to take considerable effort. It's going to take a desire to love God and to please God and to be that virtuous woman. It says who can find a virtuous woman for her price is far above rubies. Earlier in the book of Proverbs it talks about the strange woman, the loose woman, the promiscuous woman, the adulterous woman. And you know what it says about her? She lieth in weight at every corner. Meaning that they're super easy to find. Super easy to find women that are sleazy, that are promiscuous, that are easy, that are wicked. But the virtuous woman is difficult to find. And because of supply and demand the price of the virtuous woman is far above rubies. Whereas the price of the promiscuous woman is cheap. That's why this type of woman is referred to as a cheap woman. Whereas this is a valuable, precious woman. The Bible says in verse 11, the heart of her husband does safely trust in her so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. Now there are certain themes as we go through the story about the virtuous woman. And the main thing that comes up over and over again is how hard she's working. And the one word that would be the exact opposite of everything we see in the virtuous woman here is laziness. The one thing she's not is lazy. It just goes on and on and on about her work ethic. And the Bible says the heart of her husband does safely trust in her so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. And then it gets right into all the work that she's doing with the wool and the flax and how she works with her hands. So what's the Bible saying here? It's saying that the husband of a virtuous woman isn't constantly being put in the poor house by this woman. She's not just a constant drain on his bank account where he has need of spoil, meaning what? What does spoil mean? Spoil is extra money. That's not your normal paycheck. You wouldn't call that spoils. I mean your wages, your normal paycheck, you go out, you work, you get paid. So spoils is something beyond that. So if a soldier goes to war, they get their wages but then also when they defeat the enemy, the bonus or the extra that they pick up is the spoils of war. And so the Bible says that her heart of her husband does safely trust in her so that he shall have no need of spoil, meaning he doesn't need to make some crazy huge amount of money. He doesn't need to get a huge bonus. His wages are going the distance because he can safely trust in her not to go crazy with the credit card while he's gone. He doesn't just go to work and worry about all the purchases that are going to happen while he's at work and then he gets home. What's this? The new TV? The new computer? This artwork? What are these shoes? What's this shoe rack? You know, what are all these purchases? What are all these bags that say they're from Dillard's and Nordstrom and all this, you know, what in the world? Now it's out there. He's kind of purchasing, you know, the credit card and the purchases and this can stress a man out, right, and make him wonder, you know, what am I going to do to provide? Where am I going to find the spoils to pay for all this? And the constant stress of having to get a second job or try to get a raise or something just because his wife is a spendaholic or a shopaholic. The virtuous woman is not going out and just blowing a bunch of money. She's not a shopaholic. She's a workaholic, okay? So she basically works hard and it talks about her seeking wool and flax and working willingly with her hands. Wool and flax are the two main materials that you would make clothing with, okay? And remember how the Bible said in Leviticus not to wear a garment of both linen and woolen together? That's because the woolen garment is from an animal-based product from the sheep wool, right? So they would actually spin wool and make garments, make clothing, homemade clothing. This is before sewing machines. This is before you just buy thread and buy yarn. I mean, they're taking the wool from the sheep, they're spinning it into yarn, they're making clothing out of wool or flax would be a plant-based textile that you would use to make linen garments. And the reason why God didn't want them to mix those two is because one of them represented the lamb. The wool is what you get from sheep. So the lamb of God represents putting your faith and trust in Christ for salvation like Abel. He offered the lamb as a sacrifice. What did Cain offer? A plant-based sacrifice. He was the world's first vegan. He offered a plant-based sacrifice. He didn't want to bring of the first things of the flock of the sheep. And so therefore, the Bible doesn't want us mixing a works-based salvation with a Jesus Christ-based salvation. Not salvation by grace and works, those are two different things. But they're both good fabrics here because the Bible talks about how she's making some things out of wool and she's making some things out of flax. We're just not supposed to mix them in the same garment, the plant-based and the animal-based in the same garment because it's symbolic. Because that robe of righteousness that we wear, it's either one or the other. It's either our works or it's the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the wool garment, or it's the plant-based. Now, you say, well, then why even have a plant-based garment because God does want us to have works. God doesn't want us after we get saved to work and to do works. We just don't want to mix our salvation with our works because those are two separate things. Salvations by grace, works are something that we do after we're saved in order to please God, in order to serve God, in order to earn rewards. But the free gift is not purchased by works. It's just purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ and it's given to us freely. So she seeketh woolen flax and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant's ships. She bringeth her food from afar. Now what is the purpose of a merchant ship going to a far country in order to bring food from far away? I mean, why not eat local, right? Why would you bring food from far? Well, the simple answer is you bring things from far away to get a better deal. Sometimes you can import things and get things from far away and they're cheaper. They're a better deal. And so the Bible is saying here when she's like the merchant ship, she brings her food from afar. I believe that's saying she finds the deals on the produce. She's willing to walk a little further, go a little further in order to get the best deals and not to just go to the most expensive grocery store, just go to Whole Foods and just stock up at Whole Foods without even looking at the price tag. I mean, Whole Foods has got some pretty good deals and their prepared food department has some pretty reasonable prices if you want to eat out and do it as a restaurant compared to other restaurants. But if you just go to Whole Foods and you just buy everything that you need for a balanced diet, that's going to be super expensive. You got to go to Trader Joe's for some things, folks. And you got to go to other stores and sometimes you got to find the deals. So the virtuous woman's not just indiscriminately just throwing everything in the cart at Whole Foods. She's not just throwing in all the steaks and lobsters at Whole Foods and then going down to the clothing store. She's willing to work hard. Why? To take a little bit of the burden off her husband a little bit. He's doing all the providing but at least she can ease that burden a little bit by not just blowing money so that he can safely trust in her and give her the cash, give her the credit card and not be worried about what she's going to buy off the home shopping network or whatever. But it says in verse number, which is probably totally obsolete and outdated with the internet. But anyway, is it still out there? It's still out there, folks. It's still a hazard. But it says in verse 15, she riseth also while it is yet night and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maiden. So this follows that same theme of this is a hard working woman. She gets up early. While it's yet night means it's dark outside and she's up at dark 30 in the morning getting breakfast ready, getting things going. She considerth the field and buyeth it with the fruit of her hands. She planted the vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. Her candle goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distal. I mean, this is a hard working woman. She gets up early and she plops down on the sofa in those sweatpants in front of the TV. No, no, she gets up early in the morning and she goes and works. You know, she's preparing things in the kitchen. She's working out in the garden. She's planting the vineyard. She's making things. She's sewing things. She's a busy, hard working woman. She's not lazy. Now you say, Pastor Anderson, this is, you know, you've asked a hard thing here. This is a rough passage for me because this is a pretty high standard. Well, here's the thing about the Bible. You know, the Bible is setting forth an ideal. You know, it's not saying, hey, if you don't measure up to this, you're a terrible wife. But you know what this is, though? This is a standard. I mean, look, we as men, if we were to measure ourselves against great men of the Bible, we feel the same way, ladies. You know, because as a preacher, if I compare myself to the men of God in the Bible, if I compare myself to John the Baptist or the apostles or Elijah or Jesus, then obviously I'm going to feel inadequate. I'm going to feel like a failure. But that's not the point. What the point is is that I should look to Elijah, look to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, look to the apostles, and obviously I can't hold a candle. But that's the standard. That's the goal. And so every day I want to get up and see how I can become a little more like Jesus Christ and a little bit more like these great men of God in the Bible and try to see what their attributes are and incorporate those attributes, not just beat myself up about the fact that I'm not perfect or that I'm not, you know, on par with the 11 apostles that turned the world upside down. But it's the same thing with the ladies. You know, when they look at this passage, they can learn things that they can work on, right? Not to say, hey, if you don't measure up to this, you're one of those cheap street corner women. No, because there's a big, long spectrum between that woman who has no virtue, you know, the street walker and the woman who is the virtuous woman whose price is far above rubies. But all of you ladies could look to this chapter and realize what does God value in a woman? You know, when God wants to tell us what a virtuous woman is like, what is he looking for? What does he praise about her? What does he look for? And what should we look for as men? What kind of attributes? Because if we see a woman who's just super lazy, then she's pretty far from this ideal, right? So even though this is an extreme, God deals in extremes, he gives us extreme examples because if he set the bar too low, we'd just get there and relax. So he sets a really high bar so that we always have a little bit where we can improve. We could always keep striving toward that. So you know, this is not a guilt trip for ladies tonight. This is just something to show ladies what to work on and what we should strive for as Christians in general because you know, you say, well, I'm a man, I'm going to tune out the sermon. Well, you know, God wants us to work hard too. So there's a lot of crossover in this passage to what a virtuous man looks like, even though it specifically is directed to the women. So it talks about her working hard. It says in verse 19, she layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff and these are instruments for making clothing. Now some people have pointed to the word distaff and said, you know, this is why we need to get rid of that King James Bible. You know, these words are just too hard to understand. You know, we need something easier. Distaff? What's a distaff? Tell me what a distaff. This word's not really that hard because first of all, you can get the context and get the context has to do with making clothes and things like that. But then second of all, if we just take the word and just look at it, I mean, staff is a word that we're pretty familiar with. What's a staff? It's like a stick, right? And what does die, that prefix die? What does it mean? It's to divide something into two parts, right? When we think of like dissecting something or what are some other words that start with die? Dichotomy, divergent, diverse. What else? Anything else? What? I already said that. Dissect. Pay attention. No, I'm just kidding. Anything else? I mean, there are a lot of words that we're familiar with and that prefix isn't really that crazy of a prefix test. So guess what a distaff is? It's basically a staff that parts at the end. It has a little divergence. And you say, hey, we need to update the King James Bible. Okay, then what would you call that? The reason that you don't know what it's called is because it's not something that we use anymore because we actually just go to the store and buy clothes now. So we don't need a distaff. So it's not that the King James Bible is using an archaic word. It's an archaic concept. And we have to understand that sometimes when we're reading our Bible, we have to use the context. We have to use a little common sense. Or God forbid, you might have to just pull a dictionary off the shelf and just look up the word distaff. Or I know that the shelf with the dictionary is a little far from your armchair. So pull out your smartphone and go to dictionary.com and type in distaff. And it's all right there. It's going to explain everything to you. You know, instead of dumbing down the Bible, maybe we can learn things. We can learn something. Learn a new word. Learn a prefix. Die. All right? The distaff. She lays her head. Look ladies, you better figure out what a distaff is if you want to be a virtuous woman. Now I'm not saying tonight that you as ladies should go sew all your own clothes. Because in today's world, sewing your clothes saves you about this much money. Zero. It's not cheaper to sew your own clothes at all. Because clothing is so cheap now because of the Industrial Revolution, you know, you can go to a Goodwill or a Savers and go to the thrift store and get some really nice clothing. Some really quality durable clothing for cheaper than it will cost you to buy the fabric and the yarn and the machine. But that's not the point. The point is she's doing something productive. She's working hard so that her family has the right clothing without her husband having to go out and buy a bunch of expensive ready-made textiles. And you can apply that concept today to being a hardworking woman even if you're not specifically just spinning wool and flax. I'm not suggesting that you take up spinning flax into your own linen because obviously that's completely unnecessary in the world that we live in. See we have all this technology. And I personally think that technology is great. I think that using technology can be helpful, it can be a blessing, and it can allow us to do things that we'd never be able to do. I mean without the internet we wouldn't be able to preach the word of God to millions of people over the airwaves like we do every single week here where just the internet pumps out, the preaching from our church and millions of people listen to it literally on a monthly basis. Over one million viewers on YouTube. And so that's pretty amazing. But even it's just amazing that we can just get in a car and travel to distant places where we can get a car, drive two or three hours, and preach the gospel in other regions of Arizona. Whereas if we didn't have cars, you know how long it would take to go 200 miles away or 150 miles away? Think about going on foot, say, wow, you just ride a horse or a, you know, throughout history most people haven't even had horses. Because they're expensive. And even if you have horses, they can only run so far and they have to eat and you have to take care of them and they're expensive. And it would just be not practical. You wouldn't be able to reach as many people. So I mean there are a lot of great things about technology, but you know what? Technology can also be dangerous because of the fact that it could turn us into lazy people and it might seem like it's improving the quality of our life, but it can actually end up giving us a lower quality of life. Because if we end up sick and unhealthy because we never get active, we don't walk anywhere, we don't run anywhere, we just sit around and let machines do everything. I mean think about it. No one would have even dreamed of going to the gym in the days that Proverb 31 was written. You know when the Bible says, she girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms, this isn't some arm workout that she's doing. This isn't her doing this kind of stuff and doing this kind of stuff. She's not training like this, doing girl push-ups in order to strengthen her arms. There's no thought of a gym in those days because you got so much exercise just from life and the strongest men, men in the Bible that are really strong, it's because they're working a lot. It's not because they're lifting weights all the time. If you think about women of the past, they're washing clothes, that's a lot of work. Hauling water, I mean they're going out down to the river and hauling buckets of water, that's a workout. They're getting their cardio, they're getting their strength training. People throughout history have eaten a lot of calories and they didn't really worry about going on diets, it was only wealthy people that had to worry about that stuff. If your average person is just working so hard, they're burning through so many calories, it was more just the only diet they're on is to figure out how can I get enough calories down my gullet so I don't get too skinny. That was the problem. How can I put more calories into this food? How can we put more butter on it and more fat in it just to get the strength that we need? The point is that this woman in this story, she's working hard and she's not lazy and so the takeaway for the modern woman is to realize, hey, I shouldn't just roll out of bed super late, lay around, watch TV, play video games, surf the net and they're not getting anything done. They should want to work hard, be productive, keep a good house. Teach the children, train the children, homeschooling, cleaning, cooking, just doing all the duties that go with being a godly wife and a godly homemaker and look, thank God for the dishwasher, thank God for the washing machine, thank God for the dryer but look, if you have a dishwasher, if you have a washing machine, if you have a dryer, that should just make you even more productive. But today, a lot of people are less productive with those convenience because they just get more and more idle and more and more sedentary. You know, we drive our car down to the mailbox to get the mail that's, you know, 30 feet away or whatever, 100 feet away. I mean, we need to make sure that we don't get idle and sedentary and look, I'm not against going to the gym because in today's world, if that's the only way you can exercise, then get the exercise for crying out loud so that you don't go to an early grave because if you sit at a desk all day, you need to figure out something to get you out there moving. And by the way, here's a great exercise program for you, at least this will get you out once a week. How about soul winning? You know, at least that gets you out walking a little bit, right? At least that gets you, you go to the apartment complex, you got your stair master when you keep going up those stairs to give the gospel to people. You know, you go to the small town soul winning, go to the Indian reservations, there's a lot of hills and slopes and you can get a pretty good workout on some of these days of soul winning. And so, get active, get out there and do something for crying out loud but, you know, definitely be a hard worker. That's what this Bible chapter is teaching the most. It says in verse 20, she stretches out her hand to the poor, yea, she reaches forth her hands to the needy. See, she has a surplus. She has enough for her family and she's able to help out those that are in need. She's able to be generous and to give to the poor, to give alms, to help out people that are disabled or that need help, they're in a bad situation and they need to be helped. She's there and she's generous with them. It says in verse 21, she's not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She's not worried that it's going to be a cold winter because that just gives her an excuse to pull out the warm clothes that she just finished sewing out of wool. It says she maketh herself coverings of tapestry. I mean, that's going beyond just making functional clothing. She's actually making clothing that is decorated. Think about what tapestry means. It has designs in it, right? It actually has designs so it has an artistic factor to it. Her clothing is silk and purple. She dresses nice because why? Because she earned it. She worked hard and she provided those things. Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She maketh fine linen and selleth it and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. So it's pretty hard to make enough clothing for your family if you're making it from scratch. That's a huge job. She's making so much that she even sells some of it to the merchant. She's even able to have an extra girdle, an extra item that she says, well, hey, we could sell this for some extra money because I made an extra. It says in verse number 25, strength and honor are her clothing and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness. So pretty much up through verse 25, the emphasis has been on the works, right? That's what's been emphasized from verse number 11 all the way to verse number 25. There's a strong emphasis on the fact that she's getting up early, working hard, getting a lot done, getting a lot accomplished. It really helps out her husband to not have to be burdened with really having to stress about finances. Then it kind of changes gears in verse number 26 and it talks about how she opens her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness. So this goes back to earlier in the chapter when I said, hey, verses 1 through 9 shows that she loves hard preaching and that she speaks out against sin. She opens her mouth with wisdom. She's an intelligent woman. She's not just a workhorse or a machine, but she has brains too. God wants us to be intelligent. God wants us to have knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. That's not just for men, that's for women too. A lot of people think that we as fundamental Baptists that we're against women being educated. That's something that gets thrown at anybody who believes in just a standard role for men and women. Oh, you patriarchal types, you're against women being educated. I'm not against women being educated at all. I want my daughters to grow up and be just as smart as my sons. I want to be every bit as smart as my sons. I know that there are some Christians and there are some Baptists and people that are fundamental who they don't really take the education of their daughters seriously because they just think, oh, they're just going to be cooking and cleaning anyway. What do they need to know all this stuff for? But here's the thing. There are several reasons why I want my daughters to be smart, why I want them to open their mouth with wisdom, why I want them to have brains, why I want them to have knowledge and understanding. First of all, being a homemaker is not just this mindless brainless job. It takes brains to do a good job. It takes smarts to do that job. There are a lot of men who are very well-accomplished, intelligent men who spend their whole lives cooking and being great chefs and everything. It's not an unskilled brainless activity to actually cook well or to run a household. Being a homemaker, it can involve more than just cooking and cleaning. It can also involve financial matters. It can involve paperwork. It can involve just any other area where the wife could help out in running the household. There are a lot of intelligent decisions that go into buying things. There's a lot of math in all of our lives, whether we're men or women. When you go to the store and you're looking at all these price tags and you're trying to figure out, okay, this many ounces cost this many dollars and this many ounces, and you're having to do the math to figure out what's a good deal, what's the cheapest, because sometimes buying the big one is more expensive. Sometimes the prices don't even make sense. Or how about this? You go to the grocery store and you set out to spend a certain amount of money. Sometimes as you're putting things in the car, you might have to keep a running total or whatever of what you're spending. Or you go to the thrift store, you're buying clothing, and you got to keep a running total of what are you buying, what are you doing. There's a lot of thinking involved. Obviously, women are going to use their brains if they're going to do a good job. If you're going to consider a field and buy it and plant a vineyard and stuff, that all takes brains. That all takes smarts. But not only that, I want my daughters to be smart because of the fact that if they're smart, then they're not going to marry a dumb guy. Because smart people don't like to spend the rest of their life with a dumb person. They want to spend their life with somebody intelligent, right? It'd be pretty frustrating if you're pretty intellectual and you're with somebody who's on a really low level intellectually, you're going to be bored by that person. You're not going to enjoy spending a lot of time with that person. And so you're going to gravitate toward a smart. I don't want my daughters to marry a dumb guy. I want them to marry an intelligent guy. A smart guy. Well, if I can educate them and my wife can educate them, then they're not going to marry a total loser, right? They're going to gravitate toward a smarter guy, amen? That sounds great. I'll tell you this. When I was dating as a young person, my number one, and I'm not saying that this is right or wrong. I'm not saying this is what the Bible teaches. I'm just testifying of my own experience that when I was a young person, my number one criteria that I was looking for in a woman was brains. That's just me personally. I wasn't just looking for the most beautiful girl that would go out with me. I was looking for a woman that was smart because I wanted somebody that I could talk to and that I could enjoy conversing with at a high level. There were just a lot of girls that were just ditzy. That just was not something I was interested in. I remember this one girl back then. She said to my wife, she said, oh, you're German. I thought you were from Europe. This other girl that I knew said that she wanted to know what language they spoke in England. It's like, what in the world? These ditzy teenage girls, it can be mind blowing sometimes. Just the lack of intelligence. I couldn't spend the rest of my life with somebody like that. I don't care what they look like. You know what I'm saying? The point is that you want your daughters and your sons to be intelligent so they make good decisions in life and so that they will gravitate toward the wise and abstain from companying with fools. You want both sons and daughters to be educated and to be intelligent. I want my wife to keep learning and getting smarter because of the fact that that's one of the reasons why I married her in the first place, was to have an intelligent companion, not just this pretty dumb homemaking play thing at home for me. No, I'm looking for a companion. Amen? Maybe that's not important to you, but it was important to me. That's one of the things that I love about my wife is that my wife is constantly learning new things. My wife and I are both constantly continually reading books and learning new skills and pursuing new intelligent hobbies because of the fact that we don't want to just let our brains atrophy any more than we want to just let our bodies atrophy. We want to use our brains. My wife is constantly on this kick or that kick of what she's reading or learning or pursuing and that's great. We want our daughters and sons to be educated. Don't be an unschooler. Some homeschoolers are like an unschooler, like, oh yeah, we homeschool, but they don't actually do the work. To them, homeschooling is just not going to school. If you're going to homeschool, you actually have to teach the kids. You actually have to have books and a plan because you don't want to just raise a bunch of dumb people. We don't need a generation of dumb fundamental Baptists. We need people that are intelligent, that are wise, that have knowledge. I mean, God says we should cry after wisdom. You know, He says here that the virtuous woman, her price is far above rubies, but this is chapter 31 of a book that you know what it said earlier in the book over and over again was worth more than rubies, wisdom, knowledge, understanding. By the time you get to chapter 31, you've already gone through 30 chapters telling you get knowledge, get wisdom, get understanding. Wisdom is the principle thing. Increase learning. Listen to your teachers. Listen to your instructors. The Bible hammers that in the book of Proverbs. So that's why the Proverbs 31 woman is opening her mouth with wisdom because she's been reading chapters 1 through 30 and getting some smarts. So it says here she opened her mouth with wisdom and watch this, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. Now a pitfall for homemakers and mothers and women is to get very angry all the time and frustrated. Because it's a stressful job. Being a stay-at-home mother, stay-at-home wife, homeschooler, it's a stressful job. It's hard. You know, my wife just went away for the last three days and was enjoying some fellowship with other pastors, wives, and so I was the one staying home with the nine children, right? So I pretty much tasted her life for three days. I pretty much took over her job. I entered her world for next week she's going to preach three times and see what my life's like, right? No, I'm just kidding. She's going to go out on the soul-wording marathons. No, she's not. But anyway, you know, so I kind of got to experience, and I've done it before, folks, but over the last three days I got to experience, and you know what? It's hard work. It's a lot of work, and it starts when you wake up early and it ends late at night, and it's just a lot of work, taking care of the kids, keeping everything together, a lot of fires to put out, and it can get annoying. You know, one of the hardest things about having a lot of children is just the noise. It never stops. Somebody's always making noise. It's a lot of noise. And so, you know, you got to figure out how to deal with it. But it could be easy to just lose your temper, just to go nuts, just get super angry. And look, there's a time when anger is warranted. There's a time when anger is appropriate. There's a time when, yeah, you know, you do need to cloud up and rain, but in her tongue is the law of kindness. Now, have you ever heard this expression, the exception proves the rule? What does that mean? There's a certain rule, and then there are exceptions to that. So let me ask you this, ladies. What's your default mode of what comes out of your mouth? What's the rule? Not the exception. What's the rule? What's the law that comes out of your mouth? What's your standard answer? Is it kindness? Or is it, ahh, ahh? See what I'm saying? In her tongue is the law of kindness, meaning the default for her is kindness. Are there times when she's going to cloud up and rain? Yes, but not just a constant anger. Constant just, ahh, ahh. You know, now here's the thing. A lot of women, they're frustrated. And you tell them, hey, tone down that anger, you know, calm down, or be nice. You don't know what it's like! But here's the thing. If you're angry all the time, something's wrong with the way that you're living your life. If you're frustrated all the time, if you're at the end of your rope all the time, if you're just constantly just, you know, ready to just end it all, something's wrong with the way that you're living your life. Because God wants you to be a joyful mother of children. And obviously there are going to be times when we get stressed, when we get overwhelmed, when we're burning the candle at both ends, when we're redlining ourselves. But you can't live your life that way all the time. And if that's how you feel all the time, ladies, you're doing something wrong. You know, you need to figure out a way to get your life a little more manageable so that you can actually have in your tongue the law of kindness. Meaning that most of the time what's coming out of your mouth is kind and loving and friendly. And not just a constant, biting, sharp, angry tongue all the time. Now here are some practical tips, and you know I only have a little bit of time tonight here and I'm going through all this scripture, but here are some practical tips. You know, if you would actually try rising also while it is yet night, this will help you have a better day and be less stressed out. You have to get up early, okay? And here's the secret. Let me give you the great secret to getting up early, because you say, oh, getting up early is easier said than done. Here's the great secret to getting up early. Going to bed early. Now you say, oh, I just, I need sleep, I need my beauty rest. Great. Go to bed early. It's super easy to get up at five in the morning if you go to bed at nine, right? It's super easy to get up at six a.m. If you go to bed at ten or ten thirty, then you can get up at six. It's no problem, right? But the problem is that a lot of people, they stay up too late. And we're all guilty of this from time to time where we get carried away and we stay up too late. And look, occasionally, yeah, stay up late and party. But just constantly, there are people that are staying up till midnight every night. They're staying up till one in the morning every night. And then they wonder why they're so stressed out. They wonder why they can't get anything done. They wonder why they can't get up in the morning and get ahead of the game. See, if you can get up before the kids are up, you can beat them to the, you can head them off at the pass, right? And get there before they start tearing the place apart. And get things under control. Get things ready. Get things organized. You know, a lot of people, and here's the thing, how about just getting enough sleep? And you know, a lot of times we focus on the verses that are telling you, you know, love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty, open thine eyes and thou shalt be satisfied with bread. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall I poverty come as one that travelth, and I want as an armed man, how long wilt thou sleep O sluggard? When wilt thou arrive? You know, and we focus on those scriptures, but here's the thing about that though. I think that's how, in my personal opinion, I think that's talking about people who are sleeping in the daytime. This is talking about people who are at work and they start dozing off. This is people that are sleeping when they're not supposed to sleep. They need to sleep, sleep in the night, and they need to be drunken or drunken in the night. Right? So, we need to realize that God's not telling us to deprive ourselves from sleep. Alright, brother Segura? You getting this? No, I'm just kidding. He doesn't sleep enough. Anyway, the point is that, you know, God's not telling us to deprive ourselves of sleep. What he's telling us is that, you know, we don't need to be sleeping and lazy in the daytime, you know, unless it's a planned siesta or you worked late or whatever. I'm not talking about people who are in those situations. I'm talking about people who get a good night's sleep at night and then they just take a nap again or they just lay around and sleep. And you know, it makes you more tired. Sometimes sleeping too much or relaxing too much begets more sleep and gets you lazy, okay? Sleep begets more sleep. And by the way, while we're on this, and look, I'm trying to help you ladies out, okay? By the way, sleep begets more sleep. This is something that you can put to work for you in the lives of your children because you want them to sleep more or less. Ladies, okay, I'm giving you a dispensation to speak in the church for one second. Do you want your kids to sleep more or less, ladies? More. Amen. All right. Okay, now remain silent. Now, I'm just kidding. But anyway, the point is that, look, you want the kids to sleep more because if they stay up real late and they're up early in the morning, that's when you're going to be going crazy. The key to remaining sane as a virtuous woman is that there's a time when your kids go to sleep and you have a break, right? And then there's a nap time when you get another break. This is how my wife remains sane, okay? Most of the time. So, no, I'm just kidding. So the point is that, you know, you got to enforce bedtime. And listen to me, the later your kids go to bed, the earlier they get up. I know it's a paradox, but it's true. If you put your kids down at 9, 10, 11 at night, they're going to be up first thing in the morning. I don't know why. I can't explain the science behind it. But all I know is that when you put them down at 7.30, they sleep in. They sleep better. They stay in. And, you know, who cares if they just lay there silently? Amen. Break. And here's the thing. If you put, yeah, if you put the kids down at 9.30 or 10, you're not going to want to go to bed at 9.30 or 10 because there's some stuff you want to do after they're asleep. So you got to, if you want to get to bed at a reasonable hour, 9, 9.30, 10 o'clock, and I know I might sound like an old fuddy duddy for saying that, but if you want to get to bed at a reasonable hour, you got to put them down even earlier. How many of you when you were growing up, your parents were sending you to bed at 7.30, 8? Yeah, I mean, we all did it. We all suffered through that. They'll live. They'll survive. Look how we turned out. We turned out great. I mean, here we are. We're at church. Amen. We love the Lord. So something worked. So the point is that, you know, you got to go to bed early enough so that you're not just this wreck. You're not angry all the time. You can have a mouth filled with the law of kindness and you can rise while it's yet night. You can get up and you can learn that the sun comes up gradually. You can actually see what it's like to watch the sun come up because you get up early. Look, I can't explain it. I don't know the science behind it, but I'll tell you this. If I get up early and go to bed early, I get way more done. Even if I sleep the exact same amount and even if I have the exact amount of time, you just get way more done in the morning. You just get more done and you feel better. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. And when I go to bed early and get up early, sometimes I'm just blown away how much I can get done. It'll be like 9 a.m. and I feel like, man, I've already gotten so much done. But staying up late doesn't do that for you because I don't know about you. The later it gets, the less productive I get. I'm way less productive in the evening as in the morning when I first wake up. And I'm not really a morning person or anything like that. It's just, I think it's just true. And also I've heard this said from a scientific standpoint that every hour of sleep you get before midnight is worth two after midnight. The sleep that you get before midnight is a better quality of sleep. And again, I'm not telling you, oh, Pastor Anderson's trying to give me an early bedtime. Look, I'm not telling you when to go to bed. I don't care when you go to bed. Go to bed at 3 in the morning and get up at 11 a.m. and I love you and you're a member in good standing. I don't care what you do. I'm just trying to look. And look, if you go to bed at 2 a.m. every night, hopefully it's not because that's when the bar's closed, but if you go to bed at 2 a.m. every night and you're happy and you're productive and you're serving God, then you know what, if it's working for you, keep doing what you're doing. But there's a lot of people today that are at the end of their rope, they're pulling their hair out, they're stressed out, they're angry all the time, they can't get their household in order, they can't get the kids in line. You know what, maybe you should try something different. Try going to bed earlier and for the love, put the kids down earlier. Put them down. We put, look, sometimes we put our kids down to bed, it's still light outside in the summer because I mean it stays light late here. We put them down at 7.30, 7.45, they're like, it's still daytime. No, it's night. Get a blackout curtain, it's 7.45, go to bed. And I'm thinking like, man, why are my kids even up right now because we're at church. And look, on church nights, yeah, you end up staying out a little later. But you know what, you can still get to bed at a reasonable hour and nobody's gonna fellowship tonight, but anyway, no, I'm just kidding. But still fellowship. But what about the other five nights, you know, you can get to bed early and it's good for you and you'll be happier and you can get the kids under control. And you know what, one of the things I learned too over the last three days was just the importance of having strict discipline because if you just let the kids run wild, it's a madhouse. You've gotta reign it in. And you don't have to be mean to do it, but you gotta be strict and you gotta reign it. And a lot of the women that are tearing their hair out, you know, they need to get their kids under control and get them under control so that they don't just torture them all day with just the wildness and the brattiness and so forth. I gotta hurry up. I hope that that's helpful to you though, to understand that the virtuous woman, you know what, she's getting up early and she's working hard and then she's able to stay cool and in her tongue is the law of kindness. It says also in verse 27, she looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idols. You know what I've always thought is funny when I read this chapter is that he talks so much about her working hard that it seems like he gets off that and talks about she opens her mouth with wisdom and her tongue's the law of kindness and then he just gets right back on it. It's like one verse off and then it's like, oh, by the way, she doesn't eat the bread of idol-ness. I mean, that just shows you how busy she is. She got one break verse from all the hard work and then she's back to work. Her children arise up and call her blessed. Her husband also and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excelest them all. Super is deceitful and beauty is vain. But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates. What's he saying? Hey, you'll be a lot happier guys with a wife that's not as physically attractive if she has these qualities, way happier than to have that supermodel gorgeous trophy wife who's sleeping in, laying around, watching a bunch of junk, watching a bunch of soap operas and telenovelas and she's not getting the work done. She's not intelligent. She's ditzy. Look, you're going to get bored of looking at that pretty face. It'd be like if you bought some fancy sports car, but it's not functional, right? For a few weeks, it's going to be fun, put the top down, cruise around, you're shifting through the gears, you're enjoying the tachometer and all the frills of your fancy sports car. But you know what? At the end of the day, you need something functional. Amen? You need something functional. You're going to care more eventually about talking to your wife and actually how your wife's raising your children and what kind of a companion she is. And look, obviously you want your wife to be beautiful, but is that really the most important thing? Is that the number one criteria? No way. He says, look, favor is deceitful, beauty is vain. A woman that feareth the Lord and has these Christian character attributes, she shall be praised. And you know what, ladies? I'm sure you want your children because every mother should and usually does love her children. That's pretty natural for a woman to love her children. And so every mother wants her children to love her and to call her blessed, right? That's a pretty natural desire for a woman to have. And every woman naturally wants her husband to praise her. She wants to please her husband. She wants to please her children. She wants to be doing a good job as a wife and a mother, right? That's natural. That's normal. That's what women want in life. Just like we want to go to work and we want our boss to tell us that we're doing a good job. We want customers to praise us and rise up and call us blessed, right? Well, they want the same thing. Well, here's the thing, ladies. If you want that to happen, you know, this is some stuff to work on. This is the formula right here, Proverbs 31. If you like that verse in verse 28, it's verses 1 through 27 that get you there, right? So this is a formula for being a virtuous wife and being called blessed. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.