Proverbs 31 women who aren't

How apropos for the “evil day” we live in that the woman who has made the 31^st chapter of Proverbs synonymous with her name, building the profit empire Proverbs 31 Ministries, is so deceived and deceiving she advocates learning to “hear God’s voice because every day He speaks to us, inviting us to draw close and listen as He reveals Himself, His character, and His direction.”

The best-selling Christian author and sold-out national speaker, Lysa Terkeurst, reveals in a YouTube video, “I remember not being a Christian for a long time in my life; I always thought when people say, ‘I heard God say,’ I thought they were freaky weird people because I just couldn’t imagine that the God of the universe had time to talk to that person, and if He did, what was He, booming His voice from heaven? And if He did boom His voice from heaven, why didn’t the rest of us hear? So I was very confused about that question . . . I NOW can hear from God, not in a booming voice from heaven, but this pressing in; this gentle nudging in my heart and I know when I’m hearing from God.”

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God is not in the business of giving out extra-biblical information today and the whole purpose of the Book of Proverbs is to provide wisdom and instruction from God’s written Word, making it abundantly clear to the reader that the understanding needed to attain wisdom comes from the pages of His finished Book, not the "listening prayer" Terkeurst promotes. 

What’s so ironic is that the first verse of Proverbs 31 ('The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him') identifies the Book of Proverbs as a book of prophecy—one that instructs tribulation saints how to identify the apostate system women like Terkeurst have fallen for.

As my pastor, Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org), explained just this past Sunday morning in his Mother’s Day sermon, “Proverbs is not just a book of wisdom; it’s a book about some prophetic things Lemuel’s mother taught him.

“It’s talking about wisdom that, in the prophetic program, Israel is going to need to function in the tribulation period to distinguish between the vain religious system of Baal worship that the Antichrist is going to propagate, and the true wisdom God will have them to follow.

“There’s a seduction program in the satanic attack against Israel and it’s to try and draw them away into error. Remember, Satan wants to be like the most high God and He’s The Great Counterfeiter.

“In Proverbs, there are two women. There’s the virtuous woman, but there’s also the vile woman and she’s a picture of that vain religious system Revelation calls ‘MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’

“The other one is that ‘virgin daughter’ of the nation Israel, as Isaiah calls her. There’s going to be that true remnant of God and Proverbs is written prophetically for them as a book to give them discernment—ability to discern between the true and the false.

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“Proverbs 30 and 31 are two chapters stuck on the end of the Book that are really weird, and I’m saying that reverently. The Book of Proverbs turns out to be a book of prophecy, but when did you ever hear that?!

“There’s nobody in the Bible named Lemuel, but a lot of times names are titles. There’s nobody named Caesar, for example; it’s a title. We call the president the president and the mayor the mayor. The name Lemuel means ‘devoted to God.’ Here’s the king who’s devoted to God and that obviously could be Solomon.

“People who teach Proverbs often do it without understanding anything about right division and they say, ‘For some strange reason God stuck this stuff at the end and here’s what a godly king and a virtuous woman look like.’

“The answer is He did it because the king and His bride, Christ and Israel, are going to function together and that’s who’s functioning here.

“He uses the issue of the virtuous woman to teach those things. Proverbs 31:10 says, [10] Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

“This is not designed to present a dilemma; it’s a challenge, a declaration: ‘Let me tell you how you find her because her price is far above rubies.’ The idea is if you have a precious stone, the longer you have it, its value goes up.

“The value of a virtuous woman is the longer she lives the more her value increases. The word ‘virtue’ means ‘moral excellence.’ It’s the outward display of wisdom.

“When you try to define a word, the best way to look for a definition is to find a verse in the Bible that defines it for you, because then you know how the Bible uses the word. Sometimes a dictionary gives you six different definitions of a word and you’re not sure which one it ought to be.

“I used to be puzzled about (God’s) idea of virtue because of this really odd verse in Luke 8: [46] And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.

“What flowed out of Him? Power to heal that woman, so virtue has to do with the strength that is produced by moral excellence. It’s not just that she’s correct, but it’s that there’s a strength; there’s an internal character of strength produced by the truth of God’s Word.

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“Isaiah 33:6 says, [6] And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure.

“God has this treasure chest and the way you get into it is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It tells you what’s in the treasure chest and it’s the key that unlocks it and allows you to begin to get out of it the treasure that’s in it.

“The wisdom and knowledge that’s in that treasure chest is going to be stability of the times and strength of salvation.

“You look at the world we live in today—is there much stability? Why, just look at the politics and how goofy everything is. Look at the economy. Everything’s turned on its head. Look at the social structure, all the stuff going on with transgender bathrooms, and you say, ‘Doesn’t anybody have any common sense?!’

“That verse tells you why. There’s no wisdom and knowledge; there’s no fear of God that lets you go into the treasure chest and bring out some understanding that would give stability to the culture you live in.

“If you want to see a nation go away, how a nation’s destroyed and what it looks like when it falls apart, look at the nation Israel. They were God’s nation, and when God sent them into captivity, destroyed their national government and sent them among the nations, He described what was happening to them and why. Isaiah 33:6 is one of the passages that tells you how to avoid the destruction.

“Isaiah 5 says there are five social events that tell you the nation’s crumbled. Verse 20 says, [20] Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

“When you can’t distinguish between light and darkness, good and evil, bitter and sweet, it’s over! It’s not going to be over; it IS over!

“What happened to Israel? Well, the fear of the Lord, honoring what God said above what man said, wasn’t there and so the treasures that trusting in God’s Word would have brought to them weren’t in their culture.

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“The virtuous woman is the one who understands how to have the stability and the deliverance. Where did her virtue come from? Proverbs 31:26 says, [26] She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

“Where did she get the wisdom from? Verse 30: [30] Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.

“You see that? She understood how to fear God. She understood how to put what God said above anything else.

“The fear of God is an interesting thing. We usually think about it as running from God, but that’s a fool’s errand. How good did Adam and Eve do with that? You can run from God but you can’t get away from Him. Jonah fled from the presence of God, but how did that work for him? David said, ‘If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. No matter where you go, He’s there!’

“The fear of God is the ability to be afraid of running from God to sin in order to alleviate your problems rather than allow God’s word to alleviate them for you. That’s why in Ephesians 5, Paul says we’re to ‘submit ourselves one to another in the fear of God.’

“That’s why Paul says in Philippians 2 to you and me that we’re to obey God’s word ‘with fear and trembling.’ That is, ‘I understand that’s truth and I FEAR the results of not obeying it, because to not obey it is sin and I fear the consequences of sin and what God says they are, and I fear forsaking him, running to sin to solve my anxieties and my difficulties.’

“Proverbs 8:13, I think, is a great definition of the fear of the Lord. The verse says, ‘The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.’

“Please watch that. Notice the first thing he says he hates is pride and arrogance. That’s long before the evil way. Before the action is the attitude. Every action, every overt thing you do, out of the heart are the issues of life. Jesus said in Matthew 15 that ‘from within come the things that defile a man.’

“Proverbs 4:23 says, [23] Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. That’s saying, ‘Here’s how the inner thinking is to be designed,’ and proverbs is a book about wisdom.

“As Proverbs 1 explains, [3] To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
[4] To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
[5] A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:

“That’s talking about counsel to handle the details of life in a way that accomplishes God’s purpose. Verse 7 says, [7] The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning; it’s the foundation stage. It’s not the summum bonum--the end--but it’s where wisdom BEGINS. It’s where real understanding and knowledge begins.

“Listen, if you want to know what’s going on in life, it starts with understanding what God says and saying, ‘That’s what is more important than what anyone else does.’ That’s what Proverbs is for; it’s purpose is to give wisdom and instruction and understanding so you can attain to wisdom."