Wisdom in Relationships

This morning for Sunday school, we're going to continue in our series practical Wisdom from Proverbs. For those of you who haven't been here for various reasons, basically what we're doing is we're taking different topics that are covered in Proverbs.

Sometimes it's hard to read Proverbs because it seems like they bounce around all over the place and cover different things. So I'm trying to put things together. I thought I had next week for Sunday school, but I see that we have a special speaker is going to be doing Sunday school, right? Anything? Well, if he wants to, that's fine.

It doesn't matter to me. I just need to know so I can decide if I need to change my plans or whatever. So last week we talked about wisdom in how we speak, a very important topic, I think, and explained why.

And if I'm not going to go over that again, because we could spend the whole time reviewing that. This week we're going to talk about wisdom in relationships. So what does God say in Proverbs about the relationships we have with others? I think another good topic, one of the things that Nathan said when he was preaching was that the purpose impurity part is that what Daniel put into his motherboard affected what came out.

Well, some of what affects what goes in is who we're around. And Proverbs says a lot about who we should be spending our good time with and who we shouldn't be. So we're going to look at that this morning.

There's only six points, I believe, but as you can see, it's still four pages of notes. So probably another hour of teaching. Let's go ahead and pray and we'll dig into this topic here.

Heavenly Father we do praise you, Lord We thank you for this time today. We thank you for timing your word. We thank you for the challenge we had from Daniel this morning.

I pray that you'd help us to be people that purpose to be pure and then put that into practice, Lord, and even follow these steps that Daniel and his friends did. That we may choose correctly and choose wisely in our lives. That we would serve you, that we would do what's right, that we would bring ourselves away from doing wrong things, that would sin against you.

Lord, we pray too, as we study through Proverbs. Lord, you help us to really see how important it is to have good Godly, Christian friends who will influence us, who will build us up, who will admonish us at times, who will give us good advice so that we may even further be successful for you in our lives. Lord, I pray you bless this time.

Help me as I speak and help us as we listen to take in these words and to learn something from Your Word. Help us to know you better in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Okay, so wisdom in relationships, as I said, I think relationships are very important. The people you spend majority of your time with, the good friendships you have, are going to influence you in your lives, are going to influence me. And so we need to be careful that we are having Godly influences in our lives.

The people we trust, the people we talk to, the people that we go to when we're having difficulties in life, that they are people that love God, want to serve Him, want to give good biblical advice to us, want to come alongside and encourage us in the Lord. And I think Proverbs says a lot about good and bad relationships. So I'm going to start with the bad, work my way to the good, go back to the bad and come back to the good.

You'll see that in a second here. Point number one here is that Proverbs tells us we need to avoid close relationships with those who do. We'll do the same thing we did last week.

We'll just have one person kind of read the whole section of verses. Nathan, your hands up already. So go ahead and you can take the section in .1.

I think you can read through this and I'm going to come back and talk about these. So just go over, read straight through these verses, my son. If they say, Come with us, let us lie to shed blood, let us burden secretly without cause.

Let us swallow them alive like shield and whole like those who go down to the pit. We shall find all kinds of precious possessions. We shall fill our houses with spoil, casting your lot among us.

Let us all have one curse, my son. Do not walk away with them. Keep your foot from their path, for their feet from evil, and they make haste to shed blood.

Surely in vain the net is spread in the night, in the sight of any bird. But they lie, wait for their own blood, they lurk secretly for their own bodies. So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain.

It takes away the life of its owners. Proverbs two, verses eleven through 15. Discretion will preserve you.

Understanding will keep you to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who lead the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in evil and delight in the perversity of the wicked whose ways are crooked and who are devious in their paths. Proverbs 16, verses 27 through 30 an ungodly man digs up evil, and it is on his lips like a burning fire. A perverse man sows strife and a whisperer separates vest of records.

A violent man entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good. He wings his eyes and divides perverse day of slips he purses lips and brings about evil. Proverbs 22, verse ten.

Cast out the scoffer and contention will leave yes, strife and reproach will cease. Proverbs 22, verses 24 and 25 make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare up for your soul. Proverbs 23 six through eight do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies for as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The more so you have eaten, you will bomb it up and waste your pleasant words. Proverbs 23, verses 20 and 21 do not mix with wine dippers or with gluttonous eaters of wheat for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe a man of rats.

Proverbs 24 verses one and two do not be envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them, for their heart devises violence and their lips talk of troublemaker. Proverbs 29, verse 24 whoever is a partner with a thief hates his own life. He swears to tell the truth, but reveals nothing.

Proverbs 28, verse seven whoever keeps the law is a discerning son. I think you can kind of see in all these verses here, it talks about who you spend time with, who you are companions with, who you go about doing things with. And a lot of times when we say relationships, like God wants us to be holy in our relationships, the first thing we often think of is the romantic husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend type of relationship, right? But this deals with all kinds of relationships in our life.

For instance, in Proverbs one, these are people and I need to ask the question, has anybody ever had somebody say, hey, let's go to get online and wait for blood, as they may approach you and said that to you? No, but the idea here is that evil people plot evil things. They want to do evil things, and if you spend time with them, it's going to lead you to going in the same way that they're going. It's going to lead you to participate in the same actions that they're participating in.

And you see a number of these things and then there's warnings here. They say, come with us, let us lie, wait to shed blood, blah, blah, blah. Verse 15 says, my son, do not walk in the way with them, don't be spending time with them, don't be following them, don't be building good friendships with them.

Another one that I saw here, I think it's Proverbs 22 there make no friendship with an angry man. So God's warning us that people who have evil intent, people who live their lives in a way that dishonors God, they're going to have an influence on us and we need to be careful how much time we're spending with them. Now I'm going to talk about a little bit later.

You can't get away from all that. And you shouldn't get away from all that because you need to have opportunities to share the gospel with them. You need to have opportunities to be a Godly influence on them.

And there's some situations like when you go to work, you're going to have wicked, evil people around you because that's just how life works. But this is more the idea of who's influencing you, who is taking up your time? Who are the people that you trust, the people that you go to for advice, the people that you share your hopes and dreams with? What kind of people should they be? And the first thing we see is those with avoid the close relationships with those who do evil types of people we should avoid in close friendships with. This isn't a complete list from these passages, but you can see kind of where this is going.

There those who plot wickedness, those who desire to do evil, those who are quick to doing things that displease God, to do sinful things. We should avoid friendships with those people, with violent people. If somebody's violent, that's wrong, that's evil.

Avoid that kind of friendship perverse people. I have a work friend. I call him.

He's someone that I talk to at work. I have a good relationship with him at work. Once in a while he's come to our kids graduation parties.

Once in a while he drops off chairs, lawn chairs he's not using. He did that this summer. He had five lawn chairs that he didn't want.

Asked if I want them. I said, yeah, sure, bring them by. So I have a good relationship with him.

I haven't made a close relationship with him. He's not someone I go hang out with every weekend that I go and talk to about my live streams and hopes. And one of the reasons is because he prides himself in being offensive in saying things that shock people.

And he'll even admit that. He'll say, yeah, that's the kind of guy I am. And I don't want any part of that.

I don't want that to be part of my life. I want to please God by the things I say. And so he's sometimes perverse in there.

He delights in doing what is wrong. People who are talking about how great it is to go out and get drunk every week or how great it is that they're sleeping with their girlfriend. Those are not types of people that should be influencing us and should have a part in molding our lives.

Those who speak in an ungodly way. And we talked about speech a lot last week, so I'm not going to go too in detail over this. One of the words that's used in here is a miser.

This is literally in a Hebrew and evil one, but it carries the idea of someone who is disagreeable or somebody who is malignant. So those types of people drunkards, thieves, gluttons, gluttons, in Hebrew is literally worthless. It's kind of one who lavishes himself or one who squanders what he has in one of the passages even talks about drunkards and gluttons together.

That's the idea of someone that lives by their passions, they live according to their desires, their lusts, and that they don't make a distinction between what is right or wrong, they just want to do what feels good to them. So those are types of people that we should not have these close friendships with. The people we hang out with will affect the way we live.

And I think Proverbs makes that clear that if you start hanging out, if you start spending a lot of time with these types of people, you're going to be caught in what they're doing. One Corinthians 515 33 says, do not be deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits.

If that's true, what kind of company should we have then? Should be avoiding evil company, right? We should be finding Godly company. People that are walking with God, people that love the Lord, people that are filled with the Spirit and walking in the right way because evil company corrupts good habits. We don't want that as Christians.

We shouldn't want that as Christians. But again, here's another point. We should not, however, isolate ourselves from the ungodly.

I think some people take this too far and say, I'm not going to build any relationships with anybody that doesn't love God. Well, that's not necessarily right. One Corinthians five and verse nine says, I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with the sexually immoral people.

Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world or with the covetous, extortioners or idolaters. Since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I've written to you not to keep company with anyone who named a brother who is sexually immoral or a covetous or idolater or reviler or drunkard or an executioner, not even to eat with such a person.

And the context of One Corinthians five is this man who's caught in adultery in the church. And the church had basically come to the conclusion that we're not going to do anything about this. We're actually going to let it go and we're actually going to take pride in the grace that we're showing this guy to kind of go off and live a sinful life.

We're not going to bother with him and Paul's saying, no, you can't do that. He's a believer. You need to separate yourself from him.

And in this passage he makes a sub point here and it's not really the main point of the passage, but reminds us that people in the world, sinners are going to act like sinners and we should expect that. We shouldn't think that someone who doesn't know Christ is going to be living a godly life. They're not going to they're going to live according to their sinful nature.

But how are we going to breach them if we isolate them, if we separate ourselves from them, if we never talk with them, if we never have any relationships with them? No, we should have those relationships so that we can influence them for Christ. And you look at just what we talked about in the morning service. I'm amazed a lot of times how these things go together.

God works that out really well. But Daniel being having passion for these ungodly people and then being an influence on them and even seeing Nebuchadnezzar speaking on behalf of God and praising God and worshiping God, how did that happen? Well, because Daniel didn't separate himself from the ungodly king. He influenced him.

Now, was Nebuchadnezzar his best friend? I don't think so. I think Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were the guys he hung out with, but he didn't not have a relationship with Nebuchadnezzar. He was able to influence him and show him who God was.

And we were talking a little bit earlier. I took a class in Daniel. I wrote a seven page paper about the salvation of Nebuchadnezzar and made some points.

I think that Daniel actually even affected him, that Nebuchadnezzar may have come to a proper knowledge of God and have been saved. And that would be amazing that you can do that. So we can't separate ourselves from the world.

God wants us to influence the ungodly. But are they our most important relationships? Are they the people that are influencing us? And the answer should be no. If they're not living for God, they shouldn't be influencing our life.

We ought to be going to people in our church, godly, friends and family that we have. Those ought to be the people that are closest to us and influencing us. We need to avoid close relationships with those who do evil.

So that's point number one this morning. Point number two, discern between good relationships and bad relationships. Kayla, you want to read those proverbs Jesus Christ.

Proverbs 1320. But the problem 67 better is a dinner of bird we're loving than a bad cow. Proverb 69 better to be a humble fear of loathing, the loneliness to divide, the spoil, the proud.

Proverbs 71 better. Proverbs 27. Six they warn the kiss of the so we see a number of times in proverbs here.

It gives us that we need to be able to discern between what's a good relationship, what's a bad relationship, what relationship we should invest in, and what relationship we should say, okay, this is not the most important relationship in my life. And it gives a lot of comparisons here. We need to consider who we're friends with, who we're close friends with, and say, is this a good relationship? Is this a bad relationship? We need to be discerning.

Now, I think discernment starts as we know the word of God. So first thing you need to do is make sure that you know the word of God. You're studying the word of God.

You're meditating on the word of God so that you know what kind of relationship God wants you in. And then once you know that, then you can discern and you can say, okay, is this person a good influence on me, or is this person leading me down the path of unrighteousness? And here we see a number of things and we should carefully consider who we are friends with. I'm going to make a comparison just from the verses.

Here the first verse for others, 12:26 just talks about the righteous should choose their friends carefully. The righteous should choose their friends carefully. That's good advice, right? So far.

And I'm going to show you more reasons why we should choose our friends carefully. But these people do have an influence in our life. Next verse there, Proverbs 1320, gives us a care comparison.

We should seek friendship with wise people, not foolish people. If you're hanging out with people that are doing foolish things all the time, that's not a good influence on you. You ought to be hanging out with people that are doing wise things, that are doing things that make sense according to God's word, that follow the wisdom that God gives.

So wise people, not foolish people, we should seek friendship. The next verse talks about seeking friendship with those motivated by love, not by hatred. I think we would say, and you could even ask the world at this point and say, should we be around people that are hateful? And they would say, no, although their definition of hateful is going to be a lot different than what we say is hateful, right? But people who love you are going to care about you.

They're going to want what's best for you. They're going to do the things that are helpful for you. And likewise, if you're a loving person, your relationship with them will be the same way that you will care for them.

You're going to try to benefit them, you're going to do things that are helpful for them. That's a good relationship. There's a hateful relationship.

It's a very selfish relationship. It's a very demanding relationship, and we need to be careful about that. We should seek friendship with those who are peacemakers, not strifeful people.

God says, Blessed are the peacemakers who ought to be seeking relationships with people that are not stirring up contention, they're not stirring up wrath, they're not trying to cause problems, but people that are trying to reconcile. They're trying to bring peace between people. We need to seek friendships with those who want to help us grow, not those who want to hurt us.

You get that from Proverbs 27:6 faithful are the wounds of a friend. Sometimes it's the best thing to tell somebody, hey, look, you're doing what's wrong? You're in sin. You need to get this right.

And we don't like to confront people on that. But that's a loving thing to do, to tell people that, hey, you need to get things back with God. And that's the good type of friendship that we should find.

That's one thing I always appreciate about sue. She wasn't afraid to tell people, hey, look, that's wrong. You need to change that to get it right.

I remember in Josiah, you could probably testify about this, that he would often come to sue and say, hey, this is what's going on my life, it's so cool. And she would say, really? You need to think about this, right? That was the kind of person she was. Yeah, she would do that with me as her husband.

And I would be like, well, what's your advice on that? Well, here's what you need to do. This is what God's word says. Oh, I hadn't thought of that.

Yes, that's the kind of friendship that you want, somebody that's not going to be afraid to tell you, hey, you're not getting this right. You're not doing the things God wants you to do. You need to change that.

You need to change your life. So it lines up with what God's Word says and that you're obeying and following Him. So we need to be discerning.

We need to look at our friendships and say, is this a friendship that's going to help me grow, help me be the type of person God wants me to be? This could be beneficial in my life that I can serve God and do what's right, or is this somebody that's going to lead me down the wrong path? So we need to discern between good relationships and bad relationships. Number three here is we should seek out relationships with God honoring people. So I'm going from the bad to the good here now.

So who should we look for? Well, people who honor God. This is four verses here. Who'd like to read these four? Lynn.

So here's four verses in Proverbs that talk about what a good friend does. The first one talks about a friend loves all times. A brother is born for reverse. A good friend will support and encourage in hard times.

When you're going through hard times, a good friend's not going to abandon you. A good friend is actually going to come alongside you and say, hey, I'm here for you, I love you, I care for you, I'm going to be beside you. I'm going to help you through this.

That's what a good friend does. That's the type of friend we should seek out. A good friend also will be faithful.

Proverbs 8:24 says, there's a friend that sticks closer to a brother. I think we apply this first and foremost. I think Jesus is who that's talking about the friend that sticks closer to the brother.

But this is a good idea for us too, that a faithful friend is faithful. Even when the friendship's not easy, even when there's some stress or some strain in that relationship, they're going to be faithful. I think about marriage myself, and I know at times marriage was wonderful, and then there were other times where marriage was not very much fun.

Sue was mad at me, I was mad at sue. We weren't communicating correctly. Things happen.

But you know what? There was never a point in my life where, you know, I'm done, I'm gone. This isn't worth it. Because I wanted to be faithful to sue, and sue even more.

So, I think, desired to be faithful to me. And she was always willing to work through that. I think that's part of a good friendship is that you're faithful.

And the rocks and bumps and strains and stresses of the relationship don't end that friendship. It just builds it up. It helps to grow stronger.

So a good friendship is faithful. A good friend will give Godly advice. 27 nine.

The sweetness of a man's friend gives delight by hearty counsel, by giving good counsel, by giving hearty. I think of like a hearty meal as like just everything you need. It's going to fill you, it's going to provide the energy you need, it's going to provide the nutrients you need.

That's a hearty meal. Hearty counsel is kind of that way too. It gives you everything that you need to do what you need to do.

So a good friend will be able to tell you, this is what God says you should do. This is the way you should go. You need help, I'm here to help you.

Let me tell you what God's word says. Hearty counsel. A good friend will walk alongside others and help them grow as iron sharpens iron.

That idea that a good friendship helps us to grow closer to God. That's what we ought to be looking for in our close friendships, the people that influence us. So seek out relationships with God honoring people.

Number four flee from sexually immoral relationships. Although this is getting a little bit more into the kind of relations we think about. But Proverbs says a lot about this.

These are some long's verses. So somebody who wants to read, who has a good strong voice and ready to read a little bit, who would like to read these? Okay. Go ahead, Josiah.

I don't see Josiah up there. So that's why he has to speak up for you and forget the covenant of God. For her house leads down to death, her path to the dead none who goes to her return.

Nor do they regain the fastest life from spies this rig for the rest of an old woman. But in the end she is bitter as wormwood sharp. Her feet go down to death, her steps by hold of hell lest you wander her past life her ways are unstable.

Do you not know this? Therefore give me now my trouble not depart from the words of my mouth. Move your way far from her, for the commandment of the land and the law proofs of instruction are the way of life. Keep from the evil woman, do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelid.

For by means of my father a man reduced the crust of bread and adulteress will prey upon his precious life. So is he who goes into his proverbs 7:12 and saw among the temple after kingdom of youth the young men in the twilight, in the evening, in the black dark night, and their woman met them. She was wild and rebellious, her feet were not staying home at times she was outside.

Now therefore listen, pay attention to the words of my mouth. Do not let your heart turn aside to her way. Do not stray into her path.

She has cast down many wounded and all who are slain by her strong men. Her house is the way to come, for a harlot is a deep pit well, she also lies away as for a victim and increases the unfinished whoever loves wisdom. So here again, Proverbs deals a lot with this idea of sexual immorality of here it uses the word harlotry, but adultery, sexual relations outside of marriage, and how not only wrong it is, but how detrimental it is, how much it hurts us, how much it destroys our lives.

I thought it was appropriate, as we're talking about relationships, to just think about this. I originally had thought maybe doing this as a whole lesson by itself, given the mixed company of young people to old people. I decided just to do it in one point here.

But God wants us to choose our companions in terms of our life partner, our husband, our wife, that type of idea, in a godly way. Someone who is sexually pure, who has sexually right ideas, who's not looking to fulfill their own pleasure. And this works both for men and women, even though Proverbs is mainly written to men.

And you can see by this, I think this works both ways here, that you don't want to be either one of these people, the harlot or the person who is seduced by her. So what are my points here? Well, first, befriending sexually immoral will cause you pain and suffering. And you look at this over and over in some of these passages.

I gave the full extent of the passage because it goes into great detail about what happens to these people who turn against the right things of God's sin in this way and what happens in their life that they are destroyed, they are hurt, evil things happen to them because they haven't done what was right. Some of the things that are listed is death. It talks a number of times about that.

Like in proverbs seven here. Where is it? Verse 27. Her house is the way to hell, descending the chambers of death.

This could kill you. There's bitterness that can happen. There's poverty, there's punishment, there's ruin of your life.

All this had happened because we're not keeping ourselves pure in our sexual relationships. Sexual sin just doesn't just hurt others around you. One Corinthians 618 talks about sexual immorality.

It says, flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body. But he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.

And so this is something that's going to hurt you if you choose the wrong companion, the wrong relationships, and get involved in some of the sexually immoral behavior. This is going to hurt you. This is going to not be beneficial to you.

This is going to cause pain and suffering to you. And that's something to realize. We must be careful not to be caught by those who are immoral.

And you look in a number of these passages, proverbs seven especially, I saw among the simple, I perceived among the youth a young man devoid of understanding. Here's someone that wasn't paying attention, who wasn't looking at wisdom, who wasn't seeking out, how can I do the right thing? He was just doing whatever was going to happen and he was caught. We need to be careful.

We need to understand that this is a very evil thing and we need to say it again. We're going to need to purpose in our heart that we're going to keep ourselves pure. And then we need to practice that.

We need to put that into action. It's something that we need to make a conscious, strong, faithful commitment to do. Must be careful not to be caught by those who are immoral.

Our focus should be on the things which please the Lord. Philippians four eight is a great passage on how we think. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report.

If there's any virtue, if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate, concentrate, focus on these things. We need to have our mind in the right place. This is where I want to bring up something, because these passages don't talk about it.

But the one thing that we can do that really hurts us, especially you as men, is that pornography puts our mind in the wrong place. We start thinking about sexual immorality, we start thinking about women the wrong way, guess what's going to happen? Our thoughts will lead to wrong actions and it's going to destroy us. As you see, point one, as our companions are, so we shall end up like them.

If you put yourself in a situation where you're even around people, that that's what they talk about and that's what they focus on. And I've been in manufacturing workplaces. I've been in places where it's been mostly guys and unsafe guys are crude in the way they talk.

You can't get away from that to some extent if you're in that kind of job. You're in that kind of job. But who are the people that are influencing you? Are those people influencing you? Are Godly people influencing you and helping you think about what's right? This is something I'm going to step aside from here and admit I'm probably not talking about something that I know a whole lot about.

For men, visual stimulus is what catches us, what gets us. So we need to be careful what we're thinking about, what we're looking at for women, and I don't pretend to understand women, but to me it seems that what gets them is the idea of a relationship. Not the relationship with itself, not the quality of it, but the idea, I need to have a relationship, I need to have a boyfriend, I need to have this good relationship, I need to be in love, I need to feel loved.

And what ends up happening is that need and that desire for that causes them to lower their standards and be with somebody that's not helpful to them, someone that's not walking with God, someone that's not doing what's right. And this is another, I think, form of passion here. The desire for a relationship becomes more important than what the relationship actually is.

And again, if you wouldn't come up to me and say afterwards, no, that's totally wrong, that's fine, I'll admit that. But I think that we just need to be careful that instead of focusing on some of these other things, we're focusing on what God wants. And what God wants for us in husband and a wife, the type of person that is sexually pure that we need to flee from these sexually immoral relationships.

God does command us to honor Him with our body that is commanded to us as Christians. We read First Corinthians 6:18. First Corinthians 6:19 goes on to say, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? You have from God and you are not your own.

So your body is not your own. It's God's and it's the temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. So that's a very important point here.

And then verse 20 says you were bought at a price. Not only that, but you know what? Christ's death for you. He paid the price for you.

It's not just for your salvation. He bought you. You are owned by Christ.

You're his. Therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's. You belong to God as Christians, you belong to him.

And I would say that twofold, he created you, he saved you. So that puts double claim on you. You belong to God.

So therefore glorify God with your bodies and glorify God in these relationships. And this whole passage here Corinthians 6:18-20 is all about sexual immorality. Do you need to be careful who you're seeking out as a husband, as a wife, someone you're going to be married to that you want to flee from people who are driven by their sexual passions.

You want to find somebody that desires to please God, that wants to honor God with their body. And if that takes a while, that takes a while, that's the right thing to do. You want to honor God.

And so flee from sexual immoral relationships. And like I said, I could say a lot more on that, but I'm going to leave it at that for this morning.

Going on with that kind of in the same vein, seek a godly spouse. Proverbs actually talks a lot about husbands and wives. In fact, mostly about wives.

I think that's partially because, again, I think Proverbs is written mostly with the viewpoint of a father teaching a son. So just about all Proverbs is applicable to men. If you do everything in Proverbs, if you follow the wisdom in Proverbs as a man, you're going to be a Godly man.

Right? I think that's pretty true. So it does cover what does a wife look like? What does a good wife look like? So letter A. Here.

An excellent wife is a blessing. Who wants to read these few verses here? Do you have another reader?

So over, over here, it says it talks about an excellent wife, I think an excellent wife, this is a godly wife. This is a woman that loves the Lord, that wants to serve him, that wants to do what's right, that wants to please God.

And you see in these passages, even someone that wants to help her husband come alongside him, help him be successful in what he's doing. Proverbs 12:14 says, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband. It's the glory of her husband.

You look at that crown and that's like, wow, that guy's a king because he has that crown. Well, that's what a godly wife does for a man. You look at him and go, wow, he has a woman who loves the Lord.

That's a lucky guy there. Or blessed guy, depending on how you want to look at it. So an excellent wife, a godly wife, seeks to be married to someone who loves and serves the Lord.

And I think this works both ways. Men, you should be looking for an excellent wife. Women, you should be looking for an excellent husband.

You should be looking for a man who loves and serves the Lord. Proverbs speaks much of the excellent wife and not of the excellent husband, because I think much of the Proverbs is kind of the blessed is the man idea. If men follow the instructions of Proverbs, they will turn out to be excellent.

So I think that's probably true. So for the woman, the goal is to exhibit the character described by the excellent wife passages. What should you try to be as a woman? You should try to be this type of woman that Proverbs describes about.

In Proverbs 31, we use a lot people preach on it on Mother's Day, and some women get tired of hearing on Mother's Day. But it's good wisdom for women. What kind of woman should you be? What kind of woman should you desire to be so that you can be an excellent wife? For the man, he should seek out a wife who has this character.

You shouldn't just seek someone out of I'm going to talk about that in just a second. But you should seek someone who has this type of character that is a Godly woman who loves the Lord, who is excellent. Proverbs also talks about what happened when you choose the wrong spouse, and choosing the wrong spouse is unwise.

I wanted to change that, but I didn't know how I could say it better, so I didn't change it. A few verses here. Who would like to read? Olivia? Go ahead, White.

So here, almost every one of these pastors, I think might be everyone talks about a contentious woman. The word contentious in the Hebrew comes from the base word that we get the word strife. So it's one who stirs up strife between two people, someone who stirs up trouble, stirs up contention, buddied against each other.

This type of woman is one that author of Proverbs, the writer of Proverbs says you should avoid this type of woman, someone who's not living in Godly way, someone who's willing to seek into big trouble. So we need to consider the character of those we are looking to marry. And this is what I want to talk about early, not just make a decision based on emotion or infatuation or I think I can speak for guys and say, just because she has a pretty smile and pretty eyes and she looks nice, that's not a good reason to marry a woman.

A good reason to marry a woman. Now, if you have that, that's great. If you have both those things, that's good, I'd say that.

But the best reason, the number one reason to marry a woman is that she loves the Lord. She's a godly woman. She's serving the Lord.

So who you marry, that's important thing. Proverbs talks a lot about what kind of woman a wife should be, what kind of woman a husband should seek. I think it goes back the other way.

If you're a woman, you look for a guy who's living out what Proverbs says, but what the Bible says, that he's living in a Godly way. We need to be careful who we choose as a spouse. Last point I have number six.

We should build our closest relationships with those who love the Lord. This is kind of a summary point, and I went out of Proverbs because this passage is just good for that two Corinthians 614 through 18. One more reader.

Go ahead, Jonathan. Do not be unequally yoked together what fellowship has recognized, what accord has Christ, and what agreement that the temple of God, for you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them, walk among them, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

So the command here is, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. When I first heard this passage, and many times after this is always applied in the marriage relationship. That's how they tried to apply it.

They'd say, well, this passage shows that you shouldn't marry an unbeliever, so therefore you should seek a believing wife. That's true that you shouldn't marry an unbeliever, you should seek a believing wife. But I think this passage expands to more than that.

This is talking about our close relationships, who we let influence us, who takes part in our life, who we spend a lot of time with, and we need to be careful that we're looking at the right people. So there are several comparisons made in this passage, and it's what accord has, and then two things that compare. So I'm just going to read these off quick.

You can see your righteousness and lawlessness. What does doing what's right have to do with doing what's wrong? They're like oil and water, they don't mix. You can't be righteous and lawless at the same time.

You have to choose one or the other. If you're righteous, you're doing all that's right. If you do anything wrong, that puts you on the lawlessness side.

They don't go together. Light versus Darkness I get up early in the morning because I like to go into work early and get stuff done before I get bothered by people. This is true.

And I get up when it's dark out and I have a little lamp by my bed, so I turn that on. I usually have to go to the restroom quick, and then I come back and I read my Bible in the morning. That's been my desire to do.

I'll read my Bible. Then I'll get changed and then I'll turn off the light by my bed and walk to my door. Well, a lot of times, especially lately, now, the middle of June or so, it wasn't so bad.

But now I turn off that light and I can't see anything. And so I'm still moron. I know where the door is, my room.

I walk it every day. It's my bedroom. I know where everything is, but I still bump into things.

I still reach for the door and end up reaching the shelf that's next to the door and stuff like that. I can't see. Light and darkness don't go together.

If it's light you see. If it's dark, you can't see. If you can see, it's light, it's not light and dark at the same time.

It doesn't work. They don't go together. Christ versus Belial.

Now. Christ. We know who Christ is.

Belial, I think here is referring to Satan. What does Christ and Satan have in common? They don't. They're working for opposite goals.

Christ is working for the glory of God the Father. Satan obviously is not. They don't go together.

So now, going in this comparison, so what do a believer and unbeliever have in common? We don't. We have different goals. Our goals as believers ought to be to be to the praise and glory of God.

We ought to be living our lives to serve God, do what he wants to bring Him the glory, to exalt Him. Believers aren't living that way. They're living according to their passions.

They're living according to their lust. They're living according to the sinful nature that's in them. There's no common ground there.

There shouldn't be. And what does the temple of God have to do with idols? Here talking about the temple of God, this is where God dwells. And in this passage here, it talks about that your bodies are the temple of God.

So how can you serve God, worship Him, give Him the glory, and be serving idols at the same time? You can't do that. They don't go together. And when we look at our relationships, god says just as these things all don't go together, being yoked with an unbeliever, being companions of an unbeliever, being best buddies with an unbeliever, just does not work.

They don't go together. They're not in it for the same thing you are. They're not having the same goals you are.

They're not going the same direction you are. So we talked about point one, it's going to lead you astray. It doesn't work together.

And so why do we try to do that? Why do we say, hey, I really like this person. I don't care that they don't know God. I don't care that they're not living for God.

I'm going to hang out with them because they're fun. That doesn't help us be good Christians, doesn't help us be who God wants us to be. We belong to God.

We are his temple. And as Pastor talks about, we're his temple, we're his people, we're his. That means we need to be very careful who these relationships we have are.

God calls us to be separate from unbelievers. Again, going back to what I said in point one, that doesn't mean we ignore them. That doesn't mean we cut them off.

That doesn't mean we isolate ourselves from them. But the people who influence us, the people who are most important in our lives. They ought to be people who love God, who are walking his ways, who are led by His Holy Spirit, who are reading his word, who are praying, who are out there proclaiming God, who are doing all the things that they're supposed to be doing, because that's going to influence us.

That's going to help us stay on the right path as we're surrounding ourselves with people who want to do what God wants them to do. So that's my thoughts for this morning. Last week, I realized I didn't open up for any questions.

It's not that I didn't want to, I just wasn't thinking. So I'm going to do that right now. Do you have any questions or thoughts that maybe I can try to answer? And my answer might be I don't know, too.

So anything this morning? It's ed really? Really tell us. Living for God and just it is and show you if you can even at workplace or even work with maybe get unbelievers to work out into this really big for me, just so positive. Yeah.

And again, it's not that we want to isolate ourselves from unbelievers because we ought to have an influence in our lives. But like you said, if you're going to go hang out with lunch with somebody and you have the choice between the believer and the unbeliever, probably you're going to want to go towards the believer because they're going to help you. As you're talking and as you're discussing, even as you're complaining about your work day and how hot it is outside, you can say, well, praise the Lord, we have jobs that God's provided for this and he's given us the strength to make it through this hot day.

That's a different attitude than somebody cursing and hating the managers for making them work today and hating their job. And the attitude just does change you. And I've been around people who you sit down with them and everything they have to say about where they're working is, this is why it's bad, this is why it's awful.

This is everything that's wrong with the company. And you start thinking, yeah, you know what? That's kind of true. This is kind of a bad company.

Instead of thinking, Praise the Lord, I have a job, praise the Lord that he's providing for my family, praise the Lord that I get to influence people that are here with the gospel of know. There's all kinds of things you can thank God for, even if it's not the perfect job. And those people can have an influencing.

And that's a good example of how a believer versus unbeliever can even have an influence in you, even at the workplace. So. Thank you, Ted.

That's good. Anybody else? Okay, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we praise you Lord.

We thank you for this time in Your Word, lord, we pray that you'd help us to take this idea of having Godly relationships with Godly people as our primary influence in our life seriously. Lord. It is so important that we do walk in your ways and we do what's right, Lord.

But you have not made us to be an island to do this on our own, to do this by ourselves, Lord. But You've given us relationships and You've developed in us this desire and even it seems like this need for relationships with others, lord, and help us to be pleasing to you and how we use that and how we build our relationships and the friendships that we make. Lord, we do pray that you would use us as an influence with the gospel to those unbelievers that are around us and those people we work with or go to school with or that are in our neighborhood or that we meet at the shopping store, that we would be able to share the gospel with them, tell them about who Jesus is.

Lord, we thank you for this time this morning. Now bless us as we go from here in Jesus name. Amen.