Woman Wisdom
Women are dying under expectations. We just watched Barbie with our tween daughter. In it, the mother figure goes on a tirade about how impossible it is to be a woman under all the current expectations! Things like: pursue a career - but - promote others; be excited about your kids - but - don’t show too many pictures of them; be thin (I mean healthy) - but - don’t talk about it; be … perfect as society has defined it right now in the dying-light of partriarchy! Every time she expresses the impossibility of the demands, she experiences more freedom from them. So do her listeners. In naming the problem, it loses its power. Amen!
But freedom is still up to you according to Barbie and the world.
There is an even better word for women in Proverbs. (and all humanity too!)
You have a God who is more invested in your freedom than you are. Jesus is for you—exposing your efforts with your expectations, putting them to death, and raising up new, better life than you ever could - a life living by faith in Jesus’ love for you. Proverbs shows us how. I spoke about the devastating expectations in Proverbs 31 in my last post, Superwoman. This is second of 3 posts on the female ideal in Proverbs.
Like Barbie, Proverbs also outlines the perfect expectations for women. (Also for men.) Chapter 31 is highly counter-cultural in the amount of agency it gives women (ie: business owners, self-sufficient, well-respected by husbands). No one in Greece or Rome or Babylon created such a vision of a woman at the time! The world was comfortable with patriarchy; the Gospel wasn’t. The world is still comfortable with impossible expectations - they are just different. And we still like to believe that we can do them on our own. For those of you who are ready to take a big sigh, dig deeper and rise to the challenge on your own once again, there is a better word: Jesus’ grace for you. The grace of Jesus Christ is constantly being shared - by His Spirit, His Word, his people of grace. Jesus is God’s wisdom to the world. Proverbs shows us how active God’s wisdom is.
Wisdom in Proverbs is Jesus
There is an overall structure to Proverbs. Chapters 1-9 are longer narratives about the ways of Wisdom and Folly. Wisdom first brings a word of conviction, of accusation, of death. It seems like Proverbs assumes you have the ability to choose, yet Proverbs 1 paints a bleak picture of humanity’s ability to listen to God. Wisdom’s first call is to accuse and expose and shed light on the sin in us.
“Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the market she raises her voice…
“Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
Because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when terror strikes you,
When terror strikes you like a storm…
Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord….” (Proverbs 1:20-31).
Yikes! This sounds uncompassionate and mean, frankly! But this is what God’s first word, the Law, does to the sin in us. He loves you enough to go after your sin. It shows you your hipocrisy, the dirt on your side of the street, and the hurt you are perpetuating. It breaks you out of victimhood and out of self-righteousness. It says, “There is something better for you.”
Jesus breaks through our sin by using the law. He also binds sin by speaking in parables (Matthew 13:10-17). As he explains his parables to his followers, he tells them that they have “been given” the ability to hear and understand him (Matthew 13:11). There are those who haven’t received that gift yet. In fact, even in Jesus followers’ hearts there are two natures: the sinner and the child of God. Jesus is binding the sin within his own people as well as getting new folks ready to hear his promises. Jesus’ explanation of parables sounds terrifying:
“This is why I speak to them in parables, because in seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled” (Matthew 13:13,14).
Terrifying! And it gets worse! Then Jesus quotes Isaiah 6, which sounds a lot like Wisdom’s rebuke in Proverbs 1. Isaiah 6:9,10 explains, “lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” What?! I thought God was compassionate and merciful. What about Jesus “seeking and saving the lost”? Why is he doing that? (Interestingly, Isaiah 6 is often read at ordination services. New pastors love the first bit – the bit about seeing God’s throne, about him cleansing Isaiah’s lips with a coal, about Isaiah jumping up and volunteering for service, “Send me! Send me!” Yet, the mission God sends Isaiah on, and the mission that Jesus is on with speaking in parables, and the mission that Woman Wisdom is on in Proverbs 1, is to expose sin and prevent us from taking any credit or perpetuate the charade of saving ourselves!!! Yikes!!! But good.) Jesus binds our sin in order to show us that there is no shred of cooperation on our part with God. He must come to us. He did. And he does. All our sin does is reject him. We looked God in the face and grabbed two pieces of wood, three nails and a spear. Jesus pushes through our good efforts, our Proverbs 31 diligence which ends up killing us (and perhaps our spouses?!), to bring us to the end of ourselves. That’s how we meet Jesus! In our sin. At his cross where all is known, all is forgiven, and all of heaven rejoicing.
We’d rather be Madam Secretary running an Electrolux commercial in Barbie Land… or the Proverbs 31 wife. But God in his wisdom loves us too much. We’re crumbling under it anyhow.
“My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline
or be weary of his reproof,for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights.” (Proverbs 3:11)
Maybe you’re being a fool and scoffing and gossiping? Maybe you’re trying to be perfect? Both need to die. He loves you too much to let you live without him. Wisdom is crying out, giving ears to hear her in the words of Jesus.
“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37,38)
In Proverbs 1, the woman of folly cries out, just like the woman of wisdom and Jesus did. The woman of folly promises life… but there are secrets, victims, betrayals, and it ends in death (Prov. 1:32, Prov. 5, 7:6-23). The Woman of Wisdom begins with death and from it gives life. She calls out because she wants all people to hear and be rescued (1 Timothy 2:4). Once God gives you ears to hear his love for you in Jesus, once he gives you eyes to see his forgiveness and grace for you in Jesus, you can’t unsee or unhear him. Proverbs 2:6 reminds us again that wisdom is a gift from the Lord. Once God has given you faith in his Son, he unleashes his promises for you. Once the Lord grabs hold of you, he won’t let you go. Hear the promises cascade from the Lord in Proverbs 2:
“For the Lord gives wisdom;
From his mouth comes knowledge and understanding;
He stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
He is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
Guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.
Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;
For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
Discretion will watch over you,
Understanding will guard over you,
Delivering you from the way of evil…
So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words…” (Proverbs 2:6-12,16)
God’s promises are all about what He does for us through Jesus. God is the actor; we are the recipient. God gives wisdom; he stores it up for you; he is a shield to you; he guards you; he watches over you; he delivers you. God is for you, giving you Jesus, giving you His Spirit. Once he calls you into his family, he won’t let you go. He gives you wisdom in the flesh: his Son who reveals true knowledge of God, His Father.
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. (John 6:37-39)
Jesus knows the pressure you face. He knows those deeply engrained patterns. He knows your temptations. You are not alone in it. He won’t let you go. He’ll bring wisdom to bear in your life—he loves you enough to bring death in order to bring new, better life than you ever dreamed. He’ll bring others around you who know his wisdom too.
More wisdom to come in the grand finale of Proverbs 31!
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